Week 7: Training Programme - Mental and Physical Activation

Post title: Training Programme: Mental and Physical Activation
Week no. 7
Date: 02/05/14

Aim of week: to increase mental and physical activation

Hi Performer X, thank you for completing last week’s tasks, I hope that you are now imagining yourself being in certain situations and that this imagery is improving. Ensure that you keep practicing imagery as it is a very useful way of improving your confidence as you are imagining yourself being on that dance floor and imagining your performance and emotions on the day that you won that trophy.

Why I have chosen to increase mental and physical activation

This week instead of trying to calm you down and reducing your anxiety and arousal levels, we are going to work on increasing your arousal levels. Sounds funny that we have spent all this time reducing arousal levels and now we are going to increase them again but there is a reason behind it and that reason is because you need some sort of “hype” before you compete because this will increase your motivation and adrenaline levels.

What it involves – technique

Creating the optimal mental and physical activation state is important because increasing your arousal levels will help with handling pressures so they are appropriately activated for competing. There are many ways in which you can increase your arousal levels, you can do all these techniques the night before competing, immediately before competition and during performance and should be done on a regular basis. 

The first way that you can increase your arousal levels is by repeatedly taking short, sharp and shallow breaths. Whilst doing this you might want to think of additional things that you can do, for example, tightly closing your eyes and carefully think and focus on selected images, this part is very similar to last week’s imagery as you are picturing things in your head. You can also make your breaths noisy and more staccato, this will help you find a rhythm and as a dancer this is normally how dancers prepare themselves by finding a rhythm. Also, going back to week 5, using positive self-talk, will increase you arousal levels. So whilst taking these short, sharp and shallow breaths, add anything that naturally increases their arousal levels.             

If you find that this type of breathing is not sufficient to get a highly mentally and physically activated response then try quicker breathing and trying short vigorous exercise for example shuttle runs, this may work better for some people as it will get their heart rate to increase therefore increasing their arousal.

Another way in which you can increase your arousal levels is by using three other key tools which will increase your alertness and interest when competing, these are imagery, music and self-talk. To answer the question is going through your head, yes you have already worked on imagery and self-talk to increase your confidence, but you can also use them to increase your arousal levels. For imagery to increase your arousal levels do exactly the same as you have been practicing, recalling a situation and remembering how you felt etc. You will also do exactly the same for self-talk. For music on the other hand, it is good if you make a playlist of all your favourite songs that get you “hyped” up, you should listen to these before you train and before you compete, preferably this music should have a strong melody and fast tempo.

Two types of arousal

There are two types of effects that arousal can have, these include physiological effects and the psychological effects. The physiological is somatic, it is all about the body and how arousal affects the body before and during performance, whereas psychological is cognitive, all about the mind and how arousal affects the mind before and during the performance. 

Effects of arousal

Arousal can have effects on the mind and body. The effects that it has on the body (physiological) is that the nerve transmission time is quicker, your heart rate increases, your breathing rate will increase as well as your blood pressure, your body temperature and sweat production will increase, your muscles will become tense and you will get butterflies in your stomach.

The effect arousal has on the mind (psychological) is different to the effects that it has on the body. The effect arousal has is a quicker reaction time, an increase in motivation, awareness and focus/concentration. Your self-talk also increases (your knowledge of self-talk will help to further increase your arousal levels).

All these affects will help your performance because they are preparing you for competition.  

Inverted U 

 

This diagram shows that as arousal increases performance increases but if the arousal increases further than the optimal point then there is a decrease in performance.

To make it easier, even though you want to increase your arousal so that it will increase your performance you cannot increase it too much otherwise your performance will not increase it will do the total opposite and will in fact decrease your performance level. So you must be careful when trying to increase your arousal              

Tasks; please complete the following tasks.

1. Practice each way of increasing your arousal level, the best way to practice this is to do it just before you go to training so then you can see the effects that it has on your body and mind.
2. Once you have tried each technique in a training session choose your favourite that you feel works for you and helps you become aroused so that you are ready for training and for competition.
3. Once you have chosen your preferred way of increasing your arousal level, you should then practice it at least three times a day so that when you come to a competition you can “hype” yourself up and prepare yourself.  
4. After each time you have practiced you should follow one of the procedures from previous weeks to help reduce your arousal back to its normal level so that you don’t become over aroused and allowing it to affect your performance.

