|
Setting your golden goals | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Around the Academy: |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Realising those dreams. What are you aiming for?
It's all about peaking at the right time says EIS psychologist Paul Dent.
The standard tool for any sportsperson is goal-setting. Some will be just happy to compete, some will settle with being on the Olympic podium. And then there are the best athletes who will set extra high challenging targets. They'll go for Olympic medals, and then even more medals. To help achieve these goals, they are broken down over a long period of time.
A good example is the GB hockey team I've been working with in the build-up to the Olympics. Their full preparations began back in October - almost a year ago. They've been touring across the world and each visit had its own angle and goal.
And they haven't all been about achieving victory. The main aim has been developing the style for this particular group of GB players and building up their confidence. So over the long term the style will hopefully be the right one for Athens.
So whatever sport it is, the right short term goals might not neccessarily be for success. And it's exactly the same approach for individuals. Working towards the Olympics, Redgrave and Johnson will have competed in some races, but sometimes they wouldn't focus on winning. They would see it as another phase in gaining fitness and using the event as a measure of their fitness. Peaking at the right time for major championships would have been their main goal.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||