The importance of goal setting for athletes
When it comes to the fine margins between success and failure at elite sport level, it is acknowledged that psychology has a huge part to play. The mental side of sport is now seen as being just as important as the physical side and research has illustrated that goal setting is one of the most effective tools when it comes to providing athletes with a psychological edge. The value of goal setting is encapsulated by David Harrison when he wrote:
Goal setting is an extremely powerful technique for enhancing performance so it is one of the most important strategies you can implement for success in any environment. Goal setting helps to focus attention and it is critical to maintain and enhance motivation. Goal setting gives direction both in the short term and the long term and you can see success as you achieve your short term goals.
What is goal setting?
Essentially goal setting is a mental training technique that can be used to increase an individual’s commitment towards achieving a personal goal and this can be separated into short, medium and long term goals. These goals can be broken down into three categories:-
- Outcome goals
- Performance goals
- Process goals
Outcome goals deal with specific results in competition, while performance goals deal with helping an athlete make improvements over a period of time. Process goals are the aspects a competitor should be concentrating on when carrying out a specific skill.
The SMART approach
SMART is a well-established tool that you can use to plan and achieve your goals.
In order to get the best out of the goal setting strategy, many athletes and coaches follow the SMART approach as outlined by Kelly Bourne in Why Goal Setting is Important. Using a football example the article highlights how athletes can benefit from an approach that is
Specific,
Measurable,
Attainable,
Realistic and
Time based
This SMART acronym aims to break down five key aspects to achieving goals. This is to help ensure all areas are focused on the individual making them effective.
- Specific – A defensive player to win over 90% of their challenges throughout a 90-minute match. An attacking player to make 10-15 runs or attempts on goal throughout a 90-minute match
- Measurable – How many goals/assists scored throughout the season, How many saves or challenges a GK or defender has made
- Attainable – Ensuring the goal which is set for the athlete is attainable/achievable, starting with small tasks which are achievable to help gain confidence in the process and then start to make larger goals
- Realistic – This is key and very important to discuss with the athlete individually. Each athlete is different and has varied strengths and weaknesses in different areas. The athlete will need to decide which on these goals and agree that they are realistic targets set for themselves to achieve
- Time based – Goals should be set for a time period of a season, but you can set smaller time frames within that specific to the athlete. Again athletes are individual, so some may prefer every month, or others could possibly do it over a three-month period
Value of setting goals
The advantage of goal setting is that it helps boost performance levels by achieving targets or as Kelly Bourne points out:
The main aim of goal setting focuses on increasing individuals’ motivational levels to achieve success by directing attention and applying energy levels into achieving the overall goal
However, a cautionary note, there can be drawbacks to goal setting and these should be addressed as early as possible in the process. Athletes often don’t see the value in setting goals, consider them boring and taking up too much time. They can also set themselves the wrong types of goals and fail before they even start. Education is key to the process. Ultimately it is worth the effort to overcome these obstacles and coaches should highlight the value of goal setting for athletes to help them achieve optimal performance.
What is Metrifit?
Metrifit helps coaches get to know their athletes, and helps athletes get ready to perform. It is a simple, intuitive and effective approach to monitoring looking at how the ‘small picture’ of an athlete’s daily habits, shapes the ‘big picture’ of match day performance.
Whether your use of Metrifit is to have a highly accurate reflection of acute to chronic work-load ratios to make training/competition decisions, to empower student-athletes to be reflective and take charge of their Health & Wellness, or as a basis to engage in conversation with your Student-Athletes thereby demonstrating you care about them as individuals, Metrifit simply works. It meets kids where they reside – on their mobile phones and through technology and is quick, easy, and habit-forming to use.
Why not have a look at our Metrifit Ready to Perform product and gain insight on the physical and mental state of your athletes through our daily wellbeing questionnaire? To find out more visit our Metrifit Product Overview page or contact at for a free demo. You can also register your team and use Metrifit for 14 days for free.
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"While working with the Clare Senior Hurling team (2012-2014), Horse Sport Ireland (U25 European Eventing Champions) and currently with the Limerick Senior Hurling Team, Metrifit provides our team with critical information across a number of essential aspects of elite athletic performance. You don’t really know how your players are responding to training stimuli unless you have daily data and Metrifit provides and easy to use and highly effective means of finding this critical information."
