5 Steps to Set Goals for Better Athletic Performance

 

When setting athletic performance goals, you should begin with your personal definition of success. The motivation to ski is different for everyone, it could be to heal outcome in mind and retroactively build a bridge to your goal. To do this you must define your or prevent injury, gain skills, strength, or money. Once you define your motivation, you should then attach an emotion to your goal. For instance, “I feel grateful when I improve a clients life.” Define the emotion in the present tense, bring your future outcome into the now. There are several ways to make sure your goals come to fruition.

Make sure your goal is achievable.

• If your goal is unrealistic, it will drastically reduce your motivation in progressing at all. 
• Dream big but set small goals as landmarks so that greater ambitions can then be realized. 
• Focus on 1-3 smaller goals and build off those.

Let’s talk deadlines. 

• Unless you have significant experience in planning and prepping for the goal you have in mind it is best to avoid random dates or times to accomplish something.
• However, if you have a surgery, competition, or a big event you are training for use this deadline as motivation to prepare. 

Quantify your development as you progress. 

• If you can see tangible improvement in yourself or where you are not putting forth enough effort, you will be able to adapt appropriately. 
• The types of measurements may vary, they might be simply journaling your subjective experience daily to track outcomes. 
• Monitoring pain you are working through. 
• It could be more weight or reps in a specific exercise, the list is expansive. Tools like this you can truly know “am I accomplishing my goal yes or no?” 

Treat yourself!

• Each milestone that you meet give your self some type of reward, but something beneficial to your goal. 

• For example, if you’re training for a ski competition, don’t reward yourself with something that will impede progress. Instead, maybe you buy those new ski’s you’ve always wanted, or you get some new base layers, or you get a sports massage. 

• Whatever your goals make sure the reward empowers your goal and does not distract from it.

Create or remove habits.

• We all have bad habits and good ones. These are the things that will either produce results or shatter them. Before you even start make sure you have compiled a list of your strongest habits and the ones that are holding back. Often times the most insidious habits are the ones we justify being “okay” or “not a problem”. 

Remember, identify obstacles and move past them with discernment. Seek out Youtube videos, proper equipment, blogs and other informative materials to increase your ski or snowboard performance. 

Questions To Ask During Goal Setting

Define your personal version of success, what does it mean to you?

• Keep it oriented toward your goal.

• What emotion does success fill you with?

Attaching emotion creates a stronger relationship to your goal.

• What will help you in achieving your goal?

• This can be anything such as needing a gym membership, finding a coach, being able to perform a specific skill for a competition. Choose a main thing to focus on.
• This question can inherently create micro goals or checkpoints along your journey.

Do you need a deadline?

• Helpful for things like competitions or events, but not always so helpful for everyday life.

What will you do to quantify or track your progress?

• There are many options Journals, spreadsheets, habit trackers, fitness apps.

What habits are you willing to create to achieve your goal?

• Positive habits will reinforce your progress and create a boost in willpower.

What are you going to let go of?

• What habits interfere with your life or your ability to achieve your goal?

Whether you’re applying these tips to your day to day life or to simply improve your skiing/ snowboarding performance, having the right gear is essential to performing well and feeling good. Come down to Boone Mountain Sports for the best skiing and snowboarding essentials.