I look forward to seeing your results.

Week 6: Training Programme - Improving self-confidence using imagery

Post title: Training Programme: Using imagery to further improve self-confidence
Week no. 6
Date: 25/04/14

Aim of week: to increase self-confidence through the use of imagery

Hi Performer X, thank you completing last week’s tasks, since you have completed the tasks you should have felt more confident when performing whether it has been in training or in a competitive situation. You should keep using self-talk as it is a very good way to improve confidence and not just your confidence within your sport but in day to day life too.

Why I have chosen to further improve you self-confidence.

Just as last week, we are going to work to improve your self-confidence levels, this is because you scored such a low score for you self-confidence on your CSAI-2 questionnaire that you completed and I believe that it is important to have a good level of self-confidence because it means that during a competition you are more confident about going on to the dance floor to perform your piece and it means that your anxiety levels will be lower.

What is imagery?

Imagery is best described as a method of using all the senses to create/re-create an experience. Imagery to sport psychologists is mental practice but is more commonly known by everyone as visualisation and it means creating pictures in the mind of an event, for example, just before you go onto the dance floor paint a picture in your mind of when you won, in this picture there should be many things, such as, how you felt at the time of each performance, how you felt each performance went, how you performed, what the atmosphere was like etc. this will help you with your self-confidence because being able to paint a picture in your mind of when you won will help you believe that you can do it and you have nothing to worry about.

Why is imagery used and why does it work?

Imagery is used for many reasons but is mainly used to see successful performances and focus on key factors which contribute to the success. It is known for many athletes to use imagery before taking part in an event or even just before they are about to perform because, imagery can be used to programme the body for successful execution. For example, the famous high jumper Dick Fosbury was well known for spending minutes before he jumped to imagine himself successfully jumping over the bar, this is because there is a mind-body connection which occurs whether you actually perform a task or just think about performing the task. So for you, Performer X, just before your section starts and you go on to the dance floor, you should paint a picture in your mind of the perfect performance, whether it be a past performance that you have done or a performance you have seen someone else do etc. you need to set the scene.

Types of imagery and the benefits of each

imagery training There are two types of imagery, internal and external.

External – external imagery, also known as visual perspective, is probably the most common type of imagery as external imagery is where you watch a video of yourself doing something in particular e.g. a golf swing. So for you as a dancer you would video yourself doing a particular dance move e.g. a pirouette and then you would watch it back to ensure that you are releveing properly and not just rising to demi pointe, that your other leg is in the correct position etc.

 

imagery training

Internal – internal imagery is where you would picture the image in your mind of the surroundings. This type of imagery is as if you are looking at something through your own eyes so you can see and feel the movement that your body is making. So for you will imagine yourself being at Blackpool Tower and everyone around you, the atmosphere and how you felt.     

 

 

 

imagery training

 

Left, are the benefits of internal and external imagery.

 

 

 

 

 How is imagery used?

Imagery is used best when the 3 R’s are followed: relaxation, realism and regularity.

Relaxation – you need to have a relaxed mind and body so that you can feel your body moving and so you can feel your emotions and all the emotions are that you are about to feel. This relaxation stage should act like an eraser so that all your worries and thoughts are wiped away. By erasing all thoughts means that it will be easier to concentrate on image/thought at a time without distractions of something else cropping up into your thoughts.

Realism – this means that when you are creating the imagery in your mind that you create it so realistic that the brain believes that the body is actually executing the skill. When you are painting this realistic picture you need to make it as clear as possible so that when you come to actually executing the in a competitive situation then your body and brain will feel as if it has been in this situation before and it knows how to respond and react to the situation. There are approximately 4 things that you need to take into consideration when creating the perfect realistic picture;

Clarity – making the picture easy to see so that the vividness and control of the image can be enhanced.

Vividness – this is to bring in as many of your senses as possible, so you want to incorporate your hearing and smell as well as your sight, this is so you can get the full impact of the picture and the situation that you are creating. For the situation to be as vivid as possible you also need to take into account all your body movements so you can re-create them because you know what it is supposed to feel like when executing the skill, e.g. in a golf swing, how your body is supposed to twist and what muscles where contracting at that time.    