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2017-06-12T13:55:49+01:00
Joe O’Connor
NISUS Fitness, S&C Coach Clare Senior Hurling, Horse Sport Ireland and Limerick Senior Hurling
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“Metrifit has become a multifactorial platform that has helped up us provide deeper context to the decisions that we make on a daily basis in regards to the physical development of our student-athletes. We have intimately been utilizing both the subjective wellness questionnaire along with player training load data to drive professional conversation and actionable tasks to enhance the sporting results and quality of life for our student-athletes with unparalleled success.”
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2017-06-20T12:12:33+01:00
Kevin Schultz
Associate Director of Strength & Conditioning
Director of Olympic Strength & Conditioning
University of Wisconsin
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"The ability to acutely monitor stress and recovery and make the correct adjustments was critical to our health and performance throughout the NCAA tournament. Metrifit has a very strong educational component. With the information we get, I am able to clearly understand the habits and behaviors of our athletes, and how they may be impacting performance."
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2017-06-12T11:42:14+01:00
Erik Helland
Director of Strength & Conditioning and Head Strength Coach Men’s basketball, University of Wisconsin
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/erik-helland/
"The Metrifit RTP platform is an excellent tool to monitor, evaluate and make the right decisions for your athlete’s well being and performance. It enables coaches and athletes to track and sift through all the variables that underpin well being and performance on a day to day basis and to address an issue or potential issue in real time. A simply wonderful product."
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2019-03-04T21:38:45+00:00
Dr. Dale Richardson
CEO Achieve Total Performance Pty Ltd
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2017-06-16T15:06:04+01:00
Paul Cremin
Head Physiotherapist, Cornish Pirates Rugby Club
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"I've found Metrifit an invaluable resource. Not only to monitor daily wellness, readiness to train and training load within the squad, but also to monitor training load externally with additional external squads. Furthermore, Metrifit has acted as a key teaching tool, allowing young athletes associate good sleeping, eating and recovery habits to an improved sense of wellness and thus superior on-field performance."
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Tommy Mooney
Strength and Conditioning Coach at DCU Sport and with Dublin Minor GAA
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"What’s more impressive is the ability to utilize the basics but at the same time have the capability to explore detailed and intricate correlative data points that helps us as coaches gain the most from our athletes. Metrifit has also served as an easy communications hub to ensure essential information is passed to the appropriate team. We are excited to what the future from Metrifit will bring."
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2017-06-14T14:09:22+01:00
Michael Torres
CEO, Shift Performance, Miami
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“I have been using Metrifit for the past number of years and I have found it to be an excellent piece of software. It is extremely easy to use and has proved very beneficial in preparing myself for competition. The ability to view my health and wellbeing stats everyday and see how this influences my performance in both practice and competition has been very helpful. I have been able to put more effort into key areas such as fluid intake, sleep and balanced golf practice and training. Having the ability to view my detailed stats helps me to understand exactly where I am and how I need to adjust my training or health choices. I have found using Metrifit this past year has been a crucial help for me to play well. As I now have turned 50 I am playing on The Champions tour in the USA and have played well during my first year. Metrifit has been as important as my golf equipment in achieving that success.”
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Robert Karlsson, Professional Golfer
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"Metrifit is an outstanding platform to track your athletes’ wellness. It’s simple to use, easy to implement and gives outstanding information on your athlete’s subjective wellness which can be used to assign training loads. I highly recommend Metrifit for any coach looking to begin implementing technology into their program"
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2017-06-12T17:58:50+01:00
Brijesh Patel
Quinnipiac University, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach
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2017-06-14T13:24:03+01:00
Cian O’Neill
Kildare Senior Football Manager
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Head Volley Ball Coach, Southern Illinois University
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2017-06-12T14:25:37+01:00
Tino Fusco, B.Sc. ChPC
Head Coach, Women's Soccer, Mount Royal University (Canada)
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"Gaelic football is an intermittent high-intensity collision-based field sport requiring high levels of endurance, strength, power, agility, and speed as well as proficiency with gaelic-related skills. These components comprise the training modalities used at the elite level and the monitoring of such a vast range of modalities is central to peak performance. The athlete monitoring tool Metrifit allows us to do this and can keep us one step ahead of our competitors."
