Post-Competition Review

Goal setting can be very useful, but unless you monitor you progress against those goals it’s usefulness is limited.

For example if you go for a long time in training without any feedback it can be quite demotivating because you have no real sense of where you stand in relation to your ultimate goal. Post-competition reviews, however, provide an opportunity for you to feed back to yourself, with the help of a coach or team-mate, on how you performed against your goals.

Reviewing will also help you to:
- build confidence, by giving yourself credit for the things you did well
- find ways to adjust training and preparation to improve your performance
- make decisions based on evidence rather than emotion.

When I was cutting my teeth I worked a lot with talented swimmers (teenagers) and between training, competition and school there was very little time for contact. What I did was (starting with review) implement a regular cycle of planning and reviewing competition. I was amazed at what a great vehicle it was for the swimmers development. They became much more knowledgeable, 'professional' swimmers as a result.

When to review your performance

It is advised that you always leave time between your peformance and it’s review – literally sleeping on it will ensure that your response it not driven by your emotions. If you review too soon you may overlook points for improvement (after a successful race) or over-emphasise the negative (after a disappointing race).

Select the Highlights

One of the important functions of a competition review is to get into the habit of giving yourself credit for the things that you did well and thinking positively about your performances.

I would not suggest that you delude yourself into thinking that you did brilliantly when you know that you did not, but often we are better at criticising ourselves than we are at giving ourselves praise.

Our real-life experiences of successful performance are our most potent resource for building confidence so, if you can honestly pick out the highlights from your performance on a regular basis, it will have a tremendous impact on your confidence

Try answering some of the following questions?
1) What was the one thing that you did best at the competition under review?
2) When did you overcome a potentially unhelpful or negative influence on your performance?

Review and goals

The role of goals in performance is important. If you combine process and performance goals - making the outcome only one of many equally important goals - you are less likely to make a rash, inaccurate appraisal of performance.

Imagine you come off the field of play after yet another defeat. If you look at the score, there is no other way of reading this result except as a confirmation of your team’s failure to perform. You might, however, have set goals for effort, successful passes, opportunities to score, communication, successful tackles, tactical positioning, or any other number of performance indicators. At the end of the match, you may have lost because of one slip-up, a piece of individual ‘magic’, or bad luck.

If you set measurable goals beforehand, such a result does not have to beat down your confidence. Instead you can take heart that you are on the right track and, if you keep playing that way then the results will come.

On the other had, measuring your performance using goals helps you to avoid falling into the trap of creating a fantasy, that you deserved to win when really you didn’t, It also provides clear learning points.

Finally, ensure that you refine your goals or set new ones to enable you to put your learning points into place (in training and competition), then put any negative thoughts behind you. It is important to learn from mistakes, but dwelling on them takes valuable time and energy away from the task at hand.

Reviewing your physical preparation

Review is also a chance for you to assess and refine your competition preparation and planning.

Try asking yourself these questions, in relation to your physical preparation (e.g. fitness, rest, warm ups, food and fluid intake).

1) How well prepared was I for this competition? Were you able to approach the competition knowing that you could not have been in better shape, or did you have doubts about your physical readiness to perform?

2) Overall, how did my race performance compare to my recent training performance? If you train better than you perform, often it is a sign of competition anxiety. Bear in mind what stage of the season you are in – are you supposed to be training hard and using competition as practice, or do you expect to be at your peak?

3) Did I stick to my plan? If your plan is new, it can take a while to get used to following it. You will only know if your plan worked well if you stick to it. If you try out and refine your plan early in the season you will be able to trust it when you need it most.

4) What worked particularly well? In other words, which parts of your plan really worked? What helped you to feel more ready or confident to perform?

5) What would I do differently next time? Did anything you did in preparation hinder your performance?

6) What can I do, starting now, to change? Make sure that you do not tinker on the day of an important competition. Ensure that you try out new things in training and, if possible, in a less important competition.

It is worth getting the viewpoints of others to validate your own assessments to these questions as sometimes we can be either too hard or too soft on ourselves.

Reviewing your mental preparation

Your mental preparation is another important factor in performance, and it will affect things such as your motivation, confidence and emotional state (e.g. anxious versus excited.

How well did your mental preparation go for this competition?

You can ask yourself most of the same questions as for physical preparation but also:

1) Did I build any mental preparation into your plan? If you can look ahead at what you might need to cope with, it can be of enormous help on the day.

2) What did I do to handle any unexpected or new emotions leading up to the race? If you found yourself in a new situation, you might not have known what to do, but at least you can learn from it. If you did handle the situation, you can take that into future planning and preparation.

Summary

Performance starts well before the kick off, tip-off, tee-off or starting gun. When reviewing your performance, ensure that you take into account the effectiveness of your competition preparation. Ensure that you have an objective, measurable way of assessing your performance, and goals will help you with this. Turn any potential negatives into learning points and put these into practice at the first available opportunity. Remember, though, to give yourself credit for a job well done. Finally, ensure that you review your performance in the ‘cold light of day’.

Remember it is not defeat that matters it is how you react to defeat that really counts. A post performance review will help you to respond in the best way possible.