Emotional feelings – visiting competition sites before a competition or remembering what the site was like if you have been there before so that your body and mind can refresh itself/get used to the site – how it looks, what the smells are, how to get around, what the atmosphere was like the last time you were there, etc.

Outcome – you need to be able to imagine a positive outcome because if you think more positively then you are more likely to succeed but if you think negatively then you are more likely to fail and it works the same with imagery, if you imagine yourself making a mistake and missing your target then this is more likely to happen when in the competition but if you think about doing everything right and hitting your target then this is more likely to be the outcome.

Regularity – you must practice this approximately 5 times a day for 3-5 minutes whilst in a quiet place so you cannot be interrupted. This is the only way that you are going to improve on this as it isn’t something that you can achieve straight away; it takes much practice and must be done on a regular basis. If you don’t spend 3-5 minutes 5 times a day on this then you will result in a poorly developed memory trace and inconsistent execution. However, too much time will result in fatigue and boredom leading to a decrease in concentration and will not help your performance or confidence in the long run.  

Tasks; please complete the following tasks.

1. Firstly, I would like you to think of a situation that you have been whilst in a competition. You can choose your own technique; whether it is external or internal that will help you deal with it.
2. Once you have done task one, I would then like you to imagine yourself succeeding in this situation, ensure that you use the 3Rs as this is an important factor into making your imagery skills successful and helping them with your performance.
3. After a few days of carrying out task two I would then like you to fill in the table (below). This table allows you to rate yourself on your imagery tasks and will help you see if you are improving in imagery and performance.

I would like you to continue to practice these imagery tasks and feel free to fill out the table on a regular basis if you feel that it will help you improve. Remember to practice 5 times a day for 3-5 minutes.

I look forward to hearing back from you.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 5: Training Programme - Improving self-confidence through self-talk

Post title: Training Programme: Improving self-confidence through self-talk  
Week no. 5
Date: 19/04/14

Aim of week: to decrease anxiety levels by increasing self-confidence through self-talk to improve performance

Hi Performer X, thank you for completing last week’s tasks, after completing them you should have felt that performance had further increased in both training and competition as your anxiety levels were lower and looking at your results that is what has happened.

Why I have chosen improve your self-confidence.

This week we are going to improve your self-confidence, this is because when I was looking at your results for the CSAI-2 questionnaire that you filled in, it shows that your self-confidence level is low, you only achieved 16 which is a low score and you should be scoring between 27 and 36 for self-confidence, so due to you having a low score in self-confidence this will be something that we will work on so that it can increase making your performance better. Having a low self-confidence level will automatically make you performance decrease because you don’t believe in yourself and you don’t believe that you can win when competing but having more self-confidence will help you will performance because the more you believe in yourself then the better you will perform because you believe that you can win therefore you want to push yourself so that you come in first place.

What is self-confidence and self-talk?

At some point in life, all performers/athletes will experience doubts about their ability to perform, these doubts are normally due to negative self-talk undermining feeling of self-confidence and self-esteem and interfering with performance.

Self-confidence is a feeling of trust in a person’s abilities, qualities, and judgement.

Many sports persons need help with their self-confidence as this is something that lacks in many athletes and is a key thing and is the difference between winning and losing a competition because if you don’t believe in yourself when performing then the judges that you are performing for also aren’t going to believe in you because you aren’t putting across a performance whereas if you have good self-confidence then the judges are more likely to give you a higher score because you are making them watch you whilst you are performing.

Self-talk is where you are convincing yourself that you are good enough to perform by changing negative thoughts into positive thoughts.

Self-talk is something that many athletes do in both training and in competition because it changes all their negative thoughts into positive ones therefore reducing their anxiety levels and increasing their self-confidence level.

Technique – what it involves.

To increase your self-confidence we are going to use something called self-talk and as explained above, self-talk is where you change all your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. An example of using self-talk to increase performance is just before you go on the dance floor to perform whether it be for you solo or for the team performance, instead of thinking, “what if…..” and thinking of all the things that could go wrong think to yourself, “come on, you can do this” this will be very effective because you are giving yourself more confidence instead of self-doubt. This is something many performers will do just before they are about to perform to help with their confidence levels.

