Friday 26 April 2019

Goal setting


Goal setting 

Goal setting refers to coming up with an objective and formulating a plan to get there. Done well it can support motivation, give structure to a training programme, help a sailor learn and develop training strategies and help generate energy in training to pursue the goal.
To get the best effect from goal setting there are a number of factors that should be considered, and a number of steps taken. A good first step is to come up with a mission statement, this briefly outlines what and how you would like to achieve during you season/ next few years/ sailing career. To do this imagine it is the end of the season/ few years/ sailing career, you have achieved your main goals and there is a film crew and reporter documenting your incredible achievements. They interview you, along with friends, coaches, key competitors and family. What will they all say about you? How did you conduct yourself? What did you do to achieve your goals? This will set out the kind of athlete you would like to be.

The next stage is to come up with some goals, these will be different for everyone in terms of which goals you set and how frequently. Some useful goals to start with are a long term ‘dream’ goal, and some shorter-term goals. There are 3 main types of goals that you can set.

1. Outcome goals. Based on the result of a competition or race, useful to have, but should be mixed with others as achievement or not of the goal depends on factors outside of your control namely other sailors’ performances. While they can motivate and guide training, they can also cause stress at the event.

2. Performance goals. Link to individual performance, for example running a certain time at a race. This is largely independent of other runners, and under the athlete’s own control. For sailing a performance goal could be to overtake one or several boats on downwind legs; get on the inside at leeward mark rounding’s or consistently perform smooth tacks under pressure.

3. Process goals. Smaller goals that when achieved will help you to achieve your bigger goal. For example, start my trigger pull with 3 seconds to go, which will help to get a clean start; be gentle with the rudder to help maintain smooth tacks; or look behind on a run to spot areas of greater pressure to help overtaking.   

Now to come up with some plans to achieve the goals. A few ways of doing this include…

1. Performance profiling, work out what is important to your sailing, break it down in to Technical, Strategic, Physical and Psychological. Come up with a list under each heading. Pick the four most important from each heading and plot where you think you are on each on. Now consider how a sailor that is achieving what you want to achieve looks like. What would they score on each of the categories that you have picked? Mark this on the chart, this should give you a visual guide as to where you think you are strong and where you need most work to achieve your goal.

2. Come up with some training plans and goals. This could be across a few training sessions, over a week/ month, or over a day or even exercise. The goals will help you to plot your progress and learn when you don’t achieve your goals. Providing you…..

3. Reflect on your goals, achieved or not they will sign post where you need to go next. Write it down in a training log.