5 Keys to give your team balance and an advantage:
Key #2– Goal Setting
Can you get there if you don’t know where you are going? There are basically two types of goals. Dream goals and wish goals.
A dream goal is a goal that you want deeply and long for it to happen, and spend a great deal of time each day thinking about and working toward accomplishing it. A realist knows hard work will get them to their goal eventually.
A wish goal is one that you wish could happen to you without very much personal investment of time or work. The idealist wants someone else to make it happen for them.
From this point on when I use the word goal I’m referring to dream goals. One of the best things you can do is to write down your goals, and rewrite them often. Goals tend to pull us in a certain direction, maintaining focus is very important, revisit your goals. There are many subcategories of goals.
Long range goals—i.e. Final outcome for the week, the month, the season.
Short range goals— i.e For the practice, next couple days.
Training goals—i.e Based on improvements.
Mini-goals — These are right now goals that keep you focused on the task at hand and you could have hundreds of them during the game. I.E. I’m going to pass this next serve right to the setter. As a coach I love mini-goals. They keep the athlete thinking positively and preparing themselves for the next series that are seconds away and only last for seconds.
All aspects of the game can be incorporated in some type of goal setting which guide the athlete in the areas of effort, attitude, support, and team spirit.
Key #1—Positive Self-Talk is important for setting and using goals. There are goals that the athlete can think through and write down and there will be goals that will be on the fly and the player needs to approach everything in a positive fashion.
One of my favorite sayings is, “What I had I gave, what I saved is lost forever.” Get your athletes to set a goal of giving everything they have every time. JS