3 Steps to Helping Athletes Set and Achieve Goals During the Off-Season

Coaches know how crucial it is to continue training during the off-season and throughout the year, whether you’re in competition or not. But your athletes may not fully grasp the importance… So how do you motivate your players to continue their training? How do you instill discipline and accountability when you don’t have your normal face-to-face practice time?

Each players’ level of improvement is correlated to the time you, as a coach, put in to help personalize their development plans. So it’s especially important to set specific goals with each player and track progress throughout the off-season. To best do this, you’ll need some sort of system to document and track players’ goals and plans, keeping them motivated and accountable throughout the off-season.

Let’s dive into the 3 critical steps for helping athletes set and achieve goals during the off-season.

Step 1: Hold a goal setting session with each athlete

In order to see improvement and goal achievement from your players, it’s important that they understand where they need to improve. At the end of the season, sit down personally with each player to review what went well and what didn’t. And set realistic goals together that align to their personal motivations.

Key: Athletes who set goals are more successful and productive than those who don't.

Step 2: Convert goals into personalized activity plans

Goals alone are not effective without the commitment, desire, and a plan to achieve them. Especially in the off-season, it’s important that athletes have a clear understanding of what’s expected of them and what they need to do each day to achieve their goals.

Work with each player to develop a customized training plan. Focus on the outcomes achieved by performing the right activities with the proper intensity, so that they don’t fall into the trap of easy, routine workouts that don’t foster improvement.

Key: A goals without a plan is just a dream.

Step 3: Track Performance – Execute & Measure

As your team trains during the off-season, seeing daily progress towards their goals will help keep them motivated, and daily activities won’t just seem like busy work. Taking a results-oriented approach and providing visibility of personal achievements to all players will keep the team connected and accountable, and motivated through friendly competition.

Key: Focus on outcomes and the activities that get you there.

In addition to setting and tracking goals, it’s important to keep players connected and committed. Download our whitepaper for more actionable details on each of the three steps as well as some additional tips to driving accountability, community, and motivation during the off-season.