Goal setting is a term many of us will be familiar with.

Throughout our lives, different individuals

might ask us to set our own goals, or set goals for us. For example, our teachers give us targets, our
parents/guardians ask us to set goals about what we want to be or what we are going to achieve in a
number of different contexts. Sometimes, these goals are focused on us as an individual; on other
occasions, we work as part of a team to achieve a collective goal. In principle, goal setting is a
process in which we identify something that we would like to achieve (and develop a plan of how we
will do this).

There is a huge range of goals that can be associated with sport and exercise activities. For example,
a sprinter may aim to win gold at the Olympics; a tennis player may want to win at Wimbledon; a
person may wish to lose a specific amount of weight; an injured athlete could want to return to
training before the end of the season.

People can easily identify and set goals, and many of us might do this on January 1st each year.
However, think of how easy it is to set a New Year’s resolution and how hard it can be to stick to it.
The role of the sport psychologist is to help an individual to identify and set the right kind of goals
and design a strategy for achieving them.

Goal setting can be used to great effect in a variety of settings and the benefits are not limited only
to individuals. Athletes can use goal setting to structure their training and enhance motivation. They
can be used to foster a sense of achievement and provide direction after setbacks. Sports teams and
organisations may have a mixture of both short and long-term goals and could ultimately influence
the job security of staff members.

Injured athletes and clinical patients may use goal setting during rehabilitation to mark progress in
their physical recovery and maintain motivation. Using the right kind of goals in this setting may also
help to alleviate feelings of anxiety but the wrong kind could make matters worse and lead to
setbacks, and reduce the confidence level of the performer.

Across all settings, you can see now why it is important to set realistic and achievable goals rather
than overly ambitious pipe dreams.

This week we will introduce the different types of goals we have available to us and we will assess
which ones may be more appropriate for sport and exercise performers. We will look in detail at the
principles of goal setting and the guidelines we can follow to ensure that we only set the right kinds
of goals. We will also be referring to our case study examples again to illustrate how goal setting can
be employed in a variety of settings for different purposes.