Hitting the Reset Button
As some may know, we do things a little differently at our Academy. A few weeks ago, we sat down with our athletes to review their goals. Earlier this year, we had set goals based on the season as well as incremental goals (lowest putts per round, most up and downs in a round or multiple rounds, lowest putts in a round, same for fairways, etc.).
Most people set goals, and almost all would agree this is very important. It’s the managing of these goals we take to a different level with our students. If you don’t manage them on a regular basis a couple things can happen. 1. Over training. 2. Over trying. And both of these can occur in training as well as competing. In many cases, it’s these two reasons athletes don’t accomplish their goals.
At this particular classroom session, we had recently come back to training from a very long break. Our facilities had been closed down for several weeks due to massive flooding here in Texas.
We went around the table asking the players where they thought they stood in their process, committing to their plan and accomplishing their goals. All of them felt they were behind. You could hear the stress and anxiety in their voices. They almost sounded as if they were guilty of something.
But as we continued to go around the table, the conversation began to lighten. You see, they all realized no one was on track to accomplish their goals because of the crazy weather mother nature brought us. They shared this struggle.
I asked everyone to get out a clean piece of paper, and we then began to reset goals. We adjusted the actual goals as well as each player’s training plan to accomplish those goals, to the exact date.
You could see the smiles and pleasure they experienced during this “reset” session as they redefined their direction proportionate to their circumstances and allowed time frame.
They loved it so much!
Needless to say, we had some serious milestones as our shortened summer progressed. One of our students posted three consecutive personal bests in events. Most recently, she beat her previous low round by 7 shots with a 74. She was beaming!
Another student set a goal of qualifying for the Texas Match Play Championship and set a personal best two-day total. He then made it to the final eight, beating the #3 seed.
They both said resetting their goals took pressure off of them. It allowed them to keep their focus on the training and running their mental systems instead of being intimidated by their desired end results.
They both accomplished their goals, beating their projected time frame by four months. So you know what, it’s time for them to hit the reset button again. Gotta love that reset button. Sure comes in handy.