Goal Setting
You have chosen goal setting as an area of your mental skills you would like to improve for your sport of basketball. After viewing this page if you have any more questions feel free to contact myself (James), or any other collegue of mine using the email addresses to the left of the page.
When asked you defined goal setting as being able to write goals of your ambitions as a mean of increasing your motivation to trainings and games. You rated yourself a 7 out of 10 for goal setting and would like to idealy reach a level of 10. This webpage is here to help and guide you through reaching that ideal level in goal setting through various methods and practice.
There are three main types of goals that can be used. These are outcome, performance and process goals (Harrison 2013). An out come goal is one that focuses on competitive results such as you being able to beat someone in your next game of basketball or beating someone for a rebound. A performance goal focuses on achieving objectives, focusing on making the comparision with your own previous performances. This may include making contact with your opponent and boxing out after the shot or increasing your free throw percentage from 70% to 75%. Process goals focus on the actions you must undertake during the game to perform well. It is good to use a combination of all 3 types of goals but one tip is to not focus on outcome goals all the time (Turtle 2010).
An easy way to get on the track of setting good goals is to make them SMART!
This means making your goals specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and setting a time frame for your goals (Monsma 2007). This will help with your ambitions and increase your motivation to achieve these ambitions in both trainings and games. Eva Monsma PH. D. (2007) explains these is greater detail and also goes through even more principles of goal setting effectively in this article
Once you set your goals if you believe your motivation is lacking to achieve some of your long-term goals, this might help your get some of that motivation back as it is all about taking your goals one step at a time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cCiqbSJ9fg
It is known that goal setting works. By following the principles and creating performance goals that you believe in, you will find yourself experiencing less anxiety and having more motivation, confidence and satisfaction in your basketball skills (Harrison 2013). The first two paragraphs of this article give great advice on why goal setting does work and how it works
https://www.thesportinmind.com/articles/goal-setting/
and its not just for amateur athletes, the best athletes use goal setting to improve their performance as well, this coming from the best basketball player ever Michael Jordan (Jordan 1994),
https://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/selfefficacy/jordan.html
Also to increase your ambitions as a team in both training and games as you said it was important to you to help your teammates in setting goals as well, don’t be afraid to get your whole team into setting goals. Setting team goals is a great way to increase motivation and persistence as a whole team and build greater comradely within the team as you and your teammates will get greater enjoyment in reaching the goals together (Prudden 2006).
With some last advise to assist you in improving your goal setting my key points would be to make sure your goals are SMART, set both short-term and long-term goals, take your goals one step at a time and don’t be afraid of failing, if you do, reset your goals and keep progressing and dont be afraid to contact me for some more advise.
Reference List:
Harrison, D 2013, 'Goal Setting', The SportinMind, viewed 5 October 2013, <https://www.thesportinmind.com/articles/goal-setting/>.
Jordan, M 1994, I Cant Accept Not Trying: Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence, Harper, San Fransisco.
Monsma, E 2007, 'Principles of Effective Goal Setting', Association for Applied Sport Psychology, viewed 5 October 2013, <https://www.appliedsportpsych.org/resource-center/resources-for-coaches/principles-of-effective-goal-setting/>.
Prudden, J 2006, 'Set Goals to Motivate Team's Perfromance', Human Kinetics, viewed 6 October 2013, <https://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/set-goals-to-motivate-teams-performance>.
Turtle, K 2010, 'Effective Goal Setting', The Sport Digest, United States Sports Academy, viewed 6 October 2013, <https://thesportdigest.com/archive/article/effective-goal-setting>.