When I work with athletes of any age I usually broach the topic of goals and goal setting in our first session. It’s become one of my favorite ways to get to know an athlete and get a sense of why they are sitting across from me… (more on this below.)
We know it takes more than scribbling a big goal on a Post-It or saying it at a New Year’s Eve party – don’t get me wrong, I do these things as well… visual reminders, friendly accountability – this is good stuff.
But goal setting all starts by knowing what we want and why we want it.
What will we unlock IF we can accomplish x, y, z?
Reasonable Athletic Goals are Key
The stark reality is many young athletes set unreasonably high goals.
This is why I love to provide a framework that really is suitable for most every age and sport.
As a figure skating coach of 17 years, I’ve spent a lot of time working with athletes on their goals, and I realized so much of my coaching on this topic involved deeper conversation and a lot of work off of the ice.
Because athletes could speak their goal, they could write it … but then the next steps got blurry, or worse:
They became an unrealistic chore like poor Cinderella trying to make a dress out of scraps with birds as hangers and mice as assistants.
The SMART Goal Framework
I worked a few “corporate” jobs without ever attending a goal setting workshop. Instead, most of my goal setting knowledge came from my own amateur skating career.
In grad school I learned the concept of SMART goals as a framework for helping athletes to outline their goals.
SMART is an acronym for:
- S (Specific)
- M (Measurable)
- A (Attainable)
- R (Relevant)
- T (Timely)
(The A and R sometimes get some other fun assignments like Achievable and Realistic… but stay with me here. We are meeting goals – no time to dilly dally over this!)
Goals Versus ‘Dream Speak’
One of the things that I often ask an athlete is, “what are your current goals?”
Many can articulate, many more go into what I call “dream speak,” which involves answers such as, “to win the Olympics.”
This was me as a kid. Big dreams, but no real “plan” on how to make them come true.
But if I change the language and give them a timestamp, things become immediately more clear.
“Where do you want to be one year from now in your sport?” – Boom, they know exactly where they want to be.
Then we dive deeper… “Where do you think you will be in five years?”
Again, there is more of a destination in mind, yet depending on the athlete’s age, we may be back to a little bit of “dream speak” versus goals.
But that’s OK – this kind of conversation always leads to a deeper understanding of what the athlete loves and why they are spending a great deal of time in sports.
It’s how I crack them open just enough to see their light.
The Danger of Black and White Goals
As a competitive figure skater from ages 4-19, I knew the day-to-day grind of sports well.
You pass one test, you prepare for another.
Messaging in the 80s and 90s in figure skating was versed around “getting your doubles (jumps) before you were double digits.”
So I chipped away at goals, not truly understanding how the timing of it all would play out. I learned at an early age that setting a goal was meaningful – and I had plenty of accountability from multiple coaches to keep me on track.
But in my little dreaming big dreams brain I was pretty black and white. I either met the goal, or I didn’t. I passed the test, or I failed. I landed the jump by Christmas, or I scooted back into the rink in January with a little less sparkle in my eye.
And as I aged in the sport, it really impacted me negatively. I didn’t get nearly as close to my “goal” as I had hoped.
Do Goals Add Too Much Pressure For Athletes?
Goal setting sometimes gets a bad rap for this very reason, especially with young athletes who are already in the overthinking pile.
Parents sometimes ask me questions like, “Well doesn’t this actually add MORE pressure to my athlete?”
And I’m here to say – yes.
Black and white goals will add pressure, so we have to be more proactive and intentional and help athletes set goals that are more personal, more malleable.
This is where SMART goals come in.
Good Goal Setting Brings Awareness
If I look back through my own experience as a skater and even as a coach, I can see how not meeting a goal impacted confidence in a negative way.
This is why I am very careful in how I approach the conversation around goals, especially with young athletes.
Goals can be a really great intro into topics like growth mindset and acceptance of the present moment in sports. Goals are not there to provide rigidity; they are there to provide awareness and accountability.
Sometimes this awareness means that yes, you aren’t maybe where you thought you’d be, but my role is to walk athletes through analysis of it, acceptance of it, and help them frame it.
Framing it looks like helping them see that their struggle and hard work may not be reaping rewards AT THIS MOMENT, but staying the course and adjusting the goal will inherently teach resilience, which is going to get them further.
Setting SMART Goals in Athletics
Specific
Can your athlete really target a skill that feels “big” to them, but can be broken into chunks?
“Getting better at my sit spin,” is not specific.
“Adding three revolutions to my sit spin”… now there we go!
Already we have a scenario now that gives the athlete assurance that they are capable of meeting this goal, but even better… how can they help themselves do it?
Measurable
How can we measure if the athlete has accomplished this goal? How can we empower them to measure it with the tools or existing knowledge they have in the sport?
This is where the rubber hits the road. Many, many athletes will measure a goal by things that are not truly “measurable” (enter sports with subjective judging.)
Winning a competition may be a goal, but when the end result is so far out of an athlete’s control, I usually start to ask the athlete to consider something more within their control.
Using my above example… adding three revolutions in a specific spin – yep, that is measurable.
Attainable
This is where our dreamers get to KEEP dreaming their big dreams, but I am here to remind them that all dreams begin with understanding our own strengths and weaknesses.
It is always good to remind them that the trajectory of a goal involves many dots on a roller coaster of a chart.
So sometimes our FOCUS is best served by concentrating on the next dot.
Also, what steps do they need to take to go after this goal?
Process goals are introduced here. (Helping an athlete not dwell on the outcome, but instead place their energy into the daily things they can be doing.)
If a young athlete says “I want to be the best gymnast in the world,” I am not going to squash that dream.
I will say… ok, let’s back it out to what we can *actually* do this season that will feed into your Olympic dream.
Maybe topping your high beam score, or getting to a qualifier that you have not yet attended. That is our dot.
Relevant
If I have a favorite SMART goal letter it is this one.
I love this conversation surrounding a goal because it brings in such an important theme in sports.
WHY. Why is this important? Is it important to the athlete? Or is it coming from a coach, or a parent?
It’s such an important part of the story. I revisit Relevant OFTEN with clients.
Time Bound (or Timely)
As adults we know that we have to hold ourselves accountable, and that is important for youth athletes to learn that as well.
Sports dictate quite a timeline, and youth athletics certainly has a “window” – so for planning purposes I like to have athletes articulate when they can master a skill.
I don’t like them to write it in anything other than pencil. Life will happen – injuries, setbacks, time away for other reasons – athletes need to know that a goal hasn’t necessarily changed, but the timing sometimes will.
There is also a reason to help them understand that with hard work and determination and effort (something they can control) maybe they will meet that goal much sooner than they anticipated.
Putting SMART Athletic Goals Into Practice
Working these letters is a strategy that can be applied in so many areas of life.
Goals may change, they may evolve, they may not happen in the manner or time frame that anyone could predict.
But, there is so much goodness in the push and pull and conversation about the goal, instead of pinning the athlete to one specific outcome at one specific time.
Goals can fuel us, they can help build confidence and they can help steer us out of ruts of disappointment.
My hope is to empower young athletes to look at goals as stepping stones on a bright path.
Work with Kelly
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