Clean Run Magazine -May 2010 - 42

Building Your Plan:

Developing Performance Goals, Part 2
By Steve Croxford, charts by author/PACE-Agility

In my previous article I discussed the training cycle, a method of breaking down the agility year in a structured way. Carefully planning your agility year is an important tool for enhancing performance and achieving your goals. This month I’ll share how I develop a plan for the competition season.

Turning Your Ambitions and Ideas into a Plan
Our next step is to work out what you are trying to achieve and then turn that into something we can work with. Figure 1 is an example of the type of plan I use. This is based on a real plan I have used in the past; I have just changed the details to make it more universal. The top section divides the year into the phases previously described and then breaks it down further into months and weeks of the year. Figure 2 shows an example of how this can be further broken down into a weekly training program, but many readers may not be professional agility handlers so this might be a step too far for some. However, I have planned to this level of detail when constructing a training program for clients preparing for a major event. The training phases are further broken down and under the heading “Competition.” We list all the events/trials that you are going to attend throughout the year, including any finals that you intend to qualify for. This is a very important point. I had a client several years ago who told me one of her goals was to qualify for a particular final. When discussing how realistic she thought this goal was it turned out she didn’t actually know what the qualifying criteria for the final were, or which trials held qualifying heats. Underneath Competition we have lines for

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Key Events: For example, these would be the qualifying heats mentioned in the previous paragraph. Special: These are key events in the calendar that may require a separate focus for training, say a final, national final, or qualification for the World Team (may require a different type of training) Testing: Where we make sure that everything is on track and going as planned

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Before I explain “Process” we need to explore “Outcome Goals” in a little more detail. Goal Setting................................................................................. Having clear goals is the key to understanding what you are doing and why you are doing it. We can’t deal with “how” until “what” has clearly been sorted out. This is where the coach needs to understand what’s on the client’s shopping list of ambitions. I was once on a sales negotiation seminar when we were told in a training simulation to keep repeating the mantra “and is there anything else” over and over again until the full list of demands was out on the table and before starting any negotiations. I have found this a pretty good ploy with clients, since everything has to be out in the open before a detailed and effective performance improvement plan can be put together.

Every part of the agility year is equally important and requires some thought and planning if a continuing improvement in performance is to be achieved from year to year.

Clean Run | May 10

Clean Run Magazine -May 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run Magazine -May 2010