Are you ready for the upcoming lacrosse season to start? We’re sure you miss playing with your team like everyone else, but it also helps to be prepared on an individual basis so you can enjoy all the other aspects of the game.
No player or competitor goes into a game or season without any goals set. Sure, the main goal is to beat the opponent or start gelling as a team, but what are some of the things you’d like to accomplish at the end of the day or year? How should you go about setting these goals?
Here are three types of goals you should be considering to set for yourself this season.
Short-Term Goals
You should be entering each day – whether it’s a practice or a game – with some specific goals in mind. They shouldn’t be focused on accumulating statistics, either. We want to be focusing on the process here, because if you do that, the statistics will eventually take care of themselves.
Also make sure that these goals you set for yourself are specific and measurable which focus on both your strengths and weaknesses. Working on your weaknesses in anything isn’t exactly a fun exercise, but if you attack them each day with abandon, you’ll soon be able to move them over to your strengths.
At the end of each day, be sure to make time so you can properly assess yourself and your performance on attaining these goals. That self-assessment will help you create and strive for the next set of short-term goals.
Long-Term Goals
What exactly would you like to accomplish by the end of the season? For this kind of goal, it’s important to start broad with whatever it is in order to work backwards and find more specific actions that must be taken to attain it.
Long-term and short-term goals are obviously intertwined, but thinking about them as separate things at first is helpful. Think of whatever your long game is first because it’ll ultimately help attain the short-term goals and aid in your daily preparation.
Effort-Based Goals
There are many variables and outside elements that can impact your lacrosse play, so making a set of goals that can be achieved no matter what happens outside of you is also a worthwhile practice. Whether it’s always sprinting as hard as you can or committing to not dwelling on past mistakes, there are little goals you can set and achieve in a matter of seconds that will also help you accomplish the bigger types that we just talked about.
However, it’s important to remember that it may not always be smooth sailing en route to these goals. They can be flexible, fluid and specific to whatever happens during the course of a season, which can change at the drop of a hat.
If you’re interested in learning more about our GameBreaker Lacrosse Camps this summer, click here to find a camp near you and be on your way to becoming a better lacrosse player!