Giving it attitude

Author: Ruth Malone

Author: Ruth Malone

How do you judge your performance in sport or exercise? If youre a runner, how do you know if youre becoming a better runner? If youre a member of the local football team, what are your measures of your performance as a footballer? When it comes to the way we judge our own performance we tend to fall into one of two camps, and research shows that one camp performs better than the other when it comes to achieving goals. The two types are task orientation and performance goal orientation. A task orientation is about developing new skills. An individual with a task orientation will focus on improving their own performance rather than comparing themselves to other. A task orientation has been shown to lead to higher levels of performance. A task orientated individual is more likely to persevere when things go wrong since they have a high level of control over whether their goals are achieved. They are unlikely to fear failure for the same reason. They tend to set realistic goals and measure their performance against their own improvements, rather than how they compare against others. As a result, they are unlikely to suffer from performance anxiety. On the other hand, a performance goal orientation is about performing well in comparison to others. An individual with a performance goal orientation gets their satisfaction from beating other people. From a motivation point of view, this is bad news since an individuals level of satisfaction is dependent on something out of their control (other peoples performance). As a result, someone with a performance goal orientation will set goals where they are either very likely to win, or very unlikely to win (meaning no one would expect them to). These individuals are also more likely to give up quickly, reduce the effort they put in or make excuses before they start. Research shows that people have a mixture of task and performance goal orientations. However, the majority of people will be higher on one than the other. Whilst much of this is dependent on personality, we can certainly influence it by changing the way we think when were exercising or training for a particular sport. During training sessions we should focus on improving technique and mastering new skills. When it comes to assessing our performance we need to judge ourselves against the improvements we have made, not against the person on the treadmill next to us, or the goal keeper on the opposite team. A final thought though. The highest performing sports people will be able to take on each orientation as appropriate. Whilst they train for competition they work with a task orientation, mastering skills and developing technique. And then in competition they can call on their performance goal orientation and focus on beating the competition at all costs. They are great at calling on the right side of their personality at the right time. Have a think about how youve been judging your own performance. If you find yourself leaning towards a performance goal orientation, consider how this is impacting on your motivation. Do you find you lose motivation quickly if you see other people progress when you plateau? Think about how you can change your mind set to focus more on improving technique. This will increase your satisfaction, increase your motivation and ultimately let you achieve more.About the Author:

Ruth Malone is a fully qualified personal trainer with achieve more. As well as training clients in one-to-one session she also offers health and fitness resources. http://www.achievemore.me.uk/fitness-resources/

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