The Importance Of Setting Goals In Sports Psychology
Setting goals is a strategy that helps control important psychological aspects that affect an athlete’s performance such as attentional control, self-confidence or motivation. Setting realistic but ambitious objectives is one of the basic methodological keys in Sports Psychology.
To do this, and taking into account the season, training sessions or matches, The coach must decide what objectives 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 provide many benefits for the athletes and the team.
The objectives They point out 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 are affected. Therefore, a good approach to objectives helps to enhance many psychological aspects and marks the direction in which efforts should be directed.
Additionally, setting goals too allows you to evaluate sporting progress and allows changes to be made when set expectations are not met.
Types of objectives: outcome objectives and achievement objectives
In order to establish the objectives of the season or the matches, the coach (or, better yet, the sports psychologist) must differentiate between achievement objectives and result objectives .
1. Result objectives
Result objectives refer to the collective and individual results that are intended to be achieved, such as winning the league, getting more points, etc.
2. Implementation objectives
For their part, the implementation objectives refer to the individual and collective behaviors that athletes must perform to achieve the desired results. For example, improving the counterattack, mastering one-touch passes or shooting more times from different positions.
Outcome goals are more useful in increasing athletes’ interest, but achievement goals are more effective in helping athletes perceive that they are in control of the situation they face. Both types of objectives help define the direction that the coach and athletes should follow.
Benefits of achievement goals
Achievement goals have certain benefits. Below are the most important ones:
Characteristics of effective objectives
For the objectives to be effective They need to meet certain requirements since they could be harmful if they do not adapt to certain criteria.
For example, if the coach sets goals that are too ambitious and unattainable, it will cause the athletes’ self-confidence to be negatively affected. To avoid this, below are a series of characteristics that effective objectives present :
