Hey everyone, back again with another op ed, challenging you guys to think deeper about some of the assumptions we make as coaches:
SMART goals are so embedded within our industry that it’s basically treated as an unquestionable gold standard. It is pretty much the day 1 1st step for any commercial gym intro session. It’s a big portion of the NASM literature, and I believe the other certs follow the same principles if not the exact same language (lmk if I’m wrong!)
But what’s the basis for it? Is it really important? What makes it so useful for our clients? Let’s look deeper:
Where do SMART goals come from?
The idea of SMART goals came from a paper written in 1981 that was published in “Management review”, some sort of publication for corporate management.
It was written by George T Doran, a corporate management consultant. He worked for a water power company in Washington, and found this method was a good way to keep his managers on track.
Ok, so the method has 0 scientific basis and was made for a completely different industry and designed for an employee/manager relationship, rather than a coach/client. That doesn’t on its own mean it’s worthless though. Lets look at the method broken down:
Applying The Letters:
Now let’s break down the letters and see how they apply in a coaching scenario. For the purpose of simplicity, I will use the example of a day 1 client who’s never been in the gym before:
Specific:
Supposedly, it’s important to have our clients make their goal highly specific. The example used in the text is “I will lose 10 lbs of bodyfat with diet and training consistency”. The idea is that this provides motivation and clarity. Does it though?
Sure, setting an exact goal in mind might make you more motivated to start. But the person is already there in front of you. They already got past the most difficult barrier.
Now what if their “specific goal” doesn’t stay on track for the first couple weeks. Maybe their lower back starts hurting or they have scheduling conflicts. Is that super specific goal going to be motivating to them? Or is it gojng to make them feel like they’re failing?
Theres *nothing* wrong with a client coming in and saying “I want to be healthier” or “I want to lose some weight”. They’ve never worked out before. The have no idea what sort of benefits they’ll get, or what they’ll want to achieve once they become more involved in their fitness. It’s your job as a trainer to, over time, help them illucidate what it is they really want from training.
Measurable:
Goals have to be measurable. You can’t just say “I want to lose some fat”. We need specific numbers that we can track.
Why?? What purpose does that serve the client? They have no idea how much weight they actually need to lose. They have no idea how to even track their bodyfat. They’re probably totally unaware of how inaccurate most bf scans are. So why are we making them put a number on it?
Attainable/Realistic:
This is my personal favorite because it really highlights how sloppy NASM is. The A in SMART is actually supposed to be “Assignable” because it’s supposed to be a task for a worker. That obviously doesn’t apply here, so they just changed it to attainabl, which means the same thing as realistic. So I’ll just group them together:
This one is just absurd. Your client has no idea what’s realistic. They’ve never been in the gym before. You have no idea what’s realistic. You don’t know anything about your clients work ethic, their genetics, their personal lives, or anything that is relevant to what is realistic from them. It’s a complete guessing game.
Time-constrained:
We need to set a timeline for our goal to be hit. Weirdly enough, that timeline always seems to line up with exactly how many sessions the client has signed up for 😂
The whole point of training your client is to help them adapt a fitness lifestyle. Putting a timeline on it sets an endpoint. That completely contradicts what we’re trying to do. There is no timeline for fitness. It’s a lifelong journey
So, what gives?
If there’s no scientific basis for SMART goals, they weren’t designed for clients, and they don’t pass the smell test in terms of rationale, why are they so ubiquitous?
In my opinion, it’s a sales tool.
Alot of this stuff is just about imagery. You create an image of your clients future self in their head. You get them emotionally invested in it. Then you create a path to get there. You’re selling them their own success before they’ve actually done anything.
It’s a great way to get a pressure sale, but a horrible way to set a client up for success.
And that’s why so many commercial gyms fall for it. They dont care about retention, they care about acquisition. And this method supports that.
As always, I’m open to debate on any of these points! The more effort you put in to your argument, the more effort I’ll respond with.
The purpose of these posts is never to tell you what to think. All I care about is *that* you think. So we can all make eachother better.