It’s a new year! We’d all like to leave 2021 in the rear-view, right? It’s a chance for a blank slate to think about what you’d like to improve on and achieve personally and professionally in 2022. For our students, it would be GK specific and what things do they want to improve on throughout 2022 and at this time next year, being able to see whether they reached them.
There is a big difference in just thinking about what you’d like to achieve or would be nice to be better at. Actually, putting pen to paper and writing them down adds an element of validity and accountability to these goals. Creating them is only one step, then next step is keeping them front and center, like taping them to a mirror or putting them on your desk to be seen daily will help with short term motivation. Taking the time to create and write them down only to put them in a drawer to never be seen again isn’t helpful.
What if you’ve never set goals before and don’t have the slightest idea on where to begin? To start, all goals, whether personal or professional, should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Bound. So let’s talk about these and use an example for a developing youth goalkeeper.
First, SPECIFIC – Don’t make grandiose goals that are unattainable or unrealistic. Setting goals you’ll never reach is disheartening. In our example, a youth keeper could set a specific goal of no giveaways on distributing out of the back to outside backs in the run of play. MEASURABLE – whatever the goal is it needs to be quantifiable. In our example the GK could ask a parent to count the number of passes made from the back vs the number connected. ATTAINABLE – yes RELEVANT – yes TIME BOUND – yes, goal was set for a described time frame of during the run of play in a match.
There are so many aspects of GK play that can be broken down into specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound increments. From handling to distribution, developing GK’s can set several goals they can focus on each season.
The goalkeeper training Just 4 Keepers of NoVA provides through private, semi-private, or group sessions can help goalkeepers reach these goals. Call us to see how we can help!