Leif H. Smith - Sports Psychology For Dummies

Many athletes tell us that at times they lose their motivation to compete in their sports. They complain that it’s no longer fun, that their coaches’ demands annoy them, that their passion for training isn’t what it used to be. When we ask these athletes what their current goals are, they usually say, “I don’t know — I haven’t thought about it.” They’re focused on the misery and pain and complaining. They’ve lost focus on their goals and the reasons they compete, and their motivation has declined because of it.

When you get into a car, you usually know your destination. When you start driving toward your destination, you’re focused on making sure you reach it, which helps you adjust when you encounter obstacles, such as closed roads, traffic jams, and passing trains blocking the intersection. You’re committed to reaching your destination, but you more than likely keep a flexible approach to getting there, depending on the circumstances and time of day. The same is true with goal setting in your sport. You need to know where you’re headed. Then, after you’ve set inspiring goals, you need to stay flexible in your approach to making them come true. Obstacles will come in many forms — injuries, coaching decisions, sickness, and other unforeseen training issues. Your job as an athlete is to keep your mind focused on your goals, which, on occasion, requires that you take alternative routes to success.

Goal setting is both art and science. The key to good goal setting is outlining goals that inspire and motivate you. They should wake you up early and keep you up late at night!

Goal setting is really about being able to answer a couple simple questions:

Where do you want to go in your sport?

What will athletic success look like when you accomplish it?

In the following sections, we walk you through setting your long-term and intermediate goals, making sure your goals are specific and challenging, and setting timelines for your goals.

Goals can be divided into the following categories:

Long-term goals: One to three years

Midterm goals: Six months to one year

Short-term goals: One to six months

Immediate goals: One day to one week

In order to achieve your goals, each goal should build on the last. In other words, goals should be successive and cumulative. If you want to be an all-American, you have to start by being all-conference. Before that, you have to get enough playing time to be noticed. Before that, you need to earn a spot on the team. Start with the end in mind when you set about determining your priorities and goals in your pursuit of athletic success.

Work with specialized and trusted coaches to provide perspective and education. For example, when it comes to fitness goals, strength and conditioning coaches and exercise specialists are key. A skills coach would be helpful if you’re a tennis player wanting to improve the speed of your serve. Work with a sports psychologist to help understand and establish mental and emotional goals. Getting to your long-term goal takes time and expertise. Use your support team to help you.

You need to start by setting your long-term goal — this is the goal that will guide and inspire you to greater heights as an athlete. It’s usually set at about one to three years out. Anything longer than that is unrealistic as a timeline, since things change so rapidly in our current world.

What’s the difference between a goal and a priority? A goal is an outcome around which you focus your attention — it’s the purpose toward which your efforts are directed. A priority, on the other hand, is a goal that is more important to you than other goals. Priorities are simply the goals that are most important to your success. All goals are important, but as an athlete, you need to set priorities to help shape your destiny. Which goals you’ve prioritized as most important will determine the magnitude of your success in your sport. Choose your priorities wisely — they’re critical to your success. It is important to remember that sometimes your priorities will involve setting certain goals in specific aspects of your sport development — such as a certain skill, a fitness area such as speed, or a mental area, such as learning to manage pressure and maintain poise more effectively.

For most athletes (professional and Olympic athletes use different timelines), one year or one season is the perfect timetable for long-term goals. Anything longer, and you risk losing focus and motivation.

Here are some examples of long-term goals:

Be the starting goalie on the team.

Improve my national recognition among college coaches.

Become all-conference.

Be one of the mentally toughest players in the state.

Dream big. Make your goals big! Search within yourself for what you want to happen in one year. Don’t place limits on yourself. Sure, you should be realistic (you aren’t going to get a college scholarship if you decide to play football your senior year and you haven’t played since the fourth grade), but too many people place limits on themselves before they even begin the goal-setting process. Limiting ourselves is probably one of the greatest human challenges we all make at times. And connected to this challenge is one of the greatest emotions that gets in the way — fear.

Next, set approximately three midterm goals that you intend to achieve in about six months (or half a season). These goals should be what we like to call process goals, or goals that deal with how you plan on going about doing things. For example, if your long-term goal is to become an all-conference athlete, your midterm process goals might include the following:

Out-hustle every person on the field.

Be the best-conditioned athlete on the field.

Become more offensive minded.

Immediately let go of mistakes and recover from poor performance.

There is a difference between outcome goals and process goals. Outcome goals are what you’re pursuing, and process goals are how you’re pursuing it. Outcome goals are usually not within your control, but they help guide you to greater heights in sports and are many times the fuel and motivation for you; process goals are completely in your control and help increase the probability that you’ll reach your outcome goals.

Your short-term goals are ones that take one to six months and directly feed into your midterm goals. The accomplishment of the short-term goals is necessary for the success of the midterm goals. For example, if your midterm goal is to be the best-conditioned athlete on the field, you could set the following short-term goals: