Goal setting
Whenever you have ambition goal setting is crucial order to optimise your performance. Whether you’re an ambitious cyclist or an entrepreneur, to get better, you need to set goals.
The problem I see in my practice as a mindset coach for cyclists, is that a lot of riders underestimate the impact it has on their performance if they can truly master the art of goal setting. Because goal setting is one of the most important mental skills out there to make it as an ambitious rider.
What I try to teach these cyclists is that mastering the mental skill of goal setting will change the way you view the world, will change the way you see your development and your career. It will quite literally shift your mindset and unlock your potential.
A mental skill: master the art of goal setting
The biggest reason cyclists underestimate the power and impact of goal setting as a mental skill is because it sounds incredibly easy to do. But that’s where the trap of proper goal setting lies. Anyone can set goals right?
Proper goal setting becomes a weapon in improving your performance on the bike the moment you start using it to improve focus and motivation. The goals you set make you aware of your behaviour and help you change your behaviour wherever necessary. This could be on the bike when you’re out training, during races or off the bike when you are recovering.
This raised awareness, improved focus and motivation to complete something challenging will give your performance a boost and will help you feel more satisfied after races and training rides.
It takes a lot of practice, determination and commitment to master the art of goal setting, but it will be worth it’s weight in gold if you invest time into this! Not only will your performance get a boost, your confidence, self worth and feeling of competence will increase tremendously.
Different time periods, different types of goals
Vision
Dream goals define a long-term endpoint—an ultimate vision of what you could and would like to achieve as a cyclist. When setting these goals, the key question to ask yourself is: what is the absolute maximum I believe I can get out of myself, both physically and mentally, if everything comes together?
Dream goals are best placed far into the future, typically five to ten years ahead. This long time horizon removes unnecessary pressure from your daily training and racing, and creates space for development, setbacks, and learning. Whether it is reaching a certain competitive level, riding for a specific team, or fully realizing your potential as a rider, dream goals serve as a guiding compass. They give meaning to the hard work you put in now, without demanding immediate results.
Dream goals do not have to be realistic in the short term, but they should be goals you are fully committed to pursuing. They represent the dot on the horizon—the bigger picture that keeps you moving forward when training gets tough or races do not go as planned. In difficult moments, dream goals are especially powerful because they give meaning to discomfort and sacrifice.
Visualizing your dream goal can help you push through hard intervals, long climbs, and periods of doubt, reminding you why you started and what you are ultimately working toward as a cyclist.
To be honest, these are the easiest goals to set. If you start dreaming about your future as a cyclist you are already halfway. This is not where the challenges lie when it comes to goal setting.
Results oriented goals or outcome goals
We have translated our dream into a clear long-term vision; now it is time to zoom in. If, for example, your dream is to reach your full potential as a cyclist or ride at a certain level within five years, it helps to define what result you want to achieve this season to make sure you stay on track. These are your outcome or result goals—they give direction and help you evaluate whether your development is broadly aligned with your long-term ambition.
This can be an outcome of a certain race, but preferably a period of races where you want to excel or be at your peak. The reason you want to use a period in the season instead of just one race is it will create a lot of unnecessary pressure when going into a single race and this race will make or break your season.
In some cases this can not be avoided, for example during the nationals, euros or worlds. But try to reduce this pressure when it is not needed.
Improvement goals
The power of improvement goals lies in their focus on your personal learning curve as a cyclist. It is very easy to get caught up in comparing yourself to other riders—on Strava, in training groups, or in races. However, constant comparison serves no real purpose and often leads to unnecessary pressure, reduced confidence, and a distorted self-image.
Improvement goals are set by defining two or more measurement moments and tracking your progress between them. Instead of comparing yourself to others, you compare your current self to a previous version of yourself—or to the rider you are working toward becoming.
This keeps the focus entirely on your own development and allows you to objectively assess whether you are truly making progress. Seeing this progress, and achieving improvement goals, can provide a significant boost in motivation and reinforce your commitment to your long-term dream goals.
