The importance of having goals

Goals are indispensable for a healthy lifestyle

Having goals is one of the most fundamental principles for a healthy and active lifestyle. If you know what you’re aiming for, it’s easier to create routines and habits to help you achieve it. Research even suggests that goal setting is closely tied to increased motivation and performance.

According to Frank L. Smoll, writing for Psychology Today, effective goal setting should abide by the rule of ABCs:

Coaches and parents should use the ABCs in teaching goal-setting techniques to young athletes. Specifically, goals should be Achievable and Believable, and athletes must be Committed to working on them.

 

 

But also that it’s important to distinguish between ‘process goals’ and ‘product goals’ for optimal performance:

Process goals focus on actual acts of performance and learning, such as a baseball pitcher setting the goal of throwing a certain percent of first-pitch strikes; whereas, product goals focus on the outcome of performance, such as winning a league championship.

 

Meet the brand new goal setting feature on Sports Tracker

We know you guys love setting goals for yourselves as well. In fact, it’s something that we’ve made available for Sports Tracker Premium users for a while now: the ability to set your own goals in the app by duration, distance, amount of workouts or energy for a weekly, monthly, or a custom defined period.

Well, today we have a cool announcement for everyone else – goal setting, as of the latest Sports Tracker update, is available for all Android users! And it comes with a shiny new dashboard as well. Here’s what it looks like…

 

Achieve your goals with our new competition

And if 2016 is the year where you vowed to work out more often and pursue a healthier lifestyle, we have another surprise: we’re hosting a competition* to help you achieve your own goals! How it works is simple:

1. Make sure you have the latest Sports Tracker update installed
2. Set your goal for February
3. Work at it – don’t give up
4. Once you’re done, share your accomplished goal on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #MySTGoal, or post it on our Facebook page
5. We’re going to award the three most ambitious goal-setters (to be decided by a jury) with an exclusive product pack

What’s in this product pack, we hear you ask? Oh, how about things like:

• A Suunto Ambit3 Vertical GPS watch
• A pair of Salomon S-LAB Sense 4 Ultra running shoes
• A Salomon Park Media Armband
• A Sports Tracker Smart Sensor (which includes a one-year Premium subscription to Sports Tracker)

Or in other words, a great way to continue achieving your goals throughout 2016!

With free goal setting, there’s really no excuse not work out more regularly with Sports Tracker. If you’re up for the task, download the Sports Tracker app for Android here or update your version and let’s get started – we’re accepting submissions until February 29!

And iOS users, we haven’t forgotten about you either. We’re working on a completely renewed version and will share news during the Spring. In the meantime you can set goals with the premium version, so go set yours!

This is just the first of many updates we’re working on as we renew the Sports Tracker app throughout the year. We’d love to hear your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter or the comments section below!

*Terms and conditions apply