Aimlessly walking around your gym jumping from machine to machine and swinging a few dumbbells around or even doing half hearted cardio workouts over your local park or in your back garden will result in little to no progress. You need to be training S.M.A.R.T 

S – specific -Be specific on what you are actually trying to do, if your goal is weight loss you need to stop the muscle building exercises or vice versa.

M – measurable – Make sure your workout programme is measurable. Weigh yourself frequently and also up your workout intensity, how will you ever progress if you use the same weights or run at the same pace at the same time?

A – attainable -Your goals must be attainable! Not to difficult or to easy. Work at your own pace which you feel is best for you.

R – realistic – One of the most important things when it comes to muscle growth, weight loss, fitness improvement is being realistic, everyone is different and everyone make progress in their own time but thinking its possible to lose a stone in a week or put on 50lbs of muscle over night will result in massive dissapointment.

T – time-oriented – Everything takes time! make sure you have a schedule and you actually stick to it.

Now you know what SMART means make sure you remember it and you actually apply it.

Another way of training smart is to actually stop thinking about exercise as something physical and start actually using your brain when it comes to achieving your goals. I notice that people often lose track of how long they have been doing a certain workout for or how much weight they can lift. Start keeping track of what you do in the gym. By this i mean note down how much weight you are bench pressing, note down how you feel after doing 30 minutes on a cross trainer at a specific intensity. If something isn’t working you need to switch it up. This is how you make improvement!