PERFORMING YOUR BEST: YOUR GOALS

Good goal setting is essential to optimum performance. This article gives you keys to set practical, achievable and motivating goals that will make a difference right now, not just in the future.

When you head out from the start line on any given race, or when you pound the streets in training, you have a goal whether you’ve set it consciously or unconsciously. Conscious goals are when you’ve written down what you intend to achieve and focus on before your training or race. Unconscious goals are when you don’t do this. They tend to be a mish-mash of what you consider to be “good” or “bad” for you and your level, and what is socially considered good and bad (i.e. by your peers, fellow competitors and/or your coach). For example, when going for a 10 km training run you may consider a decent time to be 45-55 minutes, a bad time to be anything outside 55 minutes, a good time to be anything less than 45 minutes and an awesome time anything that is 40 minutes or less (close to your PB). Often we keep these yard measures in our heads subconsciously even when we’re not setting them consciously.

The problem with these subconscious goals is that they can set us up for failure. After all, our goals are what we tend to measure our success of failure by. The day of the training run you might have been tired (towards the end of a long season), your legs may be feeling “dead” from the gym session yesterday and you maybe running into a hard cold head wind where actually 45 minutes or less would make a good run time. If one takes time to consciously appraise the situation (tired, dead legs, and a headwind = 45 mins or better = good run time) and set a conscious goal that is SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timed) then one is setting oneself up for a good chance of success.

Most people feel great when they achieve a goal and rubbish when they don’t. That’s why it’s important to consciously set goals that are challenging (there has to be some motivation) and yet give you a good chance of succeeding. If you don’t consciously set goals for your races and training sessions you’re essentially setting yourself up for failure and kicking your confidence in the guts. But if you consciously set them you can set yourself up for success and build on your confidence.

Part of the process of consciously setting good goals that set you up for success involves understanding the three different types of goals that exist. The first type of goal you can set yourself is an outcome goal. Outcome goals are about comparing yourself with others. For example, to win a race or come in the top 10 of your age group. The good thing about outcome goals is that they are very motivating – these kinds of goals are the things that get you out of bed early to train. The biggest problem with outcome goals is that their results are dependent upon others. You might run/swim/bike or paddle your personal best but if someone else has a blinder of a day and does better than you then you have no control over that. In other words, you have very limited control over outcome goals.

The second type of goal you can set yourself is a performance goal. A performance goal is something that is often measurable and is self relative. For example, bettering a personal best time for a certain race or leg of a race. The good thing about performance goals is that seeing yourself improve can be very motivating. However, you still don’t have 100% control over the outcome. For example, injury, weather, track/water/road conditions may be bad or may flare up in the middle of the race when you least expect, thus influencing your ability to achieve your performance goals.
The third type of goal is a process goal or what I like to call a “how to” goal. If your performance goal is to run a PB in training of 40 minutes or less then you need to figure out HOW you’re going to achieve that. It might be focusing on maintaining a high cadence. Or, for a novice like myself, it might be about switching off from what I’m doing and singing a song (with a good rhythm to it) in my head. Alternatively, my process goal might be to maintain positive self talk especially on the hills when I can feel my legs burning.

The great thing about process goals is that they are 100% in your control and therefore there is every reason that you can achieve these goals every time you race and train. Process goals should be your primary focus when training or racing because you can achieve them and a sense of success every time. I challenge you to set process goals next time you train or race and value these above your outcome or
performance goals.