New Year, Renewed Goals: Coaching Athletes to Win on the Field and in Life

As we enter the new year, we tend to set personal goals, like lose weight or save money, and we map out a plan of how we’ll achieve those goals – go to the gym more often, direct deposit $100 a week into your savings account. As a coach, we should also treat this new year as an opportunity to review our team performance and reset new goals. We all want our teams to be the best they can be both as athletes and in life, but what goals do we set? And how do we drive the motivation and prescribe specific activities to achieve them? We know that it’s important to provide individuals with ongoing training and development plans, and it’s especially essential to motivate and inspire confident, tough-minded, fearless competitors who strive for excellence. With the minimal face-time you get with your athletes, how can you achieve all this plus build trust and motivation within your team? The key is start small – focus on what players can do each day to become better athletes and better people. Instilling Positive Habits B.J. Fogg, a Stanford University researcher and author of the book “Tiny Habits,” notes that big behavior changes require a high level of motivation that often can’t be sustained. He suggests starting with tiny habits to make the new habit as easy as possible in the beginning. We all know that habits take a long time to create – I’ve heard 21 days, or 30, or 60. No matter the number of days or weeks, the lesson is that habits solidify faster when we perform them more often. So assigning personalized daily activities for each of your athletes will make it easier to instill these activities as habits. With Performulus, coaches can prescribe daily health & wellness, strength & conditioning, and skills and position work, but also activities geared towards building successful team cultures and character such as work habits, confidence, leadership, and trust “These are the habits that make you a great teammate. You’re on top of your physical development, you’re on top of your mental development, you’re on top of you emotional and relational development.” – Brant McAdams, Head Football Coach, Pacific Lutheran University Staying Motivated & Connected Goal setting is easy, goal pursuit is hard – that’s why so many people join the gym in January and have disappeared by mid-February. Our athletes likely need a little nudge in the motivation department every so often as well. With the Performulus platform, teams can stay connected and see who is achieving their daily/weekly/monthly goals, spurring accountability and motivation through friendly competition. And with a built in team chat feature, players and coaches can cheer each other on even when they’re not at practice. “For a busy guy like me, Performulus puts it all in one place where I can check on my players and give them a really clear plan.” – Jim Shapiro, Head Football Coach, King’s High School By spending a little time every day checking off boxes in an easy-to-use app, Performulus teams are staying fit, accountable, and motivated, and are reaching dramatic new levels of success. But don’t just take our word for it, watch this video to hear it from the coaches using Performulus with their teams.