Tasks: Below are 2 tasks that I would like you to complete this week these tasks should be carried out in a quiet place when you are relaxed and they shouldn’t be rushed but do not over think them. Please complete these tasks and send them back to me.  

Task 1; below is a table that I would like you fill out and send it back to me. Within this table I would like you to think of a situation, e.g. the past few competitions I haven’t made it into the second round. Once you have thought of the situation I then want you to think about the thoughts that were going through your mind at the time, or if it is a made up situation what you would be saying to yourself. I would then like you to state whether you thought what was going through your mind was a positive or negative self-talk.

Situation	Self-talk (what you were thinking at the time)	+ / -

 

Task 2; now that you have established whether or not your self-talk was positive or negative, I would like you to replace the negative thoughts with positive ones, this is because most of your thoughts that you were thinking about during competition were probably the reason why you didn’t make into the second round because you doubted yourself therefore reducing your self-confidence.  

Negative self-talk	Positive self-talk

Good luck with this weeks tasks and I am looking forward to seeing your results.

Week 4: Training Programme - Improve Somatic Anxiety

Post title: Training Programme
Week no. 4
Date: 11/04/14

Aim of week: to improve somatic anxiety to further improve performance.

Hi Performer X, thank you for filling everything in last week and getting them back to me so quickly with your results, I hope that they have helped you to reduce your anxiety levels and to improve your performance. 

Why I have chosen to improve somatic anxiety.

This week we are going to try and improve your somatic anxiety. I have chosen this because even though your somatic anxiety levels are good, I feel that if we were to further improve this then your performance is likely to improve further because you are more relaxed when competing, as during some competitions you may feel tense because you are nervous.  

Somatic anxiety is the physiological and affective component closely associated with physiological arousal, e.g. increased heart rate, sweat production, etc.

It suggests that as there is an increase in somatic anxiety then there is a slight increase in performance. For example, if at the end of the first section of a cheerleading competition you/your team have the most points therefore making you be at the top of the leader board, then your somatic anxiety will increase slightly but your performance level will increase faster because you are wanting to stay at the top. (For graph - vertical = performance, horizontal = somatic anxiety).


As you can see in the diagram (opposite) there is a fall in performance, this is when the somatic anxiety still increases leading to a decrease in performance. This is do with the body and how it reacts to certain situations. For example, if at the end of the second round you have been knocked down to second place then your somatic anxiety will increase but your performance will decrease, this is because you are trying to get back to the top of the leader board but because you are trying so hard you aren’t actually performing to the best of your ability.

Technique – what it involves.

So, as I said we are going to improve your somatic anxiety and to do this we are going to use something called, “Progressive Muscular Relaxation”. This helps performers achieve their Ideal Performance State (IPS) in training and in a competitive situation by using Progressive Muscular Relaxation (PMR) techniques. This will benefit you because it will help you gain the suitable physical activation state especially if you ever experience muscle tension revealing somatic anxiety and connecting this with poor performance.

Using the PMR technique will help you in a competitive situation and within training session, this is because you will be able to relax your body whenever you feel tense and agitated. You will be able to use PMR is three different ways;

1)      As a deep relaxation tool for learning and preparation

2)      As a control relaxation tool for pre-competition

3)      For the moments requiring composure (calming down) during performance

Tasks: Below are 3 tasks that I would like you to complete this week, these tasks should be carried out every day and I would like you to record how you felt after each task and monitor progress and the differences each day.  

Exercise 1:

Task 1; find ten minutes worth of calm, relaxing music that you enjoy listening to. These will be used within the following tasks.

Task 2; I would like you carry out a ten minute relaxation session focusing on each muscle groups which you feel you use most within dance (this mainly tensed to be all muscle groups). You should tense and relax each muscle group, doing this will make it less likely for your muscles to tense up when in a competitive situation.

