Goals are an important part of an athletic career. They can be useful for several reasons:

1. Goals counter boredom. By continually aiming for something just out of reach, you can keep your day-to-day routine challenging. Studies have suggested that the best way to be "in the zone" is to be involved in a task that is neither so routine as to be boring nor so challenging as to be frustrating.

Once you master a skill, up the ante and try to master new ones.

2. Goals can motivate you. They keep you from taking the easy way out. They encourage you to train a little harder, to push a little more--not because it's comfortable to do so, but because you look forward to the results.

Athletes are experts at delaying gratification. They are willing to sacrifice pleasure in the present for a bigger payoff later on. Olympians, for example, often spend years of their lives for a chance to compete in an event which comes around only once every four years.

3. Goals act as a measurement. As you set goals, accomplish them, and then set new ones, you gain a sense of satisfaction and the realization that you are making progress.

How Do You Begin Thinking about Goals? Goal Setting

Whatever your goal, it's legitimate.

Whether or not it's attainable is another matter. But worry about that later on.

For now, what's important is to decide what sports mean to you. Think about what you want to accomplish as an athlete, both in the short-term and the long-term.

As you think more about your goals, hopefully you will realize that for every goal, there are a variety of ways to achieve it. And for every effort, there are a variety of possible outcomes, all of them worthwhile.

In other words, you can approach sports so that every experience will be enjoyable and positive. You will feel good about the effort you've expended and you will feel good about the results.

This approach to sports is not what many athletes are taught. Most serious athletes are encouraged to single-mindedly pursue a goal. If they don't achieve it, they are pushed out of the spotlight and told to quit. The message they receive throughout their careers is that winning is everything. And even more important, they are told that winning encompasses a very limited range of activities. Winning is winning competitions and setting records and very little else.

Traditionally, little creativity has been introduced into most athlete careers. Perhaps this is the result of all the rules and regulations that govern most sports. At any rate, for far too many athletes, everything is either black or white.

But, in reality, winning means many things: winning races, achieving satisfaction, creating opportunities, and so on. And the sports world is starting to come around. More is being done to promote the joy of sports and sports participation. There has been an explosion of new sports, inventive sports equipment, unconventional competitions, and mind-expanding leisure and recreational pursuits.

The word is out: There's a place for everyone in sports and there's a sport career for anyone who really wants one. This means that you can find a place for yourself, too.

Start by thinking about what you'd like to accomplish as an athlete. What do you want to do by next week, by next month, in the three months, in six months, a year, two years, five years, ten years, and so on.

If you are young, you might find it hard to make long-range plans. And you don't need to do that right now. But it is helpful to start thinking about whether or not you want to pursue sports only for the early part of your life or whether you want to make it a lifetime career.

Long-range goals aren't meant to be binding, but rather are meant to keep your options open. They are made to remind you that you have a long life ahead of you and that no matter what's happening right now, good or bad, you have lots of tomorrows left.

So What's the Secret in Using Goals Effectively?

Start with SHORT-TERM goals. Set ones that are very achievable.
They should be training goals that require skills within your ability to accomplish.

If you cannot reach them, it is probably for one of two reasons:

1) Your expectations are unrealistic or 2) you've hit a temporary or permanent training plateau. When the latter happens (and it does, sooner or later, to every athlete), you will be forced to question the wisdom of what you are doing. Should you quit, should you keep trying, or should you accept your limitations?

There's no correct answer. Much has to do with your age, whether or not you still enjoying your training, and whether or not you can afford to stay involved in the sport.

MID-TERM goals usually center around competition. Perhaps you want to win a certain event, or you want to make a team, or you want to move up a competitive level, and so on. At this point, it's good to have a primary goal, several secondary goals, and perhaps even a worst-case scenario plan.

For example, let's say you decide you want to win a competition six months from now. And you are willing to pursue that goal with everything you've got. But since there's a chance you might not win (there's always a chance you might not win), set up several other goals as well. These might include: 1) performing better at your upcoming competition than you did at your previous one, 2) learning how to control your nerves or learning how to focus under pressure, 3) making an impression on a recruiter, and so on.

The point of this exercise is to help you set up ways to pat yourself on the back, no matter what the outcome of your efforts. This insures that you don't feel like you've been wasting your time.

