How do you approach goal setting with your athletes and help them measure their progress towards those goals?

Question

Alex Jospe · Answer

I could go a lot longer than 90 seconds about goal setting, but it is super important. And we have all of our athletes set goals. We make what we call goal pyramids, or as one ninth grader called it, like, I have a goal triangle. And the idea there is that at the top of the goal pyramid, tippy top little thing, that is your outcome goal for, can be for the season. That's kind of tangible for the athletes that are in high school. And the bottom of the pyramid is much wider, right? And that those are more of your process goals. And the idea is that we try and teach our athletes the difference between an outcome goal, which is usually results oriented, and you have no control over it, and a process goal, which is the stuff that you do have control over. These are the things you can actually do to try and achieve your outcome goals. And so we'll start with usually one outcome goal, and then a couple more like testing goals underneath this race goal. So for example, I want to be able to do my double pull test in a certain amount of time based on past knowledge. And usually that's where the coach comes in, or I got to be able to do 50 pushups without stopping. And then you go below that and you're like, all right, what do I need to do to improve that double pull score? And that's where it's like, hey, I'm going to do an extra double pull workout every week, or I'm going to make sure to get in the gym all summer, do the plan that my coach sent me. And then at the bottom, you've got sort of lifestyle goals, sleeping, eating, drinking, all that good stuff, mental health, things that matter for every single day.

Ray Looze · Answer

I think people in general don't take goal setting seriously. So I try to make sure our athletes here at Indiana are actually setting goals. We do a goal sheet and here's an example of one, like right here. This is our goal sheet. It's many different pages covering academics, covering the process of the goals. And then what we do is we follow up a few months later on how are we doing with what we wrote down in the beginning of the season. And then we also follow up several more times at kind of key points in the season. So I think you just gotta remind people of their goals and that people that keep their goals like very close in mind, they do a lot better. Because if you don't have goals, then you're in trouble.

Brad Hudson · Answer

So goals are huge to your performance and it's one of the first things you should do. You need to sit down and write your goals down. You can sit down with your coach but you should have short-term, mid-term, long-term and lifelong goals. And you can have master monthly, weekly, daily goals for your training. But an example of a short-term goal might be your next metric. Maybe your next aerobic test, your next race. Maybe it's a 10K or half in your marathon training. Not normally longer than 3-4 months but up to 6 months. And then mid-term is really your next important race. For my marathoners it's usually every 6 months. It's their next marathon. But in year-long periodization it could be a world champs or nationals once a year. And then your long-term goal should be where you want to see a bump up in improvement. It takes 2-3 years to be good so maybe you want to go from a 212 to a 210 marathon. You want to see some improvement so it takes time. And then lastly your lifelong guiding goal should be what you ultimately can become. Maybe you want to make a podium if you're a 212 marathoner. Something hard. Something you strive for. You don't always have to reach your goals and that is your lifelong guiding goal that you aim for every day. So your goals need to be specific and measurable and positive, inspiring and displayed. You need to see your goals. And make sure you have systems. It's one thing to have goals but you need to also have systems connected to your goals that help you reach them. If you're trying to be a 208 marathoner you have to have a group and training that's going to get you there. You should have systems connected to all the things that get you better. 1% better. Your sleep 1% better. Your nutrition. Your stress management techniques. This is your road map to where you want to go.

Joshua Watson · Answer

How do you approach goal setting with your athletes and help them measure their progress towards those goals? Well, this is something that Atomic Athletes, which is a business that I founded, it's a high performance program centered around these two frameworks of goal setting and then performance management. So the goal setting exercise that I take athletes through is it's a two part process. One is clarifying exactly what it is that you want to achieve. There's outcomes there, but there's a whole lot more than just an end point. There's understanding your emotions as to why whatever it is that you're trying to achieve is important. There are direct and indirect goals that support a main goal. There are action steps, of course. There are people involved. The relational side of a goal is super, super important and naturally there's a timeline. Now, we take that information and we recreate the visual representation. We literally draw pictures that represent this goal. And when you do that, your brain goes through an unbelievable metamorphosis where you hold this vision. It's with you 24 hours a day. After that, we do a performance journal and that's a two part process to prepare yourself before training and to review post-training. And it's all about understanding where you are in your journey. Are you ahead? What do you need to change? And yeah, I mean, it's just something that I think is absolutely critical and probably not done as well as what we could do it.

Matt Bromley · Answer

Okay, so I don't really work with that many athletes, but I'll just say myself how I do goal setting and Measuring progress firstly I start with values. What are my values? What makes me come alive and what gets me excited so everything needs to be based off my values And I try to make sure that my daily decisions that I'm making are affected and influenced by my values That helps me to kind of stay on track and then measuring my progress So yeah my my from my values I develop goals that are very measurable I do three month goals one year goals and five year goals They I can it's easy for me to see where that I've attained them or not so they're very measurable and they're realistic but also my dreams so trying to have that balance with my goals and Yeah, hope that helps

Brad Stine · Answer

I think the most important thing about goals and goal setting, especially when working with younger players or players that are in more of a developmental stage, is to focus on the process and set more process-oriented goals around improving their stroke mechanics, improving their attitude, improving their strength and conditioning, all things that they have within their control to work with with their coach, and much fewer goals that are oriented on results and outcome. I think that it's important that you set attainable goals and recognize what are attainable goals in the short term so that you can track progress and see that you're improving in what you're doing. That keeps players motivated, it keeps them excited about wanting to come to the courts and improving their game and getting better at what they're doing. Sometimes those take time. If you're working on mechanics and you're making changes in your game and you have a goal of developing a certain swing pattern, that may take months to keep working on, but recognizing that you're making improvement is very smart and a great way to set your goals. Set attainable short-term goals that lead to your ultimate long-term goals. Keep them process-oriented and try to minimize the number of results-oriented goals that you set.

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"How do you approach goal setting with your athletes and help them measure their progress towards those goals?"