Every new year the word ‘resolution’ is used frequently, but are all new year's resolutions actually useful?

The way in which we word things is important, especially for resolutions / goals.

In football especially, Football Coaches often encourage teams to adopt ‘performance’ goals rather than ‘outcome goals’.

What does this mean?

Rather than focusing on the outcome of a situation, it is often better to focus on the journey of how we get there. For instance, a classic resolution at new years is ‘i want to lose weight’. This is an outcome goal.

Instead, a performance goal can focus on the process of achieving this goal. We can re-phrase this to ‘I want to improve my health and fitness’. This goal puts less pressure on us, and instead focuses more on the steps to achieve our goal.

Lets take this to football. Whilst we all want to win football matches, we need to continuously develop our own game to help our teams.

Perhaps your goal might be to help Regents win a league title, which would be an outcome goal. What performance goals could you set yourself to help your team achieve this?

As a player, personally here is a few performance goals / targets I would try:

1. Practice my habits for 10 minutes every single day, to help improve my technical ability

2. Watch football on TV / at a stadium to learn how more experienced players play in my position

3. Ask my coach for monthly feedback on areas I am doing well in, and areas I can improve

By shifting our goals onto something more personal to ourselves, rather than focusing on the outcome, this can actually help us achieve a greater goal that will help the Regents age groups we play for.

So before you return to Regents this Saturday, have a think about what goals you have for the rest of the season.

Happy New Year!