Goal Setting

El Director

I was thinking about a friend of mine that keeps setting a weight loss target and never actually meets said target and it got me thinking. Since it is that time of year (people making new resolutions etc...) and I don't have an active log these days so I'll throw out my opinion and thoughts here - any comments or discussion are very welcome. The way I see there are two important things when setting goals (a) timing and (b) the type of goal. I will talk primarily about race targets and weight loss targets here.

Timing

My friend is not the only one guilty of this. The biggest mistake when goal setting as I see it is the time scale or lack there of. Setting a weight loss goal that is 6 months away or more is not smart in my opinion. Sure set that target but break into into smaller parts, this way there is accountability along the way. Setting a race target or weight target that is 6-12 months away and having no focus in between breeds complacency IMO. It is all too easy to take the "...ah sure I'll start next week..." attitude. Before you know it you are 4/5 weeks from your goal date and it's clear you will not make it. It would be far better to have a target that is only 6-8 weeks away. I have found that this works best for me. It keeps me focused for the short term and in the long term my goal will be achieved.

FYI I also combine my weight loss targets with race targets. Yes I do have A goal races but they are so far off and again the temptation I found was that you put things off as there is no sense of urgency. Putting some importance on races in between now and then can keep you focused in the short to medium term. So when I pick a date for losing xkg's the date coincide's with a race - any B/C priority race. Before you know it you are 6-8 weeks out from your A race and setting a weight target or indeed maintaining weight at that point.

The year Bradley Wiggins won the TdF he targeted races before June and took them seriously and raced them hard. Dauphine, Paris - Nice and the tour of Romandie. Just a few, but enough to keep focused so that when the tour rolled around he was ready. Up to that point all other teams were saving their GC contender for the Tour.


Type of Goal

There are many decent articles on The Sport In Mind website. One of which, recently, was about concentration and how setting goals can also enable athletes to improve concentration especially when the goals are performance based and not results based. The article went on to say:

'Jackson & Roberts (1992) found collegiate athletes actually performed worst when focusing on results goals compared to performance goals when they performed a great deal better. Kingston & Hardy (1997) also found golfers performance and concentration improved when focus on specific action goals'

Now this is hardly new news but just something that people need to be reminded of from time to time, including myself - more guilty than most for focusing on future results! Crazy when you think about it. Concentrate on what you can control (your power output for example) and not what you cannot control (who will turn up on any given day to race?)

So, just two things to consider when setting goals this Jan.

"That which is measured improves. Frequently measure progress towards your goals. What are the demands of your race? Test them." @jfriel

couerdelion

Good post El D - and I'll apologise for the management speak coming up...

I guess the thing with goals is to make sure they are always SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely). The attainable is sometimes the difficult bit and as with your bit about Wiggins it should be a case of breaking it down in to smaller goals all aiming towards the big one.
So there's no point saying "I want to lose weight" or "I want to do a triathlon" - in order to succeed you need to make them SMART.

"I want to lose 1 stone by the end of April 2014, by the end of August 2014 I will have lost 2 stone."
or
"I will complete the 3D Dublin Triathlon in May 2014."

peter kern

great post some of the best actually here on boards.

El Director

Here on boards there are a lot of us with "lofty" goals, myself included, and while there is nothing at all wrong with that let's be SMART(er) in 2014 and as well as stating our goal (or not) also state the short term and medium term goals and focus solely on those first. Stepping stones.

peter kern

couerdelion wrote: »

Good post El D - and I'll apologise for the management speak coming up...

I guess the thing with goals is to make sure they are always SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely). The attainable is sometimes the difficult bit and as with your bit about Wiggins it should be a case of breaking it down in to smaller goals all aiming towards the big one.
So there's no point saying "I want to lose weight" or "I want to do a triathlon" - in order to succeed you need to make them SMART.

"I want to lose 1 stone by the end of April 2014, by the end of August 2014 I will have lost 2 stone."
or
"I will complete the 3D Dublin Triathlon in May 2014."

SMART can be very different for many people.
what wiggins did was outstanding but what he maybe forgot a bit was long term effects. I mean with a tough 2012 year , it cant be a total suprise that 2013 was a write off for Wiggins. I am not saying at all what he did was wrong its just its another aspect to be looked at.


Sometimes ignorance is bliss I had not even done a triathlon when i decdiced i want to go sub 9 in an ironman ... Sure i could have trained much better for it. But travelling around the world for me was more important. It took many many years to get to the goal including swimming in the funiest places in australian outback,but i would never have started triathlon without that goal ( and it was good that i did not know that it would be even harder to achieve that goal than I thought it would be ;-)
BTW not at all disagreeing with SMART. But a portion of crazyness is needed for most things that are a bit out of the norm and high achiever often achieve high becasue they think very very big and back it up with very very hard work .