Tapping The Power of Goals

The value of goals has been widely measured and established beyond doubt. In fact, what two of the most prominent researchers on the subject, Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, discovered after years of research on thousands of people is that the most successful men and women in the world use goals as their primary method of motivation. College basketball coach Rick Pitino noted that the difference between dreams and goals is that dreams are where we want to end up and goals are how we get there. Essentially what goals do is increase people’s motivation. Athletes need motivation to train for hours at high intensity. Goals help people give their best. Vince Lombardi once said, “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” I believe it is a realistic expectation to give 100 percent effort 100 percent of the time. What does it mean to give your best? The way to tell if you’re giving 100 percent effort is to do everything you know you have to do to be your best. This doesn’t mean you train during every waking hour, day in and day out. For one thing, it is necessary to incorporate rest into training cycles. What it does mean is that if you know of something that would help your training and competitive performance, you owe it to yourself to at least test it out. An example from my practice is a swimmer who thought that improving his flexibility could increase his range of motion enough to eventually lengthen his stroke and thus cut valuable time off his races. He consulted with a flexibility and posture specialist at the Olympic Training Center, and sure enough, by improving his shoulder flexibility, he was able to trim his race times. It doesn’t always play out so neatly. There will be times when you try things that don’t do much for you. You have to keep an open mind and channel energy into researching ways to improve. Be willing to do everything that you think could help. For the 10-Minute Toughness mental-training program to work, there must be effort. I push my clients to train hard enough to make competition easy. I want you to feel confident that you’ve done everything you know to do to be successful before you start competition. That is what I call preparation. If you are mentally and physically prepared for competition, you stoke your self-confidence. A soccer player with whom I work remarked, “When I step on the field, I know I am more physically and mentally ready than anyone else out there. I work hard, and I know I can play well. I know we are going to win.”