Setting health and fitness goals gives you direction and allows you to measure your progress. You can make your goals very specific and defined, or you may prefer to have more flexible, general goals. Either way, having goals will be beneficial. Fitness goals for beginners are better as loosely defined, general goals that you can refine over time. Specific goals, especially those designed per the SMART principles (see below) are more suited to experienced exercisers and those looking to improve sports performance.
Common fitness goals for beginners
Health goals
Heart & circulatory health
While there are various other health benefits of exercise, the most common health goal is to want to improve cardiovascular health. Regular exercise strengthens the heart muscle, improves circulation, and helps maintain healthy blood pressure. This means that it reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke which are very common health risks among the overweight and inactive. Aerobic activities such as brisk walking, cycling, and swimming increase the efficiency of the cardiovascular system by improving the heart’s ability to pump oxygen-rich blood throughout the body. Over time, this reduces resting heart rate, lowers cholesterol, and decreases the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Mental wellbeing
It’s not only physical benefits – exercise also benefits mental health. It stimulates the release of endorphins and neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which can improve mood and reduce anxiety and depression. Regular physical activity also enhances cognitive function, sleep quality, and overall resilience to stress, contributing to a more balanced and energetic life.
Other goals
To lose weight
As noted above, exercise burns calories and increases muscle mass. Weight loss is one of the most common reasons for taking up exercise, however to achieve this objective you also need to pay attention to your diet.
To have more energy
Although exercise uses energy and if we’re tired or lethargic we may not feel like exercising, in fact the long term effect of exercise is to increase energy levels. The more we exercise, the more stamina improves, meaning we have plenty of energy for exercise and other activities. It also helps us to have a more positive outlook – feelings of negativity can often make us feel like we lack energy.
Stronger, firmer muscle
People often say they want to tone up their muscles. Strictly speaking tone refers to a muscle’s readiness for action and relates to the nervous system, not the muscles themselves. What most people really want when they say they want tone is trained, firm muscles that give their bodies good shape. As well as looking good, trained muscles give us the advantage of increased strength. For making muscles stronger and firmer, resistance training is the best option. The resistance can be our body weight, elastic equipment like bands or tubes, or weights such as dumbbells and kettlebells.
To be flexible
Inactive lifestyles lead to a loss of flexibility. This can end up being a viscious circle because as people become less flexible, activity becomes more difficult. Exercise helps to maintain flexibility, because when exercising we move our bodies around more. For greater improvements to flexibility, we should stretch regularly.
To have good posture
Posture is really important for muscle and joint health, as well as for looking good. Poor posture causes excess stress on joints, especially those in the spine. It also causes muscle tension and, over time, shortening of some muscles, leading to pain and restriction.
So how to achieve your goals?
Not everyone has the same goals. You might want to achieve all of the above, or only some of them. Once you’ve identified what your fitness goals are, you need a plan of how to achieve them.
Cardio fitness
Aerobic exercise is the best way to increase cardiovascular health. Any exercise which increases your heart rate and which you can keep up for several minutes will bring aerobic improvements. Ideally you would keep going for 20+ minutes but even 5 minutes of continuous exercise every day will start to bring about improvement.
Walking is an excellent way to start, or indoor low impact cardio. Try one of these walking programs:
Mental wellbeing
The best exercise for your mental wellbeing is whatever you enjoy the most. Some people find that cardio exercise gives then an endorphin “high”, especially if it is outdoors. Some benefit more from something slow and focused, like Pilates or stretching. And others find the challenge and focus of strength training helps their mental wellbeing. Beginner workouts you could try include the walking programs above or:
To lose weight
Any strenuous exercise will help you to lose weight. Cardio exercise burns more calories while you’re doing it than strength training or other high intensity exercise, but higher intensity exercise requires more metabolic activity to recover and adapt for the next session. Again, for cardio you can try the walking plans above, or these beginner running plans:
Or these strength ones
To strengthen bones
Bone mass density is a concern for women as there is a risk of problems with brittle bones post-menopause. Good exercises for the bones include walking, running and weight training.
Increasing energy levels
While aerobic energy is likely to have the biggest impact in making you feel like you have more energy, any exercise will help, especially if it also makes you feel more positive.
Stronger, firmer muscles
If this is what you’re goal is, then you want to be doing some strength training – see the suggested strength workouts above.
To be flexible
Depending on how much you want to develop your flexibility, you could just incorporate 5 or 10 minutes stretching at the end of your workout, or you might want to take time just to stretch. These stretching routines will help:
Improve posture
Any workout that you do will help to improve posture as long as you follow the instructions carefully to make sure you’re doing it with good technique. Exercise helps to improve posture by:
- Lengthening shortened muscles
- Improving joint mobility
- Strengthening weak muscles
- Improving awareness of posture and movement quality
Fitness goals for beginners printable
Use this worksheet to list your fitness goals and how you’re going to achieve them. It has space for 6 goals, but it’s fine if you have fewer goals. Most people start out with 2 or 3 goals. People often say for example that they want “to lose weight and tone up”. Or “to be less stressed and have more energy”.
Download A4 PDF
Download letter PDF
A note about SMART goals
SMART goals aren’t specific to fitness programs, you might have come across them in other contexts. It makes sense in theory that in order to achieve what you want you need to define what that is and set out steps to achieve it. But in practice, if you’re just starting out on a fitness program, you probably don’t have particularly specific goals and you don’t know what you can achieve or how long it will take you. Personal trainers may pretend they can tell you this, but that’s just not true if they haven’t worked with you before. Everyone is different and in order to understand what is achievable for someone and how long it will take them you need to have a good understanding of their personal
- Health
- Anatomy and physiology
- Life circumstances and challenges
- Psychology
A “consultation” may give you a starting point but not enough understanding to set SMART goals. You can read more about SMART goals here.
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