The problem with improvement goals is that they can seem hard to measure. How do you measure confidence, cornering or your descending? The solution to this is using how you feel about it. Rate yourself from 1 to 10 on how you feel your cornering or descending this (or ask your coach if possible). The start working on the skill using process focused goals until you get to the next moment to measure and compare how you feel now and before. There you go!
Improvement goals work best over the medium term and are usually focused on a single area of development. This might be a physical aspect such as climbing efficiency or endurance, a technical skill like cornering or descending, a tactical element such as positioning in the peloton, or mental routines related to focus, discipline, and recovery.
By narrowing your attention to one clear area, improvement goals create clarity, consistency, and sustainable growth.
Process focused goals or task oriented goals
Okay, we have defined our dream goals, result goals, and improvement goals. Up to this point, the central question has been what do we want to achieve? With process goals, the question shifts to how we are going to achieve it.
For example, imagine your dream goal is to reach your full potential as a cyclist or ride at a high competitive level within five years. That likely means that within the next year you need to make clear, measurable progress in performance or results to stay on track (result goal). Let’s say your current weakest link is your ability to stay efficient on long climbs under fatigue, and you want to improve this by riding the final 20 minutes of climbs at a more stable power output within two months (improvement goal).
The next question is: how are you going to make that happen? For this week, that might mean completing two focused climbing sessions, deliberately practicing pacing, breathing, and focus during the final block of each effort (process goals).
In an ideal world, your attention should always be on the process and your process goals, because this is the only area where you have direct control. Everything else—performance gains, race results, selections—is simply a consequence of how well you execute the process. Take a moment to let that sink in.
That said, maintaining a process focus is difficult. Cyclists are constantly tempted to look at the scoreboard: power numbers, race results, Strava rankings, or what others are doing. As a mindset or performance coach, I see it as my most important role to continually bring athletes back to the process. Everything outside of that is noise.
Why is goal setting so important?
Why do goals work? That is the question I want to use to close this blog. A clear way to answer it is through the lens of Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985). This theory explains why we are motivated to behave in certain ways and what fuels sustainable, intrinsic motivation.
According to the theory, intrinsic motivation is driven by three core psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence. For now, I will set autonomy and relatedness aside. When it comes to goal setting in cycling, competence is the key factor.
Competence is the feeling that you are capable, improving, and making progress. Well-designed goals—especially improvement and process goals—continuously reinforce this feeling.
Each small step forward, each skill improved, and each process executed successfully sends a clear signal: I am getting better. This sense of mastery is incredibly powerful. It builds confidence, strengthens motivation, and increases the likelihood that you stay committed during difficult training blocks or disappointing races. In other words, goals work because they make progress visible, and visible progress fuels motivation.
A sense of competence means believing that you are capable—that you can handle something challenging and grow from it. But how do you actually develop that belief as a cyclist? By setting and achieving challenging goals for yourself. Each time you follow through on a demanding process, complete a focused training block, or execute a skill under pressure, you collect concrete evidence that you can do hard things. This strengthens your self-image, builds confidence, and directly fuels intrinsic motivation.
That is why process goals work so well in cycling. By consistently focusing on what you can control—and repeatedly achieving those process goals—you keep supplying fuel to your intrinsic motivation engine. Every completed session, every disciplined choice, and every small improvement reinforces the feeling of competence. And when that engine keeps running, it becomes much easier to stay committed, stay composed under pressure, push a little harder, and keep accelerating toward your long-term goals.
My name is Lex, and as a sports psychologist I specialize in the mental coaching of cyclists.
Do you want to become mentally stronger? Schedule a free Mindset Scan through the link below and I’ll give you your first practical tool to help you improve your self confidence!
Thanks Lex voor meer meedenken over het mentale aspect rondom wielrennen, sporten maar eigenlijk ook het persoonlijke leven 🙂
Graag gedaan Lisette!