Goal Setting

8/12/11

Young players at the Sussex Junior Elite Centre in East Grinstead recently received input from sports scientist, Tim Holder, who has previously worked with the England Mens Table Tennis Team, on the subject of goal-setting. Setting personal goals in the right way is a vital ingredient for keeping motivated and if all you set your sights on is winning you may be setting yourself up for a TT career of disappointment!

Tim's goal-setting notes are as follows:

Goals are targets that you can aim for.

You can set them for:

Tactical aspects

Physical training

Psychological aspects

Competition behaviour

Training behaviour

TYPES OF GOALS

Outcome Goals

Outcome goals set a target based on the result or outcome of a performance in relation to others.

e.g.

- to finish in the top ten in the rankings.

- to reach the semi finals of the tournament.

- to get through the group at a tournament.

- to win the next game.

- to play for the county.

- to play for England.

Performance Goals

These are goals where you compare yourself to some kind of measure, for example height, length, time etc. In table tennis good examples of areas where performance goals can be set are :-

- to take a game off an opponent

- to take a certain number of points in a game

- to beat an opponent by a certain number of points

A good example of a performance related outcome goal would be to win a game 11- 5.

Both of the outcome oriented types of goals within the table tennis world (and possibly outside of this) are rather weak in that they do not give any scope for levels of success on a particular goal. If you set yourself a goal to get to the semi-finals of a tournament and you do not achieve this then you have failed on that particular goal.

With an emphasis on outcome goals these only tell us about where we are going and say nothing about how to get there.

A third type of goal can be used that help you to know HOW to get to the performance or outcome goals:-

Process Goals

This type of goal sets targets for the types of activity that you want to do in order to achieve success. For example, within the table tennis world this would be to play a particular tactic i.e. to play the third ball wide to the forehand.

In essence the process oriented goal helps the performer to break down table tennis performance into a succession of smaller packages of performance that they feel they have some level of control over.

Examples of process goals could be :-

- to remain relaxed during the rallies

- to play positively on all strokes

- to attack the third ball when serving

- to serve short when you attempt to