Train Smarter With SMART Goals

Without clearly defined goals, creating an effective training plan is impossible. You need to know your destination before you start your journey.

In this article, I will outline the SMART goals in the context of creating a cycling training plan and why they are important.

Why SMART Goals are Important

Objective pass/ fail condition

Having a clearly defined SMART goal means there will be no ambiguity if you achieve it or not. You will have a precise condition that needs to be met by a specific date in order to say you achieved your goal.

Track your progress towards the goal

Since there is a clear objective, you can more clearly measure your progress. Checking in with tests every so often to compare your progress now vs earlier in your training process will help you make adjustments to keep you on target as much as possible.

Create more effective training programs

Knowing exactly what your target event requires of you and what your success would look like, you can create workouts and structure your training to prepare. You can develop key workouts that closely replicate the demands of the event and structure your overall training to ensure all important aspects of your target event are being touched on throughout the process.

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Specific

Instead of saying “I want to get fitter” or “I want to be faster”, think of how exactly you want to be fitter or faster. Maybe you have a personal best time you want to beat, you have a weight loss goal, you want to do the local group ride without getting dropped, or even an average speed goal for a ride. These don’t need to be performance-based; your goal could be that you want to complete your first century or ride a certain amount within a year. Think about what exactly you want to achieve.

Measurable

If your goal of “I want to be faster” was made more specific by saying “I want to beat my personal best on X course” then the next step would be to say “I want to beat my personal best on X course by Y minutes”. Objectively determining if you have attained your goal is essential; make sure you understand clearly what you need to do to achieve your goal and everything else that could happen that means you didn't achieve it.

Attainable 

Your goal should be challenging but within the realm of what you can realistically accomplish. It's frustrating and demoralizing to set yourself a goal that you can work towards for decades and never get close to achieving. Your goals should typically be something that you can complete within a season. You can make larger goals, but your day-to-day training should be tailored towards a goal for the season.

Relevant

If you have created several goals, each should have at least some sort of overlap with each other. Working towards your current season goal will help progress your 3-year goal. Additionally, you can set mini goals for yourself each week or month to help break up your main season goal. Each of these mini goals should help you progress directly towards whatever your bigger goals are.

Time-Bound

There is a date you want to complete your goal by. This urgency keeps you diligent and constantly mindful of the goal itself. If you don’t give yourself a finish date, you could continue to push it off and say to yourself, “I'll start tomorrow”. If you have a race or event, there naturally is a date you need to complete it. However, if you are making your own personal goals outside of a formal event, you need to set a date to finish it by.

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How many goals should you set?

Your primary season goal should be what all of your training is structured towards helping you accomplish. You should only have one, maybe two of these main goals each season to ensure your training can be as targeted and focused on their demands.

Focusing on just one or two primary goals or events means you can put more high-quality training time into each and progress further to each one. If you need to taper and reduce your productive training every week for a race that's not that important to you, you wont make as much progress as you could with fewer, highly focused events.

Creating regular, smaller goals to break up your main one is a good idea. For example, when working with athletes immediately after the off-season, I try not to micromanage their entire training process. We set weekly volume goals with a target at the end of that phase. This means the rider will have a weekly goal of 12 hours for the first week, 14 hours for the second, and 16 hours for the third. This athlete would have a goal of being able to ride 16 hours a week before starting his true base training phase, so we create smaller weekly targets to break down a month-long goal to work towards.

Need help creating a training program for your goals?

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