When it comes to your fitness routine, one thing to keep in mind is that you always must have a goal in place. Failing to set goals for yourself will result in an attitude change each time you approach the gym. You’ll go in, go through the motions, and come out, hopefully returning again next time. It’s easy to lose motivation as you have no real end in sight.

When you have a firm goal in place though, each session now has a purpose. You go in with drive and determination to ensure your goals get met.

Want some quick tips to give yourself a helping hand? The following hacks will help you take your fitness goals up a notch.

Set Daily Goals

Rather than just setting one large long-term goal, consider breaking it up and setting a number of "mini" goals instead. Set a goal to achieve daily if you can. This is going to go a long way towards helping you gain a sense of accomplishment after each goal is achieved.

These daily goals shouldn’t be too hard to achieve – just something that forces you into the gym with focus. It could be doing one more rep when doing the chest press exercise or running on the treadmill for two minutes longer.

Count Backward

As you go about counting your reps, try this little technique: rather than counting up, count down.

As silly as it may seem, this small tweak can really go a long way towards making it feel easier to get that full set in. When you’re counting down in number, you psychologically will feel like there’s less work to go. When you count up, it tends to be the opposite.

Join A Contest

Another fast way to up your motivation to ensure that you achieve success with your goals is to join a contest. Find a group of people who are working towards similar goals as you and then get together and see who can achieve their goal in the shortest period of time.

A little competitive spirit never hurt anyone and for most people, it’ll help you push the barrier of success.

Track Your Progress

It’s essential, as you do your workouts, that you are constantly tracking your progress. How far have you come and how far do you have to go? Write this down in a journal.

Likewise, also take pictures of yourself and put that down in a journal as well. By keeping tabs on this, you can not only ensure that you are moving forward, but you also have a reference to look back on to see just how far you’ve come.

Then on the days it feels like you aren’t making any progress, you can look back and see very clearly that you are in fact seeing success.

Find A Mentor

Finally, consider finding a mentor. Sometimes you just need a little inspiration to keep you going. Having a mentor does two things. First, it allows you to learn from them. Whether you speak to them in person or just watch their videos online, it can help you learn new tips and tricks that can better your own performance.

Second, it gives you an added boost of motivation. When you watch them, it’ll increase your desire to achieve a similar result in yourself, thus inspire you to keep working hard.

So use these hacks and take your fitness to the next level. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain from making them a part of your routine.

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