On the other hand, plan for an occasional reality check as well--especially for those times when everything is a disaster. Granted, sports psychologists usually want athletes to visualize themselves winning, but periodically you do have to make sure you're still on the same path as when you started.

If it is increasingly obvious that you're not doing well in your sport, you must sit yourself down and re-evaluate what you are doing. If you still enjoy it and it's okay with you if you aren't winning and probably never will win, then by all means keep at it. But if winning and performance are important to you, you need to examine if you can do anything more to achieve success or whether you should consider making some changes--even to the point of switching sports.

Finally, LONG-RANGE goals include both your dreams ("what-if" goals) and your schemes ("I can make it happen" goals). Both are necessary and important. The first set of goals make you aim high; the second set make you plan ahead.

The "what-if" goals often depend as much on luck, opportunity, and perhaps even fate, as they do on you. They are usually the wonderful outcomes we daydream about: winning the Super Bowl, winning an Olympic gold medal, setting a world record.

The "I can" goals are also ambitious, but they are the ones that we have more control over: landing an athletic scholarship, starting a sports-related business, having a career in sports administration.

The "what-if" goals are probably what will motivate you to train hard. But the "I can" goals may be the ones that pay the bills. Therefore, you can't focus on the first without also pursuing the second.

You've got to keep your eyes, ears, and mind open for the ideas and events which will make the "I can" goals come true. This means meeting people, asking questions, educating yourself, keeping yourself healthy, and building on all your experiences so that some day you have a successful career.

How Do You Set Goals?

Coaches play a very important part in helping athletes set goals. Good coaches will help you set challenging, but achievable ones. In fact, this ability is what separates great coaches from merely good ones. Great coaches know how to help you achieve more than you ever thought possible and how to do it without hurting you in the process.

Richard Quick was perhaps the top swimming coach in the country in the past 10 years. He served as the U.S. women's coach at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and his women's team at Stanford has won 11 NCAA national titles in 13 years. His swimmers have included gold-medal winning Olympians Rowdy Gaines, Janet Evans, Summer Sanders, and Jenny Thompson. He is known as a coach who has high expectations but also gets results.

"I think most of us sell ourselves short or are afraid of setting high goals. It's OK to set high goals and really work toward those goals, and that you're not a failure if you don't accomplish what you've set out to do. In fact you're not a failure at all, unless you're afraid to set a high goal." (1)

If YOUR coach can't help you set goals, you've got the wrong coach.

The reason coaches are good at helping athletes set goals is that most of them have years of experience to draw upon. They have watched hundreds of athletes train and know what is or is not achievable. They can usually predict which athletes will have outstanding athletic careers and which ones will, for one reason or another, drop out.

The other person to help you set goals is yourself. You know your own desire and how hard you are willing to work. You are the one who must decide what you want out of life and whether sports is the best way to achieve it.

There are many reasons to participate in sports. They are an excellent way to stay fit, to meet people, to be part of a team, and to add some excitement to your life.

On the other hand, sports may not be able to give you everything you might want. They are not always the best way to find happiness, gain great wealth, or earn admiration from your friends and family.

By sorting out what's important to you, you are better able to decide how to get it.

Comments on Goal-Setting from Two Michaels

Said runner Michael Johnson (world record holder in the 200m and winner of gold medals in the 200m and the 400m at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics):

"You have to set your goals based on realism. You can't fool yourself.

"[My winning at the Olympics was due to] the setting of goals and the devotion to a style of training that worked within the precision of hundredths of seconds. It was the patience and the willingness to chase something relentlessly, even though there were no guarantees I would ever catch it." (2)

Wrote basketball superstar Michael Jordan:

"I always had the ultimate goal of being the best, but I approached everything step by step.

"I had always set short-term goals. As I look back, each one of those steps or successes led to the next one.

"All those steps are like pieces of a puzzle.

"If you've done your best, then you will have some accomplishments along the way." (3)

1 The Dallas Morning News, July 14, 1996.
2 Rocky Mountain News, November 10, 1996.
3 Michael Jordan. I Can't Accept Not Trying. HarperSanFrancisco. 1994.

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