Before each practice, ask yourself, how you will plan to make the session as efficient and focused as possible. Setting short-term individual targets focuses players on challenging themselves. By competing with themselves rather than their teammates, players are less likely to do things that undermine the success of their team and that’s a good thing.
Each player has a unique learning curve, and will benefit from different goal planning. Don’t treat all of them the same all of the time.
Get each athlete to think about what they want to work on. Frequent one on one conversations with each player increases motivation and improves planning. Help steer their targets based on their strengths and weaknesses. Players love a little individual attention from their coach. Know your players; recognize their physical and emotional maturity.
Attainable, able to reach the goal. Make sure that the targets can be broken down into steps.
This means taking a general goal, like “I want to be faster” and turning it into a goal that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timed.
For example: I want to run the mile x seconds faster in the next 3 months. Or a short-term target, I will practice my free throw shot routine x number of times each day to improve my percentage. Or set a more technical target around a specific action that you want your player to master. Every sport and position will require specific targets. team goals are for all the players.
Long-term goals also follow the SMART model. They should also be specific – measurable- attainable- realistic and timed.