Goal setting
Goal setting is probably the most widely used mental strategy. You’ve probably heard of S.M.A.R.T. goals before (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals), but there is actually a lack of evidence that they benefit performance outcomes and motivation. Athletes can get bogged down setting a plethora of detailed goals based on questionable assumptions about their capacity. I think the SMART framework can still be useful to keep in the back of our mind, but we don’t necessarily need to squeeze all goals into this framework (and particularly don’t need to use it as our starting point when setting goals).
Modern research is shifting towards a new framework known as Achievement Goal Theory, which explains how different types of goals will influence someone’s motivation and behaviour. It distinguishes between two distinct ways that individuals can define competence; self-referenced or mastery goal orientations, and other-referenced or ego goal orientations. Mastery goals centre around improvement, whereas ego goals focus on how one performs relative to others. There are also two different ways competence can be demonstrated; that can either be by approaching success, or by avoiding failure. This is the difference between aiming to win versus aiming not to lose.
This gives us four different types of goals:
Ego avoidance goals: aiming to avoid demonstrating relative incompetence, e.g., don’t come last.
Ego approach goals: Aiming to demonstrate relative competence, e.g., do better than others.
Mastery avoidance goals: aiming to avoid self- or task-referenced incompetence, e.g., don’t run slower than I did last time.
Mastery approach goals: aiming to develop competence in terms of absolute or interpersonal standards, e.g., do your best!
The latter, mastery approach goals, appear to be most beneficial. These types of goals increase satisfaction, increase persistence, and decrease practice avoidance relative to the other types of goals.
Goals can also be broken down into either being outcome or process oriented. Outcome goals focus on the result of competition, whereas process goals focus on the specific actions the runner must take to perform at their best.
Process goals direct a runner’s attention towards factors that can be more directly controlled and refined, such as pacing, technique, tactical decisions, and fueling. Outcome goals can be very motivating (and sometimes necessary for planning purposes), but may also increase anxiety and pressure, and they may hinge on factors outside of the runner’s control, e.g., a runner may need to set a goal time to help plan out their nutrition and pacing, but if the conditions are different from what was expected, this time may no longer be realistic.
Putting this all together, we should emphasise process-based mastery approach goals with our athletes. What might that actually look like?
As an example, let’s take a runner who has had nutrition related issues in their previous races.
Let’s say that they’ve previously struggled to get down 40 grams of carbohydrates per hour using predominantly gels. They’ve tended to have an upset stomach and consequently low energy, which has slowed them down in the back half of races. So, to improve their performance, we’re going to focus on finding a nutritional solution where their gut feels comfortable and where they can increase their carbohydrate intake. This is process-oriented because we can focus on what they specifically need to be eating/drinking, and it is mastery approach-based because we are striving towards improvement from their current situation.
From here, we can start to get more specific as we work with our athlete, but because I’m making this athlete up, it’s all going to be very hypothetical. They’ll work on trying different foods, nutrition products, and fluid intake to find something that feels comfortable, and they can then gradually work on increasing that carbohydrate intake and training the gut.
In this situation, an outcome goal might have just purely been to get faster, ignoring the nutrition side altogether. An avoidance goal would have been something like don’t throw up, or an ego-driven goal could even have been don’t throw up more than someone else. I think in this example it’s pretty clear why those strategies don’t get the best results – they offer absolutely no guidance about what to actually do!
Although you could, you don’t have to then massage this goal into the SMART framework. You can’t know exactly how much they’re going to be able to tolerate and how long it’s going to take to build up to that – you’re simply focusing on improvement. However, in each training session you may still set a specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic nutrition goal, which you then adjust for the next session based on the outcome.
Key takeaways
1. Mastery approach goals are most beneficial.
2. Emphasise process goals rather than outcome goals.