A Message from Coach Patrick
With winter break behind us, now's the perfect time for you as a competitive swimmer to reflect on goals for the New Year. How do you want to step it up in 2018?
These are a few suggestions on how to set ambitious goals that will challenge you to raise the bar and how to reach them:
1. Be very specific about your goal. Goals are meant to stretch you, but what makes a goal realistic? Set what is called SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time bound.
- Specific goals are goals that are more detailed where you want to go. Instead of saying you want to be a faster swimmer, try saying I want to break a certain time barrier in your race. Make it easy to state where you want to go in your goal.
- Measurable goals include detail, such as dates, for your goal. This means measuring your success.
- Attainable goals are meant to be realistic, but still are challenging. You want to avoid the easy goals, the ones where no work is involved to get there.
- Relevant goals are goals that are in line with what you want your life to look like. If you want to be a faster swimmer, set goals that are in line with this. Don’t set goals that will take you farther from where you want to go.
- Time bound goals are goals that have an end time. When you set a goal time, your sense of effort increases. If you want to get a Junior Olympic time, say when your goal time is to reach that goal. If you set it a year from now, you will be closer to that JO time then, where as if you don’t, that race time may not be as close.
2. How do you plan to achieve this goal? Do you need be at practice 5 days per week instead of your usual 3 days? What about benchmarks? If you want to drop 3 seconds from your 200 IM by the end of May, it won't happen from one day to the next. Maybe you need to set smaller goals for next week, and for every month between now and when you want to reach your target.
3. Work hard to reach your goal every day. Setting goals is not enough. How much hard work and dedication you pour into achieving your goal will determine whether or not you are successful. Be relentless in your pursuit of excellence and resilient when facing setbacks.
4. Believe you can reach your goal. How you speak to yourself can have a profound effect on how you see yourself, how you perform in practice and at meets. Set a positive mind set and tell yourself that you can do it!
5. Track your progress, adjust along the way and get help. The only way you'll know if you're making progress is by keeping track of your progress. If you find that you've hit a plateau, figure out what you can do to adjust during workouts if you're feeling stuck. Remember that Coach Mark, Coach Sydney and I are there for you. Share your goals with us and let us know how we can help you reach them. We want you to succeed and we believe in you.
Finally, if you don’t achieve a goal, don’t look at it as failure, but look at it as an opportunity to learn and become a better person. It is not failure unless you choose to give up. Instead, have the courage to continue so that you may positively change and never stop striving to succeed. We are Champions of Character; make the right choices, make the smart choices, and always look and strive to make a positive impact in your communities and everywhere you go.
Until next time,
Coach Patrick Armstrong
PS: You can read more about goal setting in these interesting online articles:
|
