Happy New Week!
This is a program that we have begun in class recently. The idea for this exercise materialized when I was writing a recent football newsletter about New Year's Resolutions. Part of what I wrote was:
Every January across the USA millions of people make New Year Resolutions about things they are going to do in the coming year. New Year Resolutions are good. They generally are about making improvements in lives or life style. They are a form of planning or goal setting.
As we all know, most New Year Resolutions are not kept. Why is that? Resolution usually center on what people wish or hope would happen, but that's not enough. People need a plan to make resolutions happen. They must take action, massive action, to make them happen; and they must be committed to making them happen.
What are your goals for 1998? How well are you hoping to perform in the athletic contests of the future? What are you willing to commit to do to "make it happen?"
While helping some players in the weight room recently, I overheard one say to the other, "We need to set some goals."
Setting goals is one of the first steps to improvement. Goals provide focus and direction. Goals are the single most important force in Human motivation.
Everyone must decide what they want. What they want for themselves; what they want for their team.
Right now about half of the football team is lifting regularly at school. These athletes are committed to raising their performance to higher levels. Of course, if they raise their own personal performances, the overall performance of the team will increase as well.
No one wants to perform poorly on game night. Excellent performances are a function of preparation. The more prepared you are, the better you will be able to perform.
With that in mind there are a number of key items to keep in mind as we move into 1998. The weight room is open and available every school day morning at 6:06 AM and every afternoon after school till everyone's workout ends. The weight lifting program is open to all athletes. Right now we have students from the 8th -12th grades lifting regularly. Del Hessel in his book The Spirit of Champions, states that you can assure yourself of a good performance before it begins by developing proper habits like training hard, proper nutrition, getting plenty of rest, etc. Making the weight room a habit every day helps each of us and our team to a better performance next fall.
As we went through classes and began our goal setting unit, it became clear to me that we should visit our Resolutions more than just once a year if we are ever going to keep them. What we did is adapt a page of PLU's team goal chart for the front side and also adapted Zig Ziglar's weekly goal planner for the backside of the form.
The front:
The main focus on the front of the form centers on "My Big Cream" and the "Weekly Resolutions." The Big Dream refers to what the person's big dream in each of these areas is all about. We conduct a number of exercises from Garfield's book, Peak Performance, which further define what the person's Big Dream is. Remembering that we must have long term goals to overcome short term obstacles, the Big Dream is the spot for the long term goal. These goals should be 1-5 years or more out there in the future. The space provided allows for "trigger" words to be written. These words will trigger a visualization of the successful realization of the Big Dream that the student has developed through the Peak Performance exercises. We have learned that words account for only 10% of the power of motivation and that the other 90% is comprised of images and accompanying emotions triggered by those images. The Weekly Resolutions space is for the student to decide what they are going to do the next week to take them closer to realization of the Big Dream. The idea is that if we can successfully string enough successful weeks together, the Big Dream can be realized.
The Backside:
The week at a glance side of the form provides space for 5 goals to be briefly stated at the top of the form. Of course, two sheets would allow space for another 5 goals. The days of the week boxes can be used three different ways: (1) the student may record at the end of the day those activities completed each day that are steps to completion of the goal; (2) the boxes can be used as a planner for the week's activities that the student plans to accomplish; (3) the boxes might be split; on the left side of the box the student could record his plans for the week, and on the right side of the box he could record what was actually accomplished. For example, Goal #1 might be: Increasing my weightroom maxes enables me to be a superior athlete and gives me confidence in all that I attempt. If this is a max week in the weightroom, he might plan to increase his maxes in the following manner: Monday-Bench: 225; Tue-Squat:375; Wed-Clean 210; Thur-Incline: 200; Fri-Deadlift: 380. These plans would be recorded on the left hand side of each box. After each day in the weightroom what actually was lifted would be recorded on the right hand side of the box.
The students have really bought into the idea of Happy New Week and the process of setting weekly goals based on their Big Dreams. When we have passed out the form, the students set about immediately to complete their forms.
This form will eventually be added to the packet of forms that you can order from the order page. For those of you who have already ordered and would like to have this new form, send a stamped self-addressed envelope to Roger Freeborn, 38660 S.D. Delph Ridge Rd., Estacada OR 97023 and I will get one right out to you.
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