Process, Performance, Outcome: Setting Cycling Goals
Goals can play a key role in helping cyclists to train effectively, providing direction, focus and motivation…
That being said, the wrong goals set at the wrong time are often counterproductive and can hinder an athlete’s ability to train well.
Luckily, there’s a goal-setting framework which we call the P.P.O method that can help.
It categorises goals into Process, Performance and Outcome goals, and can ensure the right goals are used at appropriate stages of a training program.
Let’s dive in to understand more about each classification and to see how this method works in practice…
Process goals
Acting as “behaviour” goals, process goals represent distinct tasks to perform.
They sit within your control and that make up the “process” towards the performance and outcome goals, which we’ll come onto next.
Here are examples of process goals in a cycling training context:
Ensure 3x priority sessions are completed this week
Perform newly optimised warm-up before all higher intensity sessions
Ingest pre-planned carbohydrate rich meal after each training session
Process goals also work particularly well when specifically training technical skill development, where an example may be to ride a particular feature off-road 6-8x in a workout.
The key benefits and reasons to use process goals are that they help cyclists “see the wood for the trees”...
By ensuring that an ambitious target in the future isn’t overwhelming, process goals provide the small steps that ultimately lead to the performance goals being completed, giving the athlete the best chance of success.
In our coaching, athletes have clear process goals/objectives to work towards for each microcycle (e.g. training week), and where appropriate, for individual sessions too, where this is particularly evident in race-day plans.
Process goals can be applied to different time frames, ranging from daily (e.g. process goals ascribed to a training session), to weekly, and even over the course of an entire season.
Onto the next type o’ goal…
Performance goals
Performance goals are those which outline a standard to reach that’s related to the overall outcome you want to achieve.
As an example, in a cyclist’s plan, performance goals could relate to a fitness test, where a particular work power output may be set as a goal to achieve in an effort over a certain duration, for example.
That being said, performance goals may also exist in some key training sessions, e.g. a particular amount of repetitions to be achieved (a process goal) at a particular power output (a performance goal).
Performance goals are important so that you can track your progress as you work towards a desired outcome and are used to glean what the next relevant process goals should be to reach the necessary next level of performance.
Performance goals remain in the control of the cyclist more so than outcome goals, but less so than process goals, since depending on how ambitious the performance level to be achieved is, they may be quite difficult to achieve!
It’s key to have a means of tracking performance so that when each performance goal is worked towards, you can determine your rate of progression.
This then informs what may the next appropriate steps to take to make good progress towards the next milestone.
Using appropriate testing methods (e.g. critical power testing) and keeping records of the results is one way to do this as a cyclist.
Before we move on to outcome goals, it’s worth noting that cyclists who don’t compete and are simply looking to improve their fitness for the particular type of cycling they do need not go any further with their goal setting…
These cyclists can use performance goals as a means of assessing how their fitness is improving and setting new performance and constituent process goals with each test of current fitness.
For many though, outcome goals will also feature in the goal setting process, so let’s examine ‘em.
Outcome goals
Outcome goals are your ultimate desired outcomes and in the context of training cyclists, usually the destination of a particular training cycle. A race result is a perfect illustration of an outcome goal, but non-competitive outcome goals can still exist.
Much less control over the achievement of an outcome goal is exercised by the cyclist since, for example, the achievement of a race result will be affected by factors such as other athletes’ performance, mechanical issues, weather conditions and many others.
Ultimately, the best way of improving the chances of your desired outcomes being achieved are to tick off the process goals and to hit the targets of your performance goals you’ve set along the way to assess your rate of progression.
As you can gather from the above each builds on one another to facilitate progression towards the outcome (e.g. a race result).
Enhancing your goals
As well as categorising your goals using this process, performance and outcome methodology, there are a few other means of optimising your goals so that each is optimised for you as an individual at a particular time or stage in the training program.
Where appropriate and/or necessary, frame goals using S.M.A.R.T, standing for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound.
To determine what goals you should set, performing initial and follow up SWOT analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) can be very helpful in illustrating which particular areas of your training and performance capacity (e.g. physiological strengths/weaknesses, psychological factors, sleep quality, work-life stresses etc) will be most impactful to focus on relative to your desired outcomes.
Both of these are covered in a little more depth in the following article: How to build a cycling training plan: step-by-step.
Summary
Ultimately, each athlete will have their own system and workflow when it comes to goal setting that will work best for them.
Setting these goals is not always as simple as it seems…
A lot of time and attention should be spent experimenting with how challenging goals should be, the whether a higher or lower quantity of goals is most effective for you etc. In addition, it’s always useful to remember that disengaging from goals which have become unattainable might not always mean giving up on long-term aspirations (Birrer et al. 2012), meaning how you work towards your desired outcomes should be flexible and iterative.
The benefits from spending this time considering and setting appropriate goals however is clear and the existence of goals within a cyclist’s training offer an excellent means of improving the chances that important success factors like consistency, clarity and motivation are maintained over the course of a complete macrocycle.
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References
Birrer, D., Röthlin, P., & Morgan, G. (2012). Mindfulness to enhance athletic performance: Theoretical considerations and possible impact mechanisms. Mindfulness, 3(3), 235-246.
Röthlin, P., Birrer, D., Horvath, S., & Grosse Holtforth, M. (2016). Psychological skills training and a mindfulness-based intervention to enhance functional athletic performance: design of a randomized controlled trial using ambulatory assessment. BMC psychology, 4(1), 1-11.
