The Benefits of Tracking Performance – Basketball

Captain of the Basketball Team:

I’m so excited!  I’m captain of my basketball team.  I’ve been keeping a journal for the last three weeks and today is the last day of my week, and time to celebrate my weekly progress.  It’s really great to see the progress I’ve made in just a week and I can’t believe how much this boosts both my spirits and my confidence.

I mentioned to my coach that I’ve been keeping a journal and documenting my progress.  He said that he had noticed me playing stronger than before and wondered what the change had been.  As we talked I was wondering if you could offer some suggestions about how keeping a journal could apply to a team environment.  Do you have any suggestions about ways that we can, as a group keep a team journal and how we can review our progress?  How do you suggest we celebrate as a team?  Do we look at individual players or at the team as a whole?

Coach John’s answer:

Congratulations on your journal keeping!  I strongly believe in keeping track of performance especially the good things that happen. It’s really important to keep track of the successes you have.

Each team member should be keeping their own performance journal. At the beginning of the season the team captains should work with the team to establish 3 performance objectives for the season. The team captain(s) will performance the task of keeping the team journal. It’s challenging to celebrate progress without having an agreed to set of goals to strive to achieve.  By having a set of team goals it helps everyone to be on the same page. Each week the team should meet and discuss progress or lack thereof and establish performance objectives for the next week. The team meetings should be team focused. If each individual is keeping track of their own performance in reference to the team goals they will have a very good idea of how their individual performance is impacting the teams overall performance. Each team member’s goals and performance tracking process should be aligned with the team’s goals.

Team celebration should be based on the objectives the team establishes for celebration. To make it most rewarding you might establish celebrating success based on achieving performance milestone goals.

For more information on goal setting, please refer to my book entitled Mental Edge, Performance Journaling System. www.protexsports.com. You may also send me your request by filling out the “contact us” form at www.protexsports.com.