Skills and Goal Setting

Goals, Targets and Preparation for Sport

In this course, Dr Irfan Khawaja (Birmingham City University) explores mental preparation for exercise. In the first lecture, we think about what a skill is and how it links to goal setting. In the second lecture, we think about setting goals and targets. Next, we think about the basic information processing model. In the fourth and final lecture, we think about mental preparation for exercise, arousal and athlete personality. Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash.

Skills and Goal Setting

In this lecture, we think about skills and goal setting, focusing in particular on: (i) defining a skill as a learned ability to bring about a result with certainty and the minimal outlay of time and effort; (ii) understanding ability to be something that isn’t learned and which can be genetically determined; (iii) the enduring nature of ability; (iv) key types of ability, including psychomotor, perceptual and gross motor; (iv) classifying skills into their muscular involvement, environmental influencer, continuity, pacing, difficulty and organisation; (v) three phases of learning being cognitive, associative and autonomous, with only the highest performing athletes reaching the latter; (vi) three key types of goals being product/outcome, performance and process.