Jun 23, 2022

Setting your Goals

So you know the benefits of goals but if you don't you can read that post first if you want.

You can set goals in many ways but you can be sure to do a good job if you follow our guide.

Heres the Steps

1. Be Clear with your Goals

You probably already have an idea on what you want to achieve. When you write out your goals be sure to be specific. You don't just want to write "I want to become a better swimmer" you want to be specific and have a clear aim to target "I want to swim the 50m freestyle in 30 sec flat".

If you go with specifics your target is not moving anymore there can be a point in time in which you can achieve it.

2.Write out your Goals

Daydreaming about things we want to accomplish is easy, and the more we talk can be mildly rewarding. This can lead us to a sense of accomplishment and when we daydream talking about our goals the can feel so real that it ends up encouraging us not to act.

Can we fix this - The answer is yes be a pro and write down your goals. It encourages commitment, and will get your brain working to reverse engineer on how to make your goals reality. Studies have found that taking the step to write down goals significantly outperformed those who just thought about them.

Where to write them?

You can write them in your training journal, on a post-it note stuck to your keyboard, or on a piece of swim equipment, this is the first step to being serious about your goals.

3.Be Realistically super ambitious with your goals.

You need to strike a balance between realistic and ridiculous. The reasoning goes: if ambitious goals are good, why not set one that is impossibly ambitious.

Huge goals carry with them inherent risk that they will leave us perpetually failing, which has been shown to degrade performance over time. By setting impossibly high standards, eventually we will get demotivated.

Ambitious goals rooted in reality, on the other hand, have been demonstrated to elicit a higher and more consistent degree of effort.

4.Evaluate frequently and get feedback

In order to progress as quickly as possible towards achieving goals we need feedback. An honest assessment is hard to get when we self assess. We overestimate progress. Underestimate our efforts. We become a one-person echo chamber of sorts, with our biases playing all kinds of trickery, deluding us into thinking we are working harder than we truely are.

Critique can come in many forms, a coach, video review, tracking or monitoring training cycle, regular feedback is vital to the improvement process.

Don't swim towards your goals blindly, keep yourself in check with regular evaluation and feedback to make your progress even faster.

5.Accountability

So what happens when things get tough, the chlorine is burning. What are you going to do to make sure you arn't throwing in the towel when setbacks and failures appear?

Accountability works best in layers, so always good to have a backup plan.

You can check in with your coach, or partner up with another swimmer on the team.

Accountability from yourself and your support circle, can keep you on track with your goals and when you feel shaky and your confidence wavers.

Here's a template for your goals

Your Goal Sheet Template

THE VISION

Write out a vision statement for your athletes profile. What are the things you would like to accomplish? What kind of impact would you like to have on the sport? Where do you see competitive swimming taking you?

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SEASON END GOAL

What is your goal for the end of this season?

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Remember

Is it super specific? Date? Time? Place?
Is it reasonable to your abilities?
Have you talked to your coach about it?
Have you written down your goal somewhere to eye it everyday?

Who is my support and encouragement to achieve this goal?

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What excites me about this goal? What is the why for chasing down this goal?

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How will i be accountable to my goal? What are the things that i can do to stay on tack?

1________________________________________________________________________

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2________________________________________________________________________

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3________________________________________________________________________

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What are specific things I can do to get moving towards accomplishing this goal?