I had come to a turning point in my career. I was not going to be offered a new contract but still wanted to carry on playing professionally. I set myself some goals relating to my strength and conditioning and technical components of my game in order to improve and thus secure my ultimate goal—securing another contract with a different club. This really helped me get that next contract.
Peter, professional rugby union player
A goal is something that people are trying to achieve, such as being selected for a particular team, improving their tackling, or improving their kicking percentage.
Why is it important to set goals? Locke and Latham (1990), two prominent researchers in sport psychology, found that sport performers should set goals to
• ensure that they remain persistent in the face of either failure or adversity because they have something to strive for,
• focus their attention and direct their energy on what they want to achieve,
• help them maintain a consistently high level of effort and intensity through continual striving for goal attainment, and
• encourage them to develop new problem-solving strategies when setting new goals.
Goals can be short term, medium term, or long term. A short-term goal relates to attaining something that will happen shortly after a goal is set, such as winning your next match the following day or the following week. A medium-term goal refers to goals set to occur over a time of months to a season, such as wanting to make 20 appearances for a particular team during a season. Finally, long-term goals are goals that are set for times longer than a season. For instance, a long-term goal of a 14-year-old rugby player might be to represent his or her country or to attain a professional contract.
All rugby players should set a variety of short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. First, long-term goals are crucial for providing you with a sense of purpose and making the sacrifices that you will inevitably have to make seem worthwhile. Medium-term and short-term goals make longer-term goals seem more achievable because by repeatedly achieving your short-term and medium-term goals, you will eventually succeed in achieving your long-term goals.
Different Types of Goals
You can set three types of goals: (1) outcome goals, (2) performance goals, and (3) process goals. These goals can be set over different times, such as the short, medium, or long term. The important element of these goals is not the time in which they are set over, but the content of the goals.
1. Outcome goals. Outcome goals are concerned with the result or outcome of a particular match or competition. For example, a coach could set a goal of finishing in the top three of a league or winning a particular match. Although these goals are important, because success in sport is often determined by winning or losing, outcome goals are only partially controllable by a team or individual. Success in achieving these goals depends on many others, such as opponents, teammates, and officials. For instance, the team who finishes fourth in the league may have performed to their maximum potential and would never have been good enough to win the league. The team who lost a match may have done so only because of poor officiating. Caution is warranted in setting only outcome goals, because they can result in decreased motivation. Outcome goals can be used in combination with performance and process goals.
2. Performance goals. Performance goals are directly related to standards of performance that a rugby player wants to achieve, such as to improve the percentage of successful goal kicks by 10 percent from 55 percent to 65 percent, to improve sprint times over 30 metres by 0.4 of a second from 4.8 seconds to 4.4 seconds, or to improve the percentage of lineout throws by 5 percent from 80 percent to 85 percent. When setting these goals you are competing against yourself and trying to better yourself.
3. Process goals. Process goals are targets focused on specific actions within a movement. For example, a lineout jumper may have poor knee flex before being lifted at the lineout and a goal for this player could be to improve his or her knee flex for extra spring in the lineout jump. A process goal for a goal kicker could be to follow through with his or her leg. Essentially, process goals enable you to improve your performance by concentrating on the specific elements of the required movement.
Callard the COACH
A team I once coached was in a particularly daunting situation. We were 12 points adrift from our nearest rivals at the foot of the Premiership. We were a side of exceptionally hard-working individuals, but the atmosphere within the team was one of despair because of our league position.
If we had any chance of survival, we needed to change our goals. Staying up was obviously the main goal, but it was blinding us in our pursuit. We needed greater clarity for the task ahead and greater understanding about the processes that we needed to follow to achieve our goal and stay in the Premiership. Outcome goals had worked initially, but now we needed to assess and evaluate our performance goals. These were the real tangibles that everyone could live and breathe every day.
We called our position “Bad debt.” We accepted that we couldn’t just forget about it, nor could we pay it off in one go. We realised what the issues were and how we were going to address them. We set several goals:
1. We wanted to make more effective tackles. Effective tackles were classified as those that stopped the opposition, turned the ball over, or were awarded a penalty for our team.
2. We wanted to eliminate 90 percent of handling errors in training, and, as coaches, we wanted to support the lines that the players made in training.
3. We had a clear points structure, in that we wanted every visit within 35 metres of the opposition try line to be rewarded with points.
4. Finally, we wanted teammates to have more respect for each other. We encouraged players to do something that gained the respect of their teammates (e.g., turning up early for training, helping to clear the kit away, doing extra training, and encouraging others to do extra training).
Within three weeks of setting these new goals we got our rewards. We beat the top side at home and went on an unbeaten run to the end of the season. The performance goals that we established in the need of change had really worked. Premiership survival and a cup triumph was the result of our change in thinking!
A method of ensuring that your goals are effective is to set SMARTER goals. As such, goals should be specific, measurable, action-orientated, realistic, timed, and elastic. See table 1.1 about setting SMARTER goals.
Scholars from the sport psychology literature (Burton & Naylor, 2002) suggested that athletes naturally set particular types of goals depending on their personality. The two types of goal-setting styles are (a) performance-orientated goal-setting styles and (b) success-orientated goal setting styles.
1. Performance-orientated goal setting styles. Athletes with a performance-orientated approach to setting goals are more likely to set goals that are related to self-improvement (e.g., I want to improve my passing technique) rather than to demonstrating their superior ability over teammates (e.g., I want to be able to pass better than the other scrum-half). Players with performance-orientated approaches focus on improving their own game and view most opportunities as a chance to improve their game. As such, players with this style of goal setting are likely to set challenging and difficult goals, even at the risk of making mistakes, because their primary aim is to improve as players. Therefore, players who tend to set these types of goals are comfortable playing against superior opponents, because they judge success on their own improvement.