Task 3; once you have got the hang of how task 1 works, try introducing tensing and relaxing the muscle groups using different degree angles e.g. tense the muscle 50% and then relax the muscle, then tense the muscle 75% and relax the muscle and again to 10% and relax. This will be useful for specific muscle groups where heightened awareness of tension levels is vital, for example, for a dancer one might be the biceps and triceps, when doing a lift within a routine.

Each week of doing this you should reduce the time length that you do it, for example, this week you will carry these tasks out for 10 minutes, next you might reduce this time to eight minutes as the less time it takes for you to become relaxed the quicker and easier it will be for you when I a competitive situation. During your second week you should do this relaxation immediately after exercise, to reduce the chance of your muscles becoming tense as often.

Exercise 2:

If would like to think about your last competition that you did and think about how tense your muscles were and how it impacted your performance, then compare that to an upcoming competition that you are preparing for and see if there is any difference in your performance and whether the above tasks make a difference to how you feel and perform. Please could you record these and send them to me.            

Good luck with this, I am looking forward to seeing your results.

Week 3: Training Programme - Reducing Anxiety

Post title: Training Programme: Reducing Anxiety
Week no. 3
Date: 04/04/14
Aim of week: to reduce cognitive anxiety levels to increase performance levels.  

 

Hi Performer X, I see that last week’s goal setting task went well, keep working on your goal setting and you will find that over a period of time your will be improving further.

Why I have chosen to reduce cognitive anxiety for you.

This week, we are going to look at reducing your anxiety levels, in particular cognitive restructuring. Cognitive anxiety is the mental component of state anxiety, caused by fear, negative self-evaluation and threat to self-esteem. It is to do with your mental side, your mind, the more you worry then the more your performance will decrease. Opposite is a graph that might explain cognitive anxiety a bit better, all it is showing is that as cognitive anxiety increases then performance decreases.

For example, in a dance competition, if you are worrying about the other dancers being better than you then your performance will decrease because you haven’t got the right mind set and your mind is worrying and focused on something else and resulting in reduced confidence and performance levels. 

I have also chosen to do this because your cognitive score on your CSAI-2 questionnaire is high, so this needs reducing to result in having a better performance.

Technique – what it involves.

Cognitive reconstruction is trying to reduce the negative thoughts to turn them into positive attentional focuses to improve performance, so it is trying to prevent you from worrying about things, having self-doubt and fearing the consequences, e.g. worrying about an upcoming competition and then fearing what the consequences will be if you don’t do well in it. This is where the attribution theory comes in. The attribution theory relates to the reasons we give for our or the team’s performance, these thoughts can be before the competition or during the competition. If you are being positive about yourself and your performance then you are more likely to have a successful outcome. However, if you don’t believe in yourself then you aren’t going to get very far in the competition, resulting in you not qualifying for the next round and not placing for a trophy,

Attributions can be split into four types; ability, task difficulty, effort and luck.

Ability – this is the genetics you have that allow you to be the athlete you are, e.g. whether or not you are flexible.  

Task difficulty – this is the difficulty of tasks given to the athlete and how they approach the task, e.g. how you approach trying to master the splits.

Effort – this is how hard you try to win when in a competitive situation, e.g. do you try your hardest and put everything you have into it to try and win or do you just dance instead of performing.

Luck – this is whether something plays right for you, e.g. are the judges biased towards one dance school.

These four categories are then placed under two headings; these two headings are – Locus of control and stability.

Locus of control – this is who is responsible for something that is happening, is it you or your opponent. So, who is responsible? This is further split into internal and external.

Internal – this is you or your team, so in your case it would be you and how you let yourself down and what the reasons where of why you didn’t perform well.

External – this is someone else or something else that controlled the  outcome / performance – so in performer X’s case there opponent would be someone from both a different dance school and someone from your own dance school that are in the same category as you, they then perform better than you meaning that they win instead of you.

Stability – this is whether something can change or not, this again is further split into stable and unstable.

Stable – this does not change, your performance doesn’t change it always stays the same.

Unstable – this is changeable, your performance can and will change through each performance you do and each competition that you do.        

The attributions, (all information from above), can have effects on; future expectations and emotions.

If the outcome is failure but the attribution is stable and internal then the performer  can believe that they are always going to fail, this will lead to the performer becoming depressed therefore leading to a decrease in motivation and lead to learned helplessness.

