How to Set Goals Correctly!

Goal Setting is an opportunity for athletes and coaches to set goals aimed at a variety of beneficial areas of their games by providing motivation, confidence, a more focused approach and promoting persistence. When done in an efficient way, setting goals helps individuals to understand what they are currently attaining and what they would like to attain in the future. We can start to see the benefit of goal setting already within those two sentences. Not only does it set up a timeline, it also allows us to explore what needs to be done along the way. 

Here is the interesting part: the majority of athletes use goals…incorrectly! It has been found that athletes use goals that are not specific or measurable, and often times cannot be controlled. This starts to make you wonder, is there more we could be getting out of ourselves and our athletes if we correct the way we set goals?

Before you begin setting and planning your goals, it is important to understand what kind of goals there actually are. There are three main types of goals: process, performance, and outcome. See the picture to the left to learn more about what these types of goals are! Process and performance goals bring development to the goal-setter in a way that is attainable, measurable, and able to build upon. This becomes important, so that the goal does not become only about an outcome, with no real plans on how to reach it. For instance, everyone would like to win a championship. However, how do you prepare for it, what needs to be accomplished beforehand, and what do you do if factors outside your control interrupt that outcome goal? The majority of the time, athletes set goals that focus on winning. But with little control over the external aspects of winning a game (did the team have a bad game, was the other team better, did an injury happen, etc.), it becomes important to promote goal setting focus around the process and performance of the individual, giving them the best skills, mental tools, and preparation for the big time games they want to win.

           

Overall, setting goals is a valuable tool to utilize, both as an individual athlete and as a coach trying to establish goals within a team. Below is a description of some key components of effective goal setting – broken down from an individual athlete and team coach perspective:

*Specific:

            Athlete – Being specific is a key. A broad goal can leave an athlete with reduced motivation and more chances to deviate from what they want to accomplish. Make goals more specific by adding dates, measurable outcomes, and working on the wording of your goal. “I want to be the best soccer player in the world” is a bit too ambiguous…as well as having a number of other things wrong with it. Don’t get me wrong, it is good to dream and set goals that take effort and time to achieve, but without specificity you are losing a valuable aspect that will help you in the long run. 

            Coach – Encourage your individual players and the team as a whole to come up with goals that are specific. “Being the best team” and “Playing as hard as we can” are not quite specific enough and “win the conference championship” and “be undefeated” are very much only aimed at outcome. Remember, being focused on performance and process goals will help prepare the team and reduce some of the pressure and anxiety associated with outcome goals.

*Measurable:

            Athlete – Is the goal you are setting measurable? How do you know when you have accomplished it? How do you know you are improving? Set a measurable main goal, and measurable short-term goals leading up to it. This will help keep you focused, maintain motivation, and give you solid evidence that you are making progress and improvements.

            Coaches – Same questions as the athlete. Help keep your team focused, motivated, and energized by seeing measurable goals be accomplished in a noticeable way.

*Attainable:

            Athlete/Coaches – Create goals that are attainable. You can set goals that are not within reach quite yet, but don’t set goals that are so unattainable that you lose motivation because of it. If you are just starting out running, you probably don’t want to set a goal that involves you winning the 100m sprint at the next Olympics. As coaches, if your team is full of beginners, you shouldn’t be hyping them up to win their league and go undefeated. What you can do is set attainable goes that progress as improvements are made, allowing your athletes to maintain motivation by accomplishing goals throughout the season. 

*Record:

            Athletes – Write down your goals!! Record them, keep track of them, monitor them and watch the progress you make. Keep them somewhere you can see them daily and update them regularly. Starting a tracking journal, or wall calendar that allows you to see your progression will create a positive reminder of what you are working towards, why you are working towards it, and how far you have come so far.

            Coaches – Write down your team goals!! Put them somewhere your team can constantly see them and remember what they are working towards. As you achieve and accomplish goals along your path towards a main goal, make sure your poster, chart, etc. is updated. Encourage your team to take part in the creation and maintenance of whatever type of visual recording aide you choose to use. Just make sure the goals are solid, recorded, and seen by all.

*Get rid of the negatives and stay positive:

            Athletes – You will come across various people throughout your career who will try to bring you down, tell you you can’t do something, and are just negative influencers in general. Avoid their negative comments and stay positive in your journey by remembering that the goals you set are for yourself and not for anyone else. There is also a strong possibility that you come across some personal adversity. Stay positive by trusting the process, recording and assessing your progress and keeping up the hard work. The path to your goals is not always clear cut and that’s ok. Know that this will likely be the case and prepare mentally to have to dig deep and continue to climb.

