Goal Focused Training For Athletic Performance

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile you know I’m a huge advocate of goal setting. Goal setting is powerful tool that many underestimate its effectiveness and many think that goal setting just doesn’t work.

Well…if that was the case why to Navy SEAL’s, Olympic athletes and many professional athletes use goal setting?

Perhaps they know something you don’t.

Goal setting can be and is used in various applications, all to enhance and improve personal performance.  Setting goals is used in sport, business, academics, and many other areas of life.

There a numerous amounts of research that provides overwhelming support for the effectiveness of goals. Setting of goals relates to improved performance. BUT – and this is a big but – you can’t just any goal and not any goal setting process will not do.

There are specific guidelines that should be followed to guarantee that your goals are going to have a positive impact on your athletic performance.

These key components are:

• Creating a goal map
• Focusing on the process
• Inking it

Let’s break these down and start using them to enhance your athletic performance.

Create a Goal Map

“If you don’t know where you are going or how to get there, you are bound to get lost.”

Suppose you live in Los Angeles, CA and a friend ask you to come out to New York city and all you had was a car to get there.

New York would be your goal, but what do you need to get there?  Besides the car you’re going to need a map.  Yes, I know most likely you’d use a GPS, but really isn’t that map as well?

With the map, you can figure out the roads to take (in case you don’t like what the GPS suggests) landmarks and tourist attractions along the way, distances to travel.  Basically you’d have everything you need to have fun and successful journey to New York.

Let’s use this same principle to athletic training goals and effective goal setting.

Many athletes, competitive, professional, weekend warriors, etc, have goals indicating where they want to be, i.e. 20 lbs lighter, bench 240 lbs, run a 10k under 40 minutes.

Besides being “outcome goals” they are also long-term goals.

But how do you get there?  As important, if not more so are the short-term goals. These short-term goals serve as your road map to achieving your long-term goals.

Short-term goals give you direction in what you need to do or skills you need to develop to achieve your long-term goal. The short-term goals can then be broken down to the micro-goals (daily) and even intra-workout goals.

Goals help inform you what you need to work on today to improve your athletic performance.

If you’re not familiar with mind maps, this is a great tool and process for creating goals.

Focus On The Process

Outcome goals, like the long-term goals above, relate to the “end result” you desire to achieve.  These are things like time to finish a race, specific weight lifted and even what place you want to finish.

When setting goals, most athletes set only outcome goals.  But, it is essential to also set process goals, that is, goals that relate to the process of your athletic performance.

For example, with the outcome goal of running a 10k under 40 minutes, a process goal could be to negative split the race. Process goals are important because they help you stay focused on the process of athletic performance.

Also, process goals are more under your control than outcome goals (i.e., focusing on correct technique as opposed to how much weight you are lifting; attending to a fluid backswing in golf as opposed to hitting par). Besides, by setting appropriate process goals you put yourself up to achieve your outcome goals as well.

Ink It

 “Don’t just think it, ink it.”

In other words, write it down.  Written goals have an effect in improving athletic performance. This then leads to being able to evaluate your process in achieving your goal, which is a critical aspect of effective goal setting.

A great tactic is to keep a training log. Write your long-term goal at the top of each page to keep you focused on where you want to be. Then, write down and address in training the immediate short-term goals that tell you the steps you need to take to get to your destination.

Evaluate your progress towards the goal on a regular basis.

Here a little secrete, don’t wait till you achieve your goal to set a new one.  At 90% attainment of your goal, set a new one.

This way you’ll keep the momentum up and this will really improve your athletic performance.

I’ll tell you, without this process, it is easy to get side-tracked, to get stuck along the way, or to lose sight of where you are going.

So, create a map, write it down and focus on the process and you will improve your athletic performance!