Last week we spoke about the importance of goal setting and establishing long-term vs. short- term goals. To summarize, we want to break down long-term goals by reverse engineering the process into more manageable monthly, weekly, and daily goals to drive forward progress.
We also gave an example of how we do this with athletes who want to improve in performance, which all athletes do. What’s important to understand is if we only limit ourselves to performance-based goals without focusing our time and attention on other factors like nutrition, supplementation, hydration, recovery, and sleep, then athletes will only be limited to what they are capable of accomplishing. All these factors are related and need to be given the consideration they deserve to enhance an athlete’s ability to recover and perform at higher levels.
Step one is to gain perspective of where they are so we can offer guidance and direction on where to go. Step 2 is planning, prioritizing, and executing by focusing on one thing at a time that will give them the biggest return on their investment. I’m a firm believer in the lowest hanging fruits, meaning we want to take advantage of the simple things right in front of us like adequate caloric and protein intake to maximize strength, mass building, and recovery. When we get athletes on track with proper nutrition intake like eating enough quality whole food sources and getting proper calories to support their performance goals, we can then further progress into other things like proper supplementation to fill nutritional gaps.
Below is a simple guideline every athlete should fill out and resort to on a daily basis to ensure they’re staying on the right path every day toward accomplishing their goals.
- What are their goals they want to accomplish as it relates to…
Performance?
Health?
Nutrition?
Recovery?
Mindset? - Why do you want to achieve these goals?
- What drives you and motivates you to stay on the right path toward achieving your goals?
- What has to happen or change over the course of the off-season for you to adhere to, stay committed, and put forth the effort to achieve your goals?
