Tips for Tracking Your Fitness Goals
If you’re embarking on a fitness journey, tracking your progress is key to your success. Setting achievable and trackable fitness goals, creating milestones, tracking your activity levels, assessing your progress, and readjusting as needed, will all help you make the progress you want. Learning how to set an attainable main goal and milestone goals to support it will help set you up for success with your fitness goals. With these tips to track your fitness goals, you will be able to make steady strides to turn your fitness dreams into a reality.
Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals
The first step in tracking your fitness goals is to set S.M.A.R.T. goals. S.M.A.R.T. stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Setting goals that are concise, achievable, and measurable will help you track your progress and see your results as you follow a fitness program. When setting fitness goals, choose one big goal to focus on that is challenging yet attainable. Then, use the S.M.A.R.T. test to make sure your big goal is trackable and doable.
Create Milestones
Once you have your big goal, you can create milestones that will help you stay on track, and measure your progress. If your big goal is to lose 20 pounds, for instance, you may set a milestone goal of losing one pound a week. Milestones will help you break down your big goal into achievable steps and allow you to see your progress.
Schedule Your Workouts
Scheduling your workouts makes tracking easier because you will have a record of each workout in your calendar. You can use an electronic calendar on your phone or computer or go the manual route and write down your workouts on a paper calendar. Scheduling your workouts will also make you more likely to get them done.
Use a Fitness Tracker
Use a fitness tracker or step-tracking app and keep track of your workouts and daily activities. There are so many fitness trackers available now, and you will have access to data that shows you where you are doing well with your fitness and areas where you may be able to improve. The Cubii mobile app is the perfect way to keep track of your strides, calories burned, time active, and distance pedaled. You're able to track your progress by workout, day, month, or year and even have the ability to set daily goals.
Assess Your Progress Regularly
Check in and assess your fitness progress regularly. You may look at your daily activity levels and see progress with a weekly assessment. Sit down at the same time every week to assess your goals and take any measurements as needed. If you are working on a weight loss goal, for instance, weigh yourself at the same time every week. Regular check-ins will help you identify when you are doing well with your fitness goals and make adjustments for any obstacles that come up.
Readjust as Needed
Everyone faces challenges in life, and obstacles will arise on your fitness journey. Setting S.M.A.R.T. fitness goals and tracking your progress will help you to see areas that you may be able to improve upon. Also, if an unforeseen circumstance comes up - such as an illness or injury, you can readjust your goals as needed. You may have to extend your goal end date, adjust milestones, or even readjust your main goal. Be flexible in your approach and you will find that every problem has a solution that works for you.
Celebrate Progress
As you track your fitness progress, celebrate your milestones and achievements along the way. You may want to indulge in some self-care activities, enjoy an outing with family or friends, or treat yourself to a new fitness accessory. Celebrating your progress will help you stay motivated and enjoy your fitness journey as you continue to take steps toward achieving your fitness goals.