Coaching Education Content presented in partnership with The FA Learning AA

Shooting for Goals

With the hectic schedule of spring soccer, State Cup and National Cup coming to a close, now is the time for coaches and players to reflect on the past and set goals for future development. This article can help coaches to evaluate goals that they have set for themselves, the team, and their players.

Why are Goals Useful?
Goals can help improve the purpose and quality of training because they direct attention to the task. Goals encourage people to work SMART as well as hard. They also increase effort and persistence by providing feedback in relation to the player’s own performance. In this way, goals can maintain motivation on a day-to-day basis as well as over time. The final way in which goals can affect performance is through the development of relevant learning strategies.

The ability to be a rubber-ball competitor, that is, to be able to bounce back from performance set-back as a result of increased determination to succeed, is seen as important in studies of “mental toughness” in sports performers.

Principles of Goal-Setting: SMART Goals
A common formula for developing effective goals is the SMART system, which recommends goals that are Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic and Timed.

Specific
• Specific goals tend to result in higher levels of performance than no goals or “Do your best” goals, which are not as effective as many believe.

Measurable
• Effective goals are measurable. Higher motivation is gained when you have a way to measure the progress you are making towards achieving your goal. Establish a starting-point measurement and give the goals a measure or a number.

Action-orientated
• The goal should be written in a way which provides information on how to get to the goal. For example, “I will practice my free kicks every other day for 20 minutes,” rather than, “I will increase the percentage of free kicks I get on target from 50 percent to 70 percent.”

Realistic
• Goals must be challenging yet attainable. They should be attainable if the player works really hard to achieve them. Be careful of setting goals that a player has little chance of achieving and, also, that are too easy, which is equally ineffective with less than maximum effort. Different players in the same squad should set personal goals in addition to group goals—not one general goal.

Timed
• Quite simply, you need to know by when you want to achieve your goal. Goals should be given a “due in by” date, which is written in the goal statement.

Principles of Goal-Setting: SMARTER Goals
Two additional principles appear in some other goal-setting systems. These are Elasticity and Repeatable to turn the word “SMART” into “SMARTER.”

· Elasticity
• This refers to having a “window” target as opposed to a single-point target. A player setting a goal to score between 18 and 23 goals during the season rather than 20 goals is an example. Window targets are seen as effective because they are more flexible and more likely achievable by the player and are less prone to result in a self-limiting mind-set if the player and/or team is performing very well.

Repeatability
• This requires the player or team to meet the goal more than once so that the goal is less likely to be attributed to luck or coincidence, but rather to effort, ability and performance improvement. An alternative meaning for the “R” is “Recorded” as there is a suggestion that there is more “stickability” to goals once they are written down.

Principles of Goal-Setting: SMARTS Goals
Another goal-setting acronym is SMARTS. The additional “S” stands for Self-determined. It is important that the player has as much involvement and control in the setting of the goal as possible. It is crucial that the person feels as though the goals belong to them and that the goals are not controlling them

Types of Goals
There are three types of goals:
Outcome goals
• Outcome goals are essentially winning and losing goals. This goal is often not in a player’s control because achieving this type of goal depends, at least in part, on the ability and play of the opposition. For example, a team may set a goal to “win the match,” then play really well, but lose and not achieve their goal or play really poorly and win. In so doing, they achieve the goal, but probably only because the opposition played even worse. In this case, where does the improvement in performance come from?

Performance goals
• Performance goals are “How am I doing compared to myself?” goals. They are based upon the player’s actual performance in relation to their own standard of excellence, for example increasing the number of crosses put in from three to six. This, in essence, translates to, “Can I do better today than I did yesterday?”

Process goals
• Process goals are the “How to do” goals of the goal-setting world. They focus the player’s attention on specific tasks because their focus is on the specific mechanisms and behaviors of how to perform the skill (for instance, knee over the ball and so on).

Short-, Medium- and Long-Term Goals
It can be beneficial to view short-, medium- and long-term goals as a staircase. Players should use all of these types of goals. Long-term goals provide direction and purpose, whereas short-term goals provide day-to-day motivation and make the long-term goals seem less daunting and more achievable by breaking them down into more do-able pieces.
Common Problems in Goal-Setting
· Failing to set specific goals.
· Setting too many goals.
· Failing to adjust goals.
· Failing to set performance and process goals.
· Insufficient monitoring and evaluation.
· Insufficient player involvement in the process.
· Little acknowledgement of either the success or failure of goals.
· Inadequate support for the goals from family members and coach.

Doing Goal-Setting
We have looked at what goals are and now we can explore the practical part of effective goal-setting—how you go about doing it.
1) Either the coach and player have a meeting, or the coach, player and parents, as appropriate. Strengths and areas of improvement are assessed.
2) The coach and player write “goal-test” dates in the diary and arrange a meeting for that date when the goal will be evaluated.
3) The goals for the player should be written down and, preferably, in a picture format such as a staircase or a soccer cup moving from quarter-finals to the final to make the relationship between short-term and long-term goals more obvious.
4) Suggest to the player that they place their goal sheet somewhere where it will be seen on a daily basis. Be sure to ask if and how the player needs support.
5) Elicit player responsibility for the goal.
6) Gain acknowledgement of the level of importance by asking the player how important the goal is to them.
7) Gain commitment from the player by asking how confident they are that they will stick to this goal.
8) Goal progress should be evaluated in a monthly group session with all players and coaches present.

Goals provide the players something to shoot for, literally and figuratively. You can think of both types of goals in the same sense. Without a target, how do you know if your efforts have hit or missed? There is little other way to measure your progress and improvement. The mental targets help make finding the physical ones that much easier.

Click Here to learn more about the great resources from The FA Learning