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Sports Scientist, Kildare Football, PhD Sports Science Researcher
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Robert Walsh
Strength Coach
Nederlandse Ski Vereniging (Netherlands Ski/Snowboard Team)
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2017-06-12T18:03:35+01:00
Edgar K. Tham
Founder and Chief Sport & Performance Psychologist, SportPsych Consulting (Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines)
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"As a school that cannot spend large amounts of money on athlete monitoring, Metrifit has provided us with a great tool for monitoring stress and athlete readiness at a great rate. Being athlete driven, we're able to get buy-in from the athlete, and drive individual or team wide conversations regarding lifestyle and performance education in the direction needed. Seeing acute and chronic stress on a real-time basis has greatly improved the way we schedule workouts and arrange travel during the season."
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Derek Bol
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Dave Passmore
Head Coach, Irish Hockey
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"Metrifit has enabled us to bring to life the complexiities associated with managing the academic, pastoral and sporting demands of pupils aged 13 - 18 in a UK day and boarding school environment It has provided another bridge between coaches and sports pupis, giving pupils a space to provide honest self reflection on wellbeing and providing coaches a head start on appropriate freshness and fatigue balance across the school week."
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Graham Williams
Athletic Development Coach, MSc ASCC
Millfield School, UK
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"The success of young athletes using Metrifit was an interesting challenge in the Elite Soccer space… After six months of learning, creating habit with teenagers the project is a huge success…. 90% completion rate has allowed us deal with all the key KPI’s that are needed in their development. In our space with developing athletes…Metrifit is a godsend and is the most important tool in this space."
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2017-06-16T16:51:01+01:00
Niall O’Driscoll
Academy Directory, SJ.B (St. Joseph’s Bray ) Academy
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"I wanted to reach out to thank Metrifit for an extremely successful season. Our Regis University women’s side won the ultra-competitive RMAC with a 11-0-1 record. Our student-athletes reported in post-season interviews the positive use of Metrifit that enabled their own reflection about their bodies and also found value providing information to coaches for our strategic planning purposes. On more than one occasion, we recognized deviations from norms and were able to step-in with a quick chat to help a player get back on track or refer her to the proper support personnel for further assistance. Fantastic! "
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J.B. Belzer
Head Coach, Women's Soccer at Regis University
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"Metrifit is an integral part of the set up within the senior and intermediate inter-county Camogie. The data collected daily on the individual players is critical to the decision making of the backroom team including, managers, trainers, selectors, physiotherapist and indeed myself. As a nutritionist it allows me to monitor the quality of the player’s diet, energy levels, sleep pattern and overall wellbeing."
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2017-06-13T16:38:55+01:00
Yvonne Treacy
Nutritionist, Wexford Camogie
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2017-06-12T14:01:46+01:00
Eamonn Fitzmaurice
Kerry Senior Football, Manager
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"Metrifit has been instrumental in helping our international Managers, Coaches and Medical teams to identify players who require modifications in training loads or who are struggling with some aspect of their preparation for, or recovery from, training and matches. One of the big strengths of this technology is that it allows our Managers and Medical teams to monitor players both during international competition and outside of these times."
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2017-06-16T15:11:55+01:00
Dan Horan
Head of Fitness for International Football/Fitness Coach Men's Senior Team
Football Association of Ireland
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"Our coaches through Metrifit basically have an ‘X-ray’ vision into the habits and lifestyles and stressors their athletes have on a day to day basis, especially when they are not together. Thus the professional authentic relationships created through the casual conversations, reflection process and application provided is priceless."
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2017-06-12T14:21:17+01:00
Brian Clarke
Head Strength and Conditioning Co-ordinator,Noblesville High School
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"Metrifit has been used to gain a more in-depth insight into our student-athlete’s progressive athletic development and balance relative to their particular sporting and training activities, academic studies and total load. Metrifit doesn’t just help with optimising our Sports Scholarship students’ athletic performance. It assists us in helping them get the balance right between their sporting activities and academic studies."
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2017-06-12T13:58:58+01:00
Richard Deuchrass
Lincoln University Athletic Performance Manager
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References
Why Goal Setting is Important by Kelly Bourne
Goal Setting by David Harrison
Principles of Effective Goal Setting by Eva V. Monsma, Ph.D.
Goal setting can give athletes an extra edge | Metrifit
Goals, goals and more goals – goal setting and other sport psychology techniques | Metrifit
Keeping young athletes motivated using achievement goal theory | Metrifit
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