If the outcome is successful but the attribution is stable and internal then the performer is always going to win, this is because the attribution is internal, this means that you can change it because it is in your control, leading to the performer becoming more confident and motivated this is called mastery orientation.

The table opposite is showing what each attribution category falls under.  

 

 

Tasks: Below are 3 tasks that I would like you to complete this week

Exercise 1: Performer X, I would like you to:

Task 1; fill out the Attribution Analysis form that I have sent you, saying why you think you have been successful and why you have been unsuccessful within a competition.

Task 2; fill in the table saying whether each reason you have given under both headings is a positive or a negative thing to your performance.

Task 3; everything that you have put under the negative column, I would like you to re-phrase into a positive. (E.g. the other team underperformed therefore making my team win, turn this into a positive, my team where the better team and on the day performed better).  

Exercise 2: Performer X, I would like you to repeat all of the above tasks again but straight after a competition, so once you have competed sit down and complete these forms so that you can see the difference between when your actually performing and when you are looking back to try an remember.

Please complete these tasks and send them back to me so that I can see what you have done.

Completed tasks by Performer X

Below, shows that Performer X has sent back the attribution analysis table (task 1). As you can see she has listed all the reasons why she thinks she was successful and all the reasons why she thought she was unsuccessful. 

She then further completed task 2, as shown below.

 

This is showing how Performer X has categorised her attributions. This is showing how each thing affects her performance; this is because when she was focused and concentrated then her performance was good therefore leading to a win but when she was nervous and tired then her performance decreased therefore not winning in the competition.

Performer X then carried out task 3, she re-phrased all the negative points into a positive ones.

So as you can see performer X successfully carried out task three as she was able to re-phrase all her negative points into positive ones. By doing this it should mean that your performance will increase and carry increasing and after a period of time all these negative things that keep coming up with get less and less until there are no negatives at all and you feel confident about your performance and therefore more likely to win.

Performer X will do this again after her next competition and then analysis her results to see if there are any differences between the two.

Also, by doing this you can see where you went wrong in every performance allowing you to improve for next time.  

Week 2: Training Programme - Goal Setting

Post title: Training Programme: Goal Setting
Week no. 2
Date: 28/03/14

Aim of week: to develop your goal setting skills in order to improve motivation, to increase confidence, reduce anxiety and your levels of stress.

Why I’ve chosen goal setting for you.

Hi performer X, this week we are going to be working on goal setting, this is because in the questionnaires that you filled out, you scored 0 out of 12 on the ACSI meaning that you aren’t setting goals for yourself therefore your confidence and motivation aren’t increasing and you are less likely to improve in dance. Goal setting is where you set yourself a specific goal, something that you want to achieve and try to give yourself a specific time you want to achieve your goal by, by setting a specific time this will motivate you more to try and achieve it. By setting yourself goals, this will increase your confidence which is something we said we had to address, as in the CSAI-2 questionnaire and the performance profile your self-confidence score was very low and by setting yourself goals it will increase your self-confidence because when you achieve them you will feel good about yourself and how you have achieved it therefore resulting in an increase in self-confidence.

What goal setting involves:

Goal setting is: setting targets for yourself to achieve and within a specific duration of time which will help you with your performance now and in the future.  

When setting goals, there are three different time phrases you can set them for, short term, medium term and long term.

Short term goal setting: a short term goal is set to for a short period of time, from one day to one month. This short term goal is what you want to achieve quickly within a few training sessions. For example, perfecting a certain jump or leap.

Medium term goal setting: this is between short term and long term goal setting. For medium goal setting duration of one to three months is around how long it would take to achieve your medium term goal.

Long term goal setting: a long term goal is something can affect your performance from three months for up to several years or if you set want until you retire from your sport. E.g. shouldering your leg, if a dancer can shoulder their leg then it means that they have a good range of flexibility within their hips therefore being able to do more advanced moves/tricks when performing.

A lot of short term goals that you set normally result into long term goals because once you have achieve this short term goal then you want to continue it and not lose it, i.e. a leap therefore you keep practicing this resulting it in being a long term goal.

