| Did you ever get in a slump? How do you get out the other side? Playing bad is not good for self-confidence and when your confidence goes you play worse: it can be a downward spiral. What can you do to get better? |
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| Mental |
| Did you ever get in a slump? How do you get out the other side? Playing bad is not good for self-confidence and when your confidence goes you play worse: it can be a downward spiral. What can you do to get better? |
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You want to get better, but if you keep doing what you're doing now you're not going to get better. So what are you going to change? Good use of goal setting can both identify the best way and to develop the plans to help you improve your game. You will achieve the results you desire increasing your confidence, motivation and enjoyment of your sport.
"If you don't know where you are going how will you know when you get there?". This famous quote pretty well sums it all up. To bowl each week without a purpose is pretty pointless: well, ok, if your goal is simply to have a night out of the house you'll probably be happy enough. But, if you want to get better, to win leagues or travel and compete successfully in tournaments please read on...
To get better you must first take note of your current ability. People sometimes cope with their problems by denying they exist (see article on Attitude): you need to admit, to yourself, your weak points. This can be done on your own, but works best with a training partner or coach. Make a start by systematically breaking down your game into it's component elements. For example...
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A
common method, that is non sports-specific, is to profile the following elements... Technical / Tactical / Mental / Physical The elements listed in
the table |
You can, of course, break these elements down into sub-elements - for example, the physical game could be broken into timing, ball speed, rev-rate, 10-pin conversion percentage etc.(the key here is be specific and objective). In the example above both coach and player already agree that the physical, lane-play and equipment elements are strong and the main area to focus development on, for this player, is the mental game. It may be the case that the coach and player differ on their ratings, this should be discussed to clarify the difference.
After a few weeks working on your goals you can look back at your progress and see improvement. This positive feedback will improve your motivation and confidence. Alternatively, if you are not improving it is a sign that, for some reason, the training methods are not working. Without a systematic approach 'failure' normally is a strong demotivator but, here, you are being objective, positive and forward-looking so you can quickly respond to the lack of measurable improvement to adapt your training programme.
| Having identified areas to work on you
need, now, to distinguish between the results you want
and the methods you will use to achieve them. Both of
these (results/methods) can be goals: confused? Call them
Long-Term and Short-Term goals and you should understand
better. The long-term goals are what you want to achieve
(perhaps many months or years away) and the short-term
goals are things you need to achieve (in the coming weeks
and months) to get there. Smaller, shorter improvements
are more realistic. It is important that your goals are exciting enough to motivate you to train harder, but the short-term goals are realistic enough that a failure to achieve them will result in major demotivation. Use the "SMARTER" acronymn in the table on the right to help you set goals. Remember the "realistic" component in your checklist and consider your life outside the bowling center - ask yourself if there are any "barriers" that might prevent you reaching the goals you have chosen. Such barriers might be money related, time you need balance between work, family and practise etc. |
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| Goal setting is a tool that you can use as part of your life outside of sport. You have aspirations to get better, to achieve things but - with work, family, study needs - only a limited amount of time to do the work. The environment is, by it's very nature, competitive, so you need to make the best use of your valuable time. Profiling is a systematic way of analysing your current performance, so you know your strengths and weaknesses. With the help of a coach you can then set the long-term "results" you want to achieve and set short-term "process" goals with deadlines to gradually and realistically work towards them. Goal setting can help motivate yourself to train so that you achieve the results you want. These prioritisation and time-management skills are, also, equally beneficial to your non-sporting life. For those of you've who've read this far let me finish with another quote; "Everyone has the will to win, but not everyone has the will to practise" - profling and goal setting makes the best use of your available time to maximise the benefit from your practise time. | Goal
Setting can help motivate you to train "Everyone has the will to win, but not everyone has the will to practise" |
