The importance of goal setting in Sports Psychology

Setting goals is a strategy that helps control important psychological aspects that affect the performance of an athlete such as attentional control, self-confidence or motivation. Setting realistic but ambitious objectives is one of the basic methodological keys in the Sports Psychology.

To do this, and taking into account the season, training or matches, the coach must decide what are the objectives that the athletes will have to achieve, individually and collectively. If the objectives are realistic, specific, measurable, achievable and are achieved within a certain time, they will bring many benefits for the athletes and for the team.

Setting clear goals

The objectives they indicate the direction to follow in the work of the coach and the athletes. When clear objectives are not set or the goal is too high, both motivation and self-confidence suffer. Therefore, a good approach to objectives helps to enhance many psychological aspects and marks the direction towards which efforts should be directed.

Also, set goals too allows to evaluate sports progress and allows changes to be made when expectations are not met.

Types of objectives: outcome objectives and achievement objectives

In order to set the goals for the season or matches, the coach (or, better yet, the sports psychologist) must differentiate between achievement goals Y outcome goals.

1. Outcome objectives

Outcome objectives refer to the collective and individual results that are intended to be achieved, such as winning the league, getting more points, etc.

2. Achievement objectives

On the other hand, the objectives of realization refer to the individual and collective behaviors that sportsmen must carry out to achieve the desired results. For example, improve the counterattack, dominate one-touch passes or shoot more times to the basket from different positions.

Outcome goals are more helpful in increasing the interest of athletes, but performance goals are performance are more effective so that athletes can perceive that they control the situation to which they are face. Both types of objectives help define the direction that the coach and the athletes should follow.

Achievement objectives benefits

Achievement targets have certain benefits. The most important ones are shown below:

• They allow athletes to establish beneficial contingencies between their own behavior and results.
• They accentuate and reinforce the behavior of athletes more than the consequences of what they do, which do not depend so much on them.
• They allow a more realistic assessment of the viability of the objectives.
• They promote the attention of athletes in their own behavior, adopting a more productive and rewarding style of operation.
• They allow performance evaluation in a simple and effective way.
• They promote self-confidence, alertness and motivation of athletes.

Characteristics of effective targets

For the objectives to be effective they need to meet certain requirements, as they could be harmful if they do not meet certain criteria.

For example, if the coach sets goals that are too ambitious and unattainable, it will cause the self-confidence of the athletes to be negatively affected. To avoid this, below are a number of characteristics that effective lenses present:

• Final and intermediate objectives must be defined and the deadline to achieve them must be set
• The objectives must be specific and well defined
• Goals should be attractive, but also realistic
• The objectives must be challenging, but at the same time require a proportionate cost
• In team sports, collective and individual goals must be established