Setting Up Your New Year of Performance
As we end the year, you want to set yourself up for a new year of performance. Whether an athlete or otherwise, it’s beneficial to establish a smart system that helps you plan and execute. Please don’t just throw out a bunch of goals and charge into the new year with a commitment to hard work. We can guarantee you will find greater success by putting some reflection and strategy behind that work.
Today, we will outline the planning model we utilize for Purple Patch athletes, provide a detailed breakdown of that model, and explain how you can use this model for your performance plan. The model will enable you to carry a sense of purpose into the coming year and set you up with the best results within the context of your life.
Onward:
The Purple Patch Training Model
While managing and coaching the Purple Patch Pro Squad, I always maintained a mindset based on a model of performance, which I found helpful for planning a season and executing that plan. At the end of each season, we leveraged this plan again to set up the following season, then cycled through the model as many times as needed to ensure consistent course correction and keep athletes on the track. This planning model is a simple model that can benefit you too when considering your performance.
Below is a graphic representing the process:
There are four stages to the model:
North Star Mission: This is where you create realistic goals for your upcoming year
Path to Success: Outlining the details of how you’re going to reach those goals
Potential to Performance: Actually doing the work, this is where all the coaching happens
Inspire to Growth: Where perspective and review occur, realigning with the mission and going again
Developing an appreciation of the phases of the model will allow you to understand better where you are on the journey. The process helps raise the mindset from being reactionary and short-term to long-term and considered. A bad race is occasionally inevitable, but identifying it as a part of the process within a performance model helps dilute the personal sense of failure or decline.
For this model to be effective, it is essential to truly understand each phase and how they flow into each other in ongoing cycles of performance gains.
A Breakdown
At a high level, this is an annual exercise. Still, the truth is that successful coaches and athletes will cycle through this model many times throughout a season, perhaps, without officially recognizing it. What you see is the coaching process in action, outlined as a model.
Let’s break each section down for context:
Mission:
Having a clear sense of mission keeps you from drastically straying off course and allows you to effectively course-correct when things go wrong. You have undoubtedly read that the best organizations and athletes have a clear sense of purpose. This is the part of the model in which an athlete or team identifies and commits to this purpose. In practice, this includes:
An appreciation for - “Why are you doing what you are doing?”
Setting the goals and parameters for your definition of success
Establishing targets, such as event choices, personal goals, or quarterly business metrics
Path:
After establishing a clear sense of what constitutes success, you are equipped to detail the way toward these goals. This is an important step, as it is about establishing focus and role. Whether athlete or employee, there are so many things that we could focus on, but we must filter for the actionable elements that should be in focus. Coach and athlete need to be aligned on the focus, and honing in on the critical steps to execute the plan provides a high level of accountability. In this phase, you create a personal ‘contract’ around your attitude and actions - to yourself, your team, your leader, or your coach. For regular readers, this is the part of the process in which we encourage you to ‘nail the basics.’ Master the most critical elements for your success, which will bring you close to perfect.
Potential to Performance:
This is the doing part where leaders and coaches earn their bacon. It is the execution of the plan and the athlete nailing with focus and intention. A fruitful execution can only occur by giving the initial two steps of the process time and energy. The path to success will include adversity and setbacks. Any plan will typically look a little rugged when put into action, as illustrated by the below graphic:
Every athlete or team will have setbacks and must deal with adversity. Conducting clear planning and ensuring the athlete has a firm sense of focus and role equips the coach and athlete to course correct and get back on track with the plan.
Growth and Reflection:
At the end of a phase or season, it’s essential to come up for air and pause and reflect to obtain some perspective. During this phase, you reflect on the progression of the prior year, assess what went well and didn’t go well, then re-engage with the mission. Are there new goals? What are the event plans? Do the mission and purpose still make sense? As you execute the plan for next year, you may need to pause every few weeks and go through a course-correction exercise, but the overarching plan creation should occur annually.