There are three types of goals that you can use to help with the goal setting process and staying motivated to keep practicing them. The three types are: outcome, performance and process.

Outcome goal: an outcome goal focuses on the result of an event, e.g. beating a certain opponent in a competition that always seems to beat you. However, this isn’t always what happens because it just depends on what happens on the day as on the day of the competition the opponent that you want to be may be on top form whereas you may not be or vice versa and therefore this can reduce the advantages of goal setting I discussed earlier, they can be quite destructive/ negative.

Performance goal: this is a short term goal were you set yourself a goal e.g. improving your split leap and this will help you with your performance  and also achieve the outcome because it means you have a wider range of movement in the hip therefore you can do more leaps when choreographing for a performance. This type of goal setting is better than outcome goal setting because you can control this more than outcome and it is more individual to you.

Process goal: a process goal is the actions that an individual must make to perform well, e.g. go to training three to four times a week instead of one to two times a week to improve your general dancing technique and level or whether you are going to go for them extra two sessions a week to focus on something very specific, e.g. shouldering the leg.  

When setting goals, the best way to ensure that you set a good, specific and realistic goal is to use SMART or SMARTER targets.

Specific – set a specific / narrow target for yourself that you want to achieve e.g. I want to be able to shoulder my leg well and hold it for at least three seconds. This target is specific because it is saying what you want to achieve but it isn’t just saying that you want to perfect a leap it is saying what specific leap you want to achieve.

Measurable – this heading is how you are going to measure the specific target that you have set. So for shouldering the leg, we would measure how high the leg is/how far away from the shoulder the leg is in the first week then in week six we would measure it again to whether or not there has been any improvement.

Achievable – this heading is to ensure that the specific target you have set is achievable and it isn’t something that is impossible to achieve. If the target isn’t achievable then there is no point in continuing any further with it and this can increase anxiety and reduce confidence.

Realistic – this heading is to ensure that the target is realistic, (very similar to achievable), is the target that you have set for yourself realistic, can it be achieved.

Time – this heading is so that you can set yourself a time frame to achieve the specific target that you have set for yourself.

This is what you would use to help yourself write a SMART target, if you wanted to write a SMARTER target then you would use the same as above but just add the following headings:

Excitable – this heading is to ensure that the target you have set and the training that you are going to do is excitable and that the training isn’t going to be the same boring routine week in week out as this will result in you becoming demotivated and not completing the goal that you have set out to achieve.

Record – this heading is telling you to record down what you have done within each training session and whether or not you feel that you are closer to achieving your goal. It also prevents the athlete from back tracking on their goal.

Exercises for Athlete to Complete

Below, are two targets that I would like you to achieve, one is a long term target that is just getting you used to goal setting and how it works and the other is a short term one which I would like you to complete for next week.   

1. A Long Term Goal Setting Plan     

This is the long term goal that I would like to set for you and this is to improve flexibility by being able to achieve the splits on at least two sides.

You will do this by setting yourself a SMART or SMARTER target so that you can improve this and achieve the target.

To help yourself try using a diagram (to help follow the picture below).

 

Here is a running exmaple that will help you to understand a little more.

To do this you need to set yourself a goal that you want to be able to reach within the next month e.g. being a certain distance off the floor (10cm) on your left leg and a certain distance off the floor on your right leg. You then want to set yourself a goal for the end of a certain length of time, “be down in splits on both my right and left leg by …..” and set yourself a month/time you want to be down in splits by. You then need to set goal for in between the starting and finishing goal, so you need to set yourself another goal for the next month e.g. be closer into splits (you may want to give yourself a distance).    

2. A Short Term Goal Setting Plan

This is the short term goal that I would like you to achieve for next week and this is to have improved your leg height on shouldering your leg by a couple of inches. This target requires you to stretch every day and practice the skill so that it can improve.  
Again, set yourself SMART/SMARTER targets that will help you to achieve this, practice every day and if possible try to measure each day so that you can see improvements. You could also try and record your improvement each day by making yourself a diary, you could record what stretches you did, how long you did them for and whether or not there was any improvement in the actual skill itself and if improving this skill helps improving other skills.  


Good luck for this week and I hope you achieve this, feel free to comment about any progress that you have made.