            Coaches – Creating a positive environment for your team in all areas is a key to maintaining and accomplishing any goals that have been set by you and your players. Eliminate threats to your team’s positive environment swiftly and consistently. Set team expectations and rules early in the season and stick with them. By not deviating from what was established from the start, you are in a good position to keep accountability high and efficiently. Take care to self-assess how you are coaching and speaking with your players as well. They will look to you during tough times and how you react will have a heavy influence on how they react. Is your criticism constructive or destructive? Are you encouraging or demotivating? Are you setting challenges in a way that is promoting your athletes to work hard and accomplish them? These are just some of the questions you should be asking yourself, in order to make sure your team is in a positive environment and not surrounded by negative words, thoughts, and actions.

*Act:

            Athletes/Coaches – Once goals are set, planned, and ready to be monitored it is time to act! No more sitting and wishing for things to happen. You make them happen! Get up, get to the gym and start to put in the work. Goals aren’t accomplished by themselves and it is now up to you to put your plan into action. When it’s going well, make adjustments to push yourself further. When it’s not going well, stay positive and keep working through whatever challenges come your way. Put yourself in motion and act!

*Visualize:

            Athletes – One great tool that can help with goal-setting is to introduce visualization to your daily workout routine. You’ve set your goals, so start to produce mental images of you achieving them. This will provide motivation, sustain focus, and create a positive feeling. If you want to know more about how visualization works, check out my previous blog post on how to use it efficiently.

            Coaches – Encourage your players to take some time to work on their mental training tool of visualization. As you are writing your practice sessions, is there an opportunity to insert visualization into the plan? At the beginning or end of practice is a good opportunity to have your athletes take 5 minutes to visualize their goals and team goals. The use of visualization may not only help with the development of skills, but also with motivation, focus, and determination.

*Believe:

            Athletes/Coaches – Believe in yourself and in your dreams! When you can get 100% behind a goal, it’s plan, and its execution, you will be in a position that allows you to achieve success. Believe in the process, believe in what you want, and believe in yourself and others!

Why are these things important? Think about being in the locker room minutes away from playing in a championship game. Wouldn’t you rather be thinking “I’m ready for this, look at everything I have achieved, I’m fully prepared for this moment in every respect, I am ready to reach my goal” than “We have to win, that’s the goal, it’s what we said we wanted to do, our whole season rides on this one game, I’m only successful if this game is won”. Who do you think is in a better place mentally? If you don’t know the answer, take a few more minutes to re-read this post :) 

All the best on your journey to accomplishing your goals!

-Cat

Coach and Athlete Tips to Overcoming Obstacles and Viewing Adversity As a Positive

We have all faced an obstacle at some point in our lives. Some sort of adversity that seems like the biggest road block to our goals, our ambitions, and to our success. It is a fact of life and one that those in sports face regularly. So what separates those who rise up and overcome an obstacle and those who falter and fail to clear the hurdle?       

There are a number of different aspects that help people overcome their personal obstacles. As athletes it is important to utilize these aspects when facing adversity, as coaches these are factors we can instill in our teams and cultivate within ourselves and our players. These aspects include:

*Positive Outlook:

            Coaches/Players – Do you believe challenges are helpful or hurtful? Do you see challenges as a step to success or a blockade that is impossible to breakthrough? How you answer those two questions will be clear indicators of if your outlook is positive or negative. A positive outlook is a key to overcoming obstacles. It is the first thing that must be in place in order for you to keep going past a hurdle and achieve success. If you view every obstacle or challenge in a negative light, finding a way to overcome it becomes near impossible. Approaching adversity with a positive outlook, seeing it as something that is going to propel you to success and greatness will help you actually achieve success and greatness. Stop looking at adversity as a negative and start looking at it as the building blocks that will help you reach your goals.

*Preparation:

            Coaches – Are you prepared to face adversity? Are you prepared to be a good example to your players on how to face adversity? Are you helping to prepare your players to face adversity? That may seem like a lot of questions and responsibility, but preparation is key to dealing quickly and efficiently with obstacles that arise…and they will arise. This is an opportunity to practice what you preach to your athletes. Are you telling your players to utilize positive sayings and self-talk? Positive visualization? Self-assessment and reflection? Well then you should be doing these things with them!! By being prepared to deal with obstacles, you are able to become a good role model for your athletes when they themselves will face their own personal obstacles. Creating an area for you and your athletes to share motivational stories, quotes, goals, etc. can be a good idea to implement within your team to promote different strategies for handling adversity.

