Site Search

What’s Your Fitness Goal? Why Are You Going to The Gym?

By Dale Andrew

Before you get to the gym, take the time to ask yourself, “Why am I going to the gym?” What’s my fitness goal?

If you don’t know why you are there, then you lack purpose; nothing great has ever been achieved without a sense of purpose. You may retort that you are there to lose weight, tone up, or get stronger. On the surface, these reasons appear to be obvious and compelling. However, it has been my experience that these aren’t the reasons why people go to the gym. These are “whats” but not “whys.”

It’s important to know the difference between “whats” and “whys” when setting your fitness goals. “Whats” are superficial and always fade. “Whys,” on the other hand, are more stable motivating forces that can lead to positive behavioural and lifestyle changes. “Whys” are usually born out of a desire to change something that’s perceived as negative in favour of something that permits a better body image.

Over the years, I’ve learned that a person’s spoken reason or motivation for going to the gym may be to lose weight, but their unspoken reasons are WHY they’re there in the first place. For example, they may want to lose weight so that they can play soccer with their kids, walk around the block without feeling out of breath, feel comfortable in their skin or in a two-piece swimsuit, or attract the attention of a husband or wife again. There are many reasons for why someone joins a gym, but you can bet that none of them revolve around being able to lift a 25-pound dumbbell or being able to run on a treadmill. Your goals for joining a gym probably have a lot more to do with wanting to improve the life that you live outside it.

Knowing your goals for why you’re going to the gym doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be successful in your quest for a better body, but not knowing almost certainly guarantees that you will fail. You can’t reach a goal before you take the time to properly identify and set one. In this sense, failure is not the result of falling short of your goal, but the result of not having a goal to reach. Know what you want and above all why it’s important. How will you feel if you don’t reach your fitness goals? What’s the biggest obstacle to achieving your fitness goals?

These are hard questions, but you need to ask them and answer them if you really want to improve your fitness and build a better body. Once motivation is properly identified, it must be carefully nurtured and directed to bring about the desired change. Your fitness goal helps to determine which principles you must follow to achieve it. These goal specific principles directly inform the selection, sequence, dose, and frequency of the best fitness methods you can choose.. What’s your plan for success? You do have one, right?

Indeed, there are many people; you may even know a few, that spend time at the gym. If your fitness goals are socially oriented, that approach may work for you too. If your fitness goals are results-oriented, however, what you do at the gym and how you do it is infinitely more important than the amount of time that you spend there.

About the Author:

Dale Andrew, M.A. is a fitness professional, author, and speaker. He is the fat loss expert busy professionals worldwide turn to for advice on how to build a better body - FAST. To get your copy of his free e-book 64 Must-Have Fitness Tips, visit www.better-body-tips.com.