Coaching 2.

Goal Setting

FAILING TO PLAN IS PLANNING TO FAIL. I am constantly amazed when talking to athletes how many don’t set goals for themselves. They just cruise through the season going from week to week without any real direction, doing the same as their friends, or just whatever they feel like.

The first step in setting your training programme is to set goals. Ask yourself “where am I now and where would I like to be”?

Goals can be achievement orientated or performance orientated. I ask my athletes to write down their dream goals. It may be to win a medal at the Olympics or a top 10 finish at the Nationals.

Generally people are a little shy about doing this so discretion is important. Mid term and short term goals can be steps along the way or can be mini goals in their own right. So if the long-term goal was to win a medal at the Olympics, a mid term goal might be to win the Nationals (so you were selected) and short-term goals might be to improve your climbing time up a certain hill or improve your time trial time by 10 seconds.

There are so many variables that it is impossible to just say “do this” Maybe the best way to show you would be to do a programme for someone through the Website. All I need is Gender, age, previous training /racing history, strengths, weaknesses, maximum available training time and goals. Send me your details at R.F.Risdon@xtra.co.nz and I will select one as an example. Please remember that this will be a generalised type of programme, as it is my belief that there is more to coaching than just writing programmes for people. A coach needs to know an athlete very well to bring out the best in them.

Regards
Robbie Risdon