Setting SMART Goals

by Adam O'Camb

Ever wished for a completely fresh start—just a big do-over on life? Well I can’t help you with that. Life’s hard.

Unlike life, cycling does give us a relatively clean slate every year upon which we can build a new and better season. But how do we build a firm foundation for the next season? How do we avoid past mistakes? It’s not easy, but I brought some tools that might help. Ready to dig in? Let’s explore how you can analyze your past performances, set impactful goals, and turn yesterday’s setbacks into tomorrow’s triumphs.

PYRAMID ANAYLSIS

We’ll start with last season’s setbacks. Sometimes I like to take a structured approach using a tool from the e-sports world. The coaches at Broken by Concept use a pyramid analysis method to review their games, and I think it transfers well to the cycling world.

Here’s how it works:

• Pick an event ripe for a deep-dive. For example, a race where things didn’t go as planned.
• Think through your race and categorise any mistakes into one of four stages:

1. 1. Stage 1 makes the base of the pyramid and are the most important issues to address immediately. These are broad lifestyle issues that keep you from trying your best like sleep, nutrition, or emotional health.
   2. Stage 2 covers big-picture racing concepts. This includes knowing your strengths and how to ride to them, planning and executing training that’s relevant to your top races or limiters, and good pre-race strategic planning.
   3. Stage 3 is for mid-race decision making—sometimes called racecraft. Did you miss an important break? Mistime a sprint or attack? These are all stage 3 issues.
   4. Most people like to focus on Stage 4—race day execution. Technical riding skills, on-the-bike nutrition, and mechanical issues are all included here and can be the most frustrating, but also can be the easiest to fix.

• Work your way through the race, digging into and categorising any shortcomings. If you identify anything under stage 1, make plans to fix that right away. Anything in stage 1 should be your primary focus. If the base of your pyramid isn’t in order, you will not be able to make any other corrections. If stage 1 is clear, continue categorising anything else that comes up.

This method leaves you with a list of mistakes. That may be discouraging, but it’s also your primary tool to plan the next season. Start with issues lowest on the pyramid and work your way up, writing goals that fix problems. Select 1-3 goals first address the biggest stage 1 and 2 issues. After solidifying the base of the pyramid, you can begin addressing problems in other stages.

For example, let’s pretend that last year you struggled to get enough sleep (stage 1), and you got dropped on a descent in a race (stage 4). You understand what you need to be doing in races (stage 2) and your mid-race decision-making is solid (stage 3). You could make plans to improve sleep, and to practice descending once a week.

SMART GOALS

Now we have some potentially vague plans for improvement, just like everyone else on January 1st. Let’s make those specific, actionable goals—SMART goals. Making a goal SMART means making it: 

• Specific
• Measurable
• Actionable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Take a goal from above as an example: “improve sleep” is not specific. “Sleep eight hours the night before rides” is better. That’s also measurable and actionable. We already know it’s relevant because of our pyramid analysis. To make it time-bound, we might rephrase it as “in the next three months, sleep eight hours the night before 80% of my rides”.

Most of your goals should orient more toward processes than outcomes. It’s good to have performance goals, but those should function more as guide rails for your process. If your big season goal is to win a specific hilly race (outcome), a process goal could be to do repeats of a hill that mimics the course once a week during the months leading up to the race (process). Process goals are the actionable steps that make outcomes possible.

Examples

Conclusion

Cycling offers the unique opportunity to hit the reset button each season and make significant changes—for better or worse. Using tools like these can help make sure those changes are intentional and positive. Embrace the process this season. Make SMART goals, trust your hard work, and have fun!