The frequency of goal setting techniques

The strategy that the practitioners perceived to use the most was goal setting (mean 4.21/5 ± 0.58). This was consistent with the existing research showing short-term goals are amongst the most commonly utilised psychological skills in physiotherapy (Hemmings & Povey, 2002; Arvinen-Barrow et al., 2007; Arvinen-Barrow et al., 2010) and in athletic training (Wiese et al., 1991). The use of goal setting has previously demonstrated that practitioners from alternative disciplines value realistic goal setting as a skill that is important to understand (Wiese et al., 1991).

Goal setting is regarded as one of the key aspects of training, impacting a person‘s motivation (Thomas et al., 1999). Furthermore, and specific to the

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present research, goal setting has proved critical to facilitating adherence to conditioning programmes (Scherzer et al., 2001). Unsurprisingly, academics have attributed strategies incorporating goal setting to account for the variation between successful and unsuccessful athletes (Orlick & Partington, 1988; Durand-Bush & Salmela, 2002).

The perceived high use of goal setting is most likely due to the nature of strength and conditioning practice, thus it is a generic psychological skill which crosses disciplines and may be viewed a pre-requisite skill. Strength and conditioning practice requires the use of established targets and physiological benchmarks from which to determine the effectiveness of a training intervention (Ebben & Blackard, 2001). The comparison with benchmarks is readily available and applicable to training environment with interventions providing tangible results such as variations in mass lifted or running velocity providing data accessible to practitioners. The use of simplistic goal setting in which comparisons between current level to those of a pre-determined benchmark indicative of an athlete‘s standard are likely to be prevalent within strength and conditioning practice.

It is documented that strength and conditioning coaches practicing in North America benchmark athletes on average two times a year (Ebben & Blackard, 2001). The instances of goal setting in the present study indicate that goal setting strategies are used between most of the time and all of the time. The present findings would suggest that over a decade later strength conditioners are

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increasingly employing physical benchmarking or that there is the informal administration of goals in addition to the formal benchmarking.

Drawing comparisons between the current findings and previous findings would suggest that goal setting is a fundamental component of strength and conditioning although it is potentially used informally. It is likely that the strength and conditioning practitioners in the present study use a combination of long term goals measured periodically as part of periodised training programmes (Ebben & Blackard, 2001) and the informal use of goal setting within sessions, forming training instruction as a motivational aid. However the exact mechanics are unable to be derived from the present findings and require further in depth exploration to ascertain the mechanics and rationale of the goal setting.

It is probable that the use of simple goals used for the evaluation of training programmes (Ebben & Blackard, 2001) provides the foundation from which goal setting strategies may be shaped through experience, with coaches developing more complex and tailored goal setting strategies as they gain a greater understanding. Indeed it was apparent in the present study that as experience increased, the frequency of goal setting strategies increased, albeit not to a statistically significant level. This finding mirrors observations witnessed in other disciplines for example within sports coaching (Sullivan & Hodge, 1991) and physiotherapy (Jevon & Johnston, 2003) that understanding of psychological interventions are developed through experience rather than formal training.

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It is also probable that the increased use of goal setting is dependent upon the strength and conditioning specialists‘ perception of the previous success using the strategy. Sullivan and Hodge (1991) have previously identified goal setting as a strategy sports coaches in New Zealand have most success utilising. Furthermore due to the reported lack of time to use psychological strategies (Creasy et al., 2009), it is likely that coaches will focus their use of psychological strategies on those perceived as most beneficial to the neglect of other psychological skill sets.

The efficacy of using a particular strategy appears to be critical in predicting a coach‘s intent to incorporate such a technique. This is reflected in existing research that the use of psychological strategies is largely shaped through experience. The experience of working with clients has been identified as a key information source which provides the strength and conditioning practitioner with the required skills (Tod et al., 2012). Furthermore it has also previously been suggested that the increased experience is manifested in an increased sense of confidence using particular techniques (Tod et al., 2012). This would suggest that the development of strength and conditioning professionals, in particular regarding the use of psychological skills and strategies, are grounded in the incidents they experience. That is, the integration of psychological skills is related to a cyclical relationship, thus, success elicits confidence and accordingly shapes intentions to repeat or even develop strategy use within applied work.

Notwithstanding that efficacy controls a significant function in the utilisation of psychological skills, research has identified that strength coaches do

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not perceive personal experiences as the most important source of knowledge (Durell et al., 2003). This is evident with only eight percent of North American collegiate strength and conditioning coaches identifying personal experience as the most important information source, the most frequently stated information source was other coaches (Durell et al., 2003). It is therefore possible that, whilst other coaches are the most valued source of information (Durell et al., 2003) and the integration of a coach mentoring scheme as a development aid has previously been suggested (Tod et al., 2012), the greatest predictor of intentions to use psychological strategies is previous experience. This supports previous qualitative research in which the strength and conditioning practitioners stated that prior experience, before becoming a strength and conditioning specialist, shaped their current behaviour (Tod et al., 2012).