The Key To Reaching Your Performance Goal

As a coach or an athlete, we have all wanted to make a change in our own or our athletes performance.

Whether it be trying to make the varsity squat, trying to make a certain weight class, or increase a certain skill set like throwing or jumping.

The problem is that sometimes we lack the structure or motivation to accomplish a goal. It's not necessarily because someone is lazy or unfocused. The issue arrises because we don't realize that the desire to change is coming from some deeper need inside of us.

For instance, take a high school baseball player wanting to gain 20 points of muscle before his senior year. There is nothing wrong with this goal. Let's say though that he gets extremely sore or even hurt weightlifting due to overtraining trying to gain that weight. It's possible the injury or lack of success will cause him to stop training all together.

The reason he was unsuccessful may seam like it was too hard and he just didn't want the change to happen bad enough. While he may indeed not have wanted it bad enough, it shouldn't matter if it get's too hard if he really wanted it.

David Goggins lost a hundred pounds to become a Navy Seal. Oprah overcame staggering poverty to be the highest paid female entrepreneur on TV. Hardship won't stop you from achieving your goal.

The truth is, that when you have a clear and concise drive that is motivating you toward your goal, you will put up with almost anything to get yourself there. So if that's the case, maybe our baseball player didn't really want to put on 20 pounds of muscle to get better at playing. Maybe the ready why he wanted to put on the weight because going into his senior year he wanted to feel like he had matured and was building his bravado before going off to college. If that is the case, there are plenty of ways to feel build your confidence besides putting on weight at the gym.

Asking "why" is KEY to making goals and reaching your New Years resolutions. You must find out the why behind your need or goal before you can make steps toward achieving it. This is where the "Finding Your Why" exercise is the first step in making any goals, New Year's or otherwise.

The exercise is relatively simple: Take a look at the following questions;

• What is your goal (resolution)?

• Why do you want that goal?

• How will feel once you've achieved this goal?

• What are the benefits of achieving that goal?

• What are the costs of achieving that goal?

• Do you benefits outweigh your costs?

Once you have thoroughly thought about and answered the above questions, then the final step, and probably the most important: filling out your mission statement.

"I am trying to become/achieve___(your goal)___ in the next 4-6 months (pick your own time period here), because I know it will bring/make me ____(write the benefits here)____, and achieving this will make me feel/become ____________. I know that the costs of making these changes are ______(write the costs here)___ ... which I accept because I am trying to become the best version of myself."

Try this exercise for whatever your major goals are for your performance.

Before you start though, a word of caution; if you are not honest with yourself about why you want to achieve a goal and how achieving that goal will make you feel, not only will you have trouble accomplishing it, you may end up abandoning it entirely. Think of our baseball player earlier...if he was honest with himself, and new that his weight gain goal was associated with boosting his confidence, then when the going got tough, he would have found another way to keep grinding away in the training room, or come up with a different method entirely to achieve his goal.

The same is true for any coach or athlete; if you don't do the work and dig deep to figure out why you are trying to accomplish your goal, and what the real "why" behind wad drives you, you may be setting yourself up for failure!