Your 2027 fitness goals, beyond SMART: a step-by-step guide

January is on its way, and with it the tradition of writing the year's sporting resolutions in a notebook (or in the notes on your phone). Someone has almost certainly told you they need to be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Well, a group of Australian experts has just put that method under the microscope, and their conclusion is that it falls short, to say the least. Before you crack open that new notebook, it is worth reading this.

What the experts say (and why SMART limps)

The statement is signed by ten researchers on behalf of Exercise and Sports Science Australia, the professional body for the country's exercise physiologists, and was published in January in the journal Sports Medicine. Their starting point is simple: setting goals is one of the most widely used tools for getting people to move more, but it is almost always done with the same recipe, and that recipe is not as well grounded as it seems.

Among the problems they list, a few are surprising. SMART was born in a business management article that relied on no theory and no data. "Realistic" and "achievable" mean much the same thing. There is not even agreement on what the letters stand for: physical activity studies have used 34 different terms for them. Above all, it clashes with the evidence: according to classic goal-setting theory, goals work best when they are challenging, not when they are "realistic", and a meta-analysis found that specific goals did not produce more physical activity than goals as vague as "move more".

There is not one kind of goal, there are more than twenty

The central idea of the document is that there are more than twenty types of goal, and each works better in some situations than in others. To give you an idea, these are the most useful for a recreational athlete:

And here comes the most useful part: the right type depends on where you are. According to the studies gathered in the statement, people who are already active perform better with concrete, challenging goals, whereas those who move little walked more with open goals (along the lines of "let us see how many steps I can manage today") than with SMART goals, and also felt better along the way.

The risks nobody talks about

A badly framed goal is not neutral. Specific goals tend to work like an all-or-nothing exam: you either make it or you fail. And failing can sap your morale and motivation even when, in reality, you have moved more than before. The authors also point to the stress and pressure of goals that are too difficult or of piling several on at once, plus a curious effect: goals can tempt people to "tidy up" their training log, such as recording a run that turned into a stroll. No need to raise your hand.

It took away the trauma of failing. On a good day, it's a good day; on a bad day, it's a better day tomorrow.

Participant in a pilot walking programme using open goals, quoted in the statement

That is why they recommend reducing the chances of failure, for example by avoiding over-ambitious targets or combining them with open goals. They also urge particular care for anyone going through a period of low mood: that is not the time to set goals that could end in a sense of failure.

Your guide to setting your 2027 goals

The statement is aimed at professionals who help other people set goals, but its recommendations can be applied to yourself. This is our adaptation, in six steps:

If you struggle to stay consistent beyond January, it is worth revisiting why routine beats motivation and why knowing exercise is good for you is not enough. And if a goal with a date motivates you, the Victoris challenges offer distances you complete at your own pace, run by run, which fits nicely with the idea of pairing a performance goal with a process goal.

With caveats

The authors themselves acknowledge the limitations: the statement was written by researchers from Western, wealthy countries, and there is a lack of studies in groups with particular needs, such as children, neurodivergent people or those with mental health problems. Nor is it a trial proving a new method; it is a review of theory and the available evidence. Even so, the underlying message makes a lot of sense: the aim is not to write the perfect goal, but the right one for you, right now. And if it needs changing in March, change it. Notebooks come with erasers too.