Keeping this system in mind as you approach an upcoming season can benefit you. It isn’t a case of tracking daily, but, equally, it isn’t something on which you spend some time plotting pretty spreadsheets and never revisit. It requires ongoing work. Whether new to the endeavor or returning for your tenth year, it is essential to plan your path.
Planning Your New Year
The thrust of this piece is planning your upcoming year. By definition, you are in part one of the model. If we peek over the garden fences of many coaches and athletes, this phase is the most often rushed, then left to gather dust or skipped altogether. Let me establish something important:
You cannot be successful in the long term without spending time in the first phase of this model.
I have seen highly gifted, but only relatively successful, professional athletes go through a whole career without honestly answering their question of why. Why are they doing what they are doing? This is disabling and limiting. They are motivated and work hard, but any adversity or setback proves explosive. They feel like failures, as they have no context or internal mission. When you plan your pathway for the next season or year, I encourage you to go through this process:
Define Your Purpose:
Even as a business, we have spent a lot of time considering our purpose with Purple Patch. It boils down to empowering and educating athletes and fitness enthusiasts. We are a coaching company but will always seek to educate and empower through every program. Athletes and motivated performance enthusiasts are best positioned when they have a clear sense of purpose. A purpose can be personal and does not need to be heroic. With this said, an authentic appreciation of why you are doing what you are doing is valuable. Spend some time connecting with yourself and your team and define your why.
Set Goals:
How can you measure progress toward achieving the purpose? It is a great time to lay out some BHAGs - that’s Big Hairy Audacious Goals. ?
Why play it safe? Within the context of life, I encourage you to chalk up some aspirational and exciting goals and events. Perhaps, this is a transformational year? Or, maybe, you hope to finish your first marathon or IRONMAN? There should be a healthy tension between aspiration and reality as you do this. I encourage athletes to first consider their lot in life, with all the non-negotiable commitments you have and everything you want or need to accomplish. When choosing goals, it is vital that they fit into life and not despite it.
The clearest example of this is a strong age group athlete who finds themself qualifying for the chance to race in the professional category. It sounds exciting, fun, and almost all your well-meaning friends will encourage it. BUT, there is a big but. What sounds terrific is typically a route to disaster, and that young athlete should think long and hard about ‘turning pro.’
Success as a professional athlete requires repositioning everything. As an amateur athlete, sport fits into life. As a professional athlete, sport must take center stage.
The rest of life's commitments and demands come after training, recovery, nutrition, and self-care. It requires tremendous sacrifice. It is often not possible, and, even if it is, folks quickly realize that life as a professional athlete is not glamorous. What happens for the vast majority of athletes that decide to take the step is a massive shift in their relationship with the sport. They train hard and have a pro card. Cool! The initial races come, and the experience is harrowing. The athlete goes from being competitive to an afterthought in every race, seldom competing anywhere near the top. Instead of racing head to head for podiums, they are alone in a battle to not get pushed off the road by the tumbleweed. Most high-end amateurs who transition to the pro ranks before being genuinely ready, end up leaving the sport entirely within a year or two. A bitter taste in the mouth. This example is extreme, but I use it to illustrate the importance of goal setting in line with your busy life and commitments.
With these goals established, you can get to the nitty-gritty of planning your season.
Set the Path:
What’s your focus? There are likely 20 things that could command your attention, but we urge you to filter it down to 3-5 components at most. This road-mapping part of the process will serve as the groundwork for the remainder of the season. This stage is best executed under the support of an expert or coach who can take your lofty goals and set up a strategic plan. Aspects to focus on include:
Your strengths
The weaknesses you need to develop
Important supporting habits that would improve your performance
With these established, you are off to the races.
This blog highlights how we go about planning. The strategy is the same, whether a team, individual athlete, or business. The structure works. You work the plan, navigate the obstacles, course-correct if necessary. Then, reflect and hit the journey again. What do we say? Embrace the journey. Well, that’s a great mantra, even if I say so myself. But first, ensure you are on the right journey.
It is time to get planning. We want you to have a great year.
Cheers,
Matt Dixon