            Players – Are you prepared to face adversity? It is coming, it will happen, do not get caught by surprise! Being prepared will help you to overcome obstacles quickly. Reflect on previous encounters with adversity and take some time to understand what helped and how to utilize good strategies in the future. Building up a personal toolkit of ways to overcome adversity will be instrumental to helping you bounce back from any setbacks. Find what motivates you, what can make you positive and what will keep you encouraged to keep persisting against adversity.

*Environment:

Coaches – Are we creating a positive environment for our players and providing encouragement as well as constructive criticism? By promoting this positive environment, from both the coaching staff and the team, you are able to help your athletes feel a sense of strength and resilience when obstacles arise. When entering any sort of team atmosphere (practice, games, team outings), players should feel a sense of togetherness, hope, motivation, and have positive interactions with everyone involved. This type of environment can help keep your athletes in a frame of mind that is able to handle any setbacks or adversity, because they feel supported and able to overcome anything. Team atmosphere, team rules, and team expectations are all tools to utilize when putting your team together. If a positive environment is expected, implemented, encouraged and reinforced, your players will foster this important aspect to helping everyone overcome adversity.

Players – Are you promoting a positive environment within your team? By being encouraging, not being negatively critical to teammates, and by exuding a positive team spirt, you are able to influence those around you to feel supported and positive. This aspect doesn’t ask too much of anyone, which makes it an easy aspect to implement into your athlete toolkit. While this will help your teammates around you overcome adversity, what do you do if you are the one facing a challenge? Who you surround yourself with will determine the environment you create for yourself. Are you interacting with friends, family, and teammates who are positive individuals? If you are, you will find difficulties easier to handle and defeat. If you aren’t, you are creating a negative environment that will make hurdles higher and harder to get past. Long story short: get rid of the negative influencers in your life. They will do nothing but cultivate negative thoughts within you and in turn destroy your confidence, making adversity an extremely hard mountain to climb.

*Accountability:

                        Coaches/Players – What type of obstacle is keeping you from success? Why do I ask? Because sometimes we create the very challenges we are trying to avoid. Understanding what you did, in relation to the obstacle you find yourself facing, is a key to figuring out how to overcome it. It is a tough question and one that requires you to be honest with yourself. Holding yourself accountable for any things that might have caused or attributed to an obstacle can help you understand why it happened, how to overcome it, and how to prevent it from occurring again. Those who hold themselves accountable will take time to work on themselves and ultimately work on the problem they face. Those who avoid accountability and pass blame onto others, will forever struggle with the obstacle they are faced with and may never succeed in overcoming it. So how do we hold ourselves accountable? Keep track of your progress, constantly reflect on how you are dealing with wins and losses, utilize tools that can benefit you along the way, and invest time in your areas of weakness – even if it is uncomfortable.

*Faith:

            Coaches/Players – Do you have faith in yourself, in others, and spiritually? When adversity hits and we encounter a wall, we need to have faith that we are capable of breaking through it. Successful individuals believe that they can overcome anything thrown at them. Their hard work, preparation, and determination are trusted and utilized when times get tough. Faith in others can include your team and support staff. Take for example coming back from an injury. It is an obstacle many athletes will face. Do you have faith in your trainers? Your rehabilitation exercises? Your coaches and teammates to get the job done until you can rejoin them? Having faith in those who are working towards the same goal as you can help you feel supported, encouraged, and confident that you are not alone when adversity strikes. Spiritually, do you have faith that things will work out. That by trusting in the Lord you are able to overcome anything that stands in your way? This is not about praying to have all the answers or to have everything go smoothly. This is about keeping the faith and praying for the strength, guidance, and wisdom to use what you have within and around you to overcome obstacles and achieve success. A simple technique to bolster your faith, is by writing a list of positive qualities you possess, positive qualities and strengths of those around you, and the many blessings that you have in your life. It is a great list to look upon and have during times when you feel as though nothing around you is going your way.

*Determination

            Coach/Players – Why do you play or coach a sport? What is the end goal? Why do you put in the hours, the sweat, the blood? When you understand fully why you do something you can stay focused on the finish line and not the hurdle you are currently trying to clear. Remaining determined throughout obstacles is easier said than done. We all know this. But translating that determination into clear, attainable goals, and staying focused on how you plan on accomplishing those goals, is another aspect to using challenges as building blocks and not road blocks. Coaches and players can utilize this aspect by again taking some time and completing a bit of self-assessment. The questions already stated are good starting points. Discovering what is important to you and finding the determination and focus to keep pushing toward that important goal will help you to overcome any challenge that may stand in your way.

If you are dealing with adversity now, I hope the tips above can help. You are in control of how you view, approach, and overcome any challenges in your life. Know that roadblocks and setbacks are but a momentary obstruction on a long road to success.

Keep going, keep persisting, keep succeeding!

-Cat