2. Success-orientated goal-setting styles. Players with a success-orientated goal-setting style focus on setting goals that are based on social comparisons between teammates or opposition players in addition to the outcome of matches. Players with this goal-setting style avoid setting challenging goals if they think that they risk suffering public humiliation by making lots of mistakes. Instead, they set moderately challenging goals that they are confident they can attain.
TASK Considering Goals That You Have Set for Yourself in the Past
Are they related to your own standards of performance, or are they related to comparisons between yourself and teammates or opponents?
The type of goals that you set is also likely to influence how much effort you put into your performance. For instance, the effort put in by players with a success-oriented goal setting style is likely to fluctuate depending on task difficulty (e.g., quality of opposition). When the quality of the opposition is moderately difficult these players will put in lots of effort to reach their goals, but they will expend only as little effort as necessary when the quality of the opposition is poor. When faced with incredibly tough opponents or a tough task, however, players who have success-orientated goals will exert high effort until they realise that they cannot outdo their opponents, and so they give up in some respects.
Conversely, players who set performance-orientated goals are likely to perform more consistently in different situations because these types of players are consistently trying to improve their own performance. They will therefore be continually striving to perform to their best and not worrying about how their opponents or their teammates are doing. As such, sport psychology researchers have suggested that athletes with performance-orientated goal styles are more likely to be successful than athletes with success-orientated goal styles because they maximise their chances of winning by performing consistently at their best.
To prevent ineffective goal setting, do the following:
• Make sure that your goals motivate you. For this to happen, you need to be highly committed to achieving your goals. Without goal commitment, you will not make the sacrifices and do the hard work required for you to achieve the goals that you set.
• Don’t set too many goals. If you set too many goals, your attention will be spread too broadly and you might not achieve any of your goals. Focus on one or two goals at a time. Achieve those goals and then set other goals.
• Change the goals that you have set if you think that they are either too easy or too hard to achieve. Don’t be afraid to change your goals.
• Remember that setting goals will not automatically result in superior performance—you will need to put in the work.
• Make sure that the goals you set are specific and that you can measure whether you were successful in achieving them.
• Identify the barriers that may prevent you from achieving your goals. These could be other commitments that prevent you from doing the practice needed to reach your goals (e.g., education, work, or time restraints). If you cannot overcome the barriers, adjust your goals accordingly.
TASK Changing to a Performance-Orientated Goal Setting Style
If you believe that you have a success-orientated goal-setting style (i.e., in the past you have set goals in relation to beating your teammates or opponents rather than improving your own performance), you can change to a performance-orientated goal-setting style with little difficulty, which will improve the consistency of your effort. To change your goal-setting style, do the following:
1. Focus on what you want to do and set goals that focus on learning and becoming more proficient in rugby-related activities. For example, you might want to set yourself a goal of improving your throw in the lineout or kicking at the goals. Focus on improvement and do not compare yourself with other players.
2. When setbacks occur, focus on new skills that you need to learn and practise them. If, for example you are dropped by your coach, you could focus on the skills that you need to work on to improve your performance such as your body alignment whilst tackling or the position of your hands when passing.
3. Embrace all challenges that you face and view matches as opportunities to learn, even if it means that you might make some mistakes. In a match your team might suffer a heavy defeat, but you might have learned new tactics from the team that you played against or the way that different players played against you, which you can incorporate into your own game through work in training.
Now you should consider setting your own rugby goals. These goals should be personal to you because only goals that are personal and relevant to you will provide the motivation required to attain such goals. Before setting your own goals you should know what you want to achieve.
To set your own goals, you need to have a clear picture of what it is you want to achieve. Before recording your personal goals, consider and then answer the questions in table 1.2 on page 8. Answer these questions honestly. Your answers are not for the benefit of your coaches, parents, or friends. They are for you.
Callard the PLAYER
When I still at school my goal was to play first-class rugby. I managed to play my first game for Newport when I was 17 and still at school. My goal was then to be a regular member of the first-team squad and to play for the first team on a regular basis. I spoke to the coaches to find out what I needed to do to be a first-team player. I then set myself goals of making positive contributions in every training session so that I could achieve my goal.
Now you have considered what it is that you want to do in rugby, you are ready to set your goals by completing your goal sheet. Table 1.3 is an example of a completed goal-setting sheet. Of course, you must answer the questions in relation to your own hopes and aspirations. Complete this goal-setting sheet for your
• long-term goals (e.g., career goals),
• midterm goals (e.g., goals for the season), and
• short-term goals (e.g., goals for each month).
You should complete these goal-setting sheets at the beginning of each season for the season ahead. You could also complete a goal-setting sheet at the beginning of each month to outline what you want to achieve and what barriers might prevent you from achieving them. The sheet has been designed with this in mind (see table 1.4 on page 10 for a blank template).
You should regularly review your goals and amend them as necessary. For example, the goals that you set might be too difficult to achieve in the time frame that you have set. If so, create a different goal. Alternatively, you might achieve a particular goal ahead of schedule. When this occurs, set yourself another goal.
• Effective goal setting can help you identify what you have to do to be where you want to be.
• Make sure that you have SMARTER goals.
• Set a range of short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals.
• Set a range of outcome, performance, and process goals.
• Remember to adjust your goals if required.
• Adopt a process-orientated goal-setting approach. Focus on your own improvements.
• Commit to your goals.
• Regularly revisit your goals and look over previous goals that you have set.
• Enjoy the feelings of achieving your goals!
