Building a Plan Around Three Types of Goals

Maybe the goal is becoming a more proficient jump turner. An example of a performance goal that supports that outcome: Perform 100 controlled jump turns down the steepest line at the resort or in backcountry terrain you are more comfortable in. Photo: Aidan Whitelaw

Goals and goal setting are as timeworn as another new year cycle around the sun. This year, makes your goals more achievable through a mindful and process oriented approach. Pete Vordenberg has your back on this.

I come from a world of competition. Over time I became disillusioned. Competition was a world I wrote off, and a word I began to despise. But I’ve come back, not to competing, but to acknowledging the lessons that can be learned from a life of competition. Among them are how we set about our journeys and adventures, how we can shape our efforts and gain much from attempting them. I came back to the lessons of competition because rather than learn to conquer something or win any prizes they are valuable in helping to increase our growth and enjoyment through sport.  Many of these lessons come through the process of trying to accomplish goals. Goals can include things like skiing something new and harder than you’ve done before, or winning an event, or learning new skills so you can safely ski with your buddies.

Many people’s distaste for goals comes from the notion that you must become single mindedly fixated on the accomplishment.  I do not subscribe to an outcome focus. A process focus is not only the best way to actually accomplish your goal, but it is the best way to learn, grow and maximally enjoy along the way.

The author spent many years chasing speed and efficiency and goals on the nordic tracks. Photo: Pete Vordenberg

Three types of goals

Planning begins with the goal and works backwards.

How will you arrive at your goal ready to accomplish it? What qualities and attributes will you need to develop to accomplish your goal, and by what means will you develop them?

Goal setting and training or learning planning requires a knowledge of, and honesty with yourself.

You must start where you are.

Setting goals is an act between dreaming and planning. Dreaming of something you would like to do is fun. To actually set out to live that dream requires you set a goal to accomplish it, and accomplishing it requires a plan, a path, a way to get there. The plan is the path. At one end is the goal, at the other your current position on the path.

The goal at the far end of your plan is not the final goal. Typically once the big goal is accomplished the shine wears off pretty quickly and you are looking for the next peak before your first celebratory beer is even drained.

Nor is it the only goal along the way.

The path is strewn with goals. Goals can be outcome goals, such as winning a race or skiing a new line. This is the the big goal you are aiming for.  Goals can be performance goals, such as landing a trick or improving in tricky conditions. These are goals that tell you you are on track to your big goal.   Goals can also be process goals, such as eating healthily, resting well, doing a specific set of intervals, or lifts, visualizing your line, or practicing specific aspects of your turn at the resort.  

Of the three types of goals, all are valid, but the most powerful ones are process and performance goals as the outcome of these are mostly within your power, whereas outcome goals depend upon factors which are less within your power. Also, process goals are truly what makes up the path. They are the work you must do, the work you are doing, the work you have done. Performance goals offer targets and waymarks to let you know how you are progressing along the way.

The goal at the end of your plan often takes place over a short time period, a single event or series of events. The process goals are literally every day. They make up the bulk of this experience. Here the goals fit together in support of each other:

Positive outcome goals. Disclaimer—this is not Pucker Gnarlies Couloir. Photo: Zack Little

Outcome goal: Climb and ski Pucker Gnarlies Couloir (location undisclosed)

An example of a performance goal that supports that outcome: Perform 100 controlled jump turns down the steepest line at the resort or in backcountry terrain you are more comfortable in.

An example of a process goal that leads to the accomplishment of the performance goal: See how many good controlled jump turns you can do and start building from there.

Within the planning process you will set process goals for each workout. They not only can be, but should be very simple. 

Further examples of process goals:

-Keep my HR in L1 on easy workouts

-Eat a healthy snack and recover after demanding tours

-Use your legs and core while shoveling snow

-Focus on a specific aspect of technique

-Practice a new mountaineering skill you may need

-Do beacon searches with your partners

-Say thank you to the mountain, your buddies and yourself at the end of the tour

Feel that gratitude—today you were skiing and learning new skills! What a privilege and a dream!

Examples of performance goals:

-Ski a new line that builds toward your big goal

-Perform the type of turns you’ll need for your big objective

-Perform a new mountaineering skill in the mountains

-Find a buried beacon in two thirds the time it took a month ago.

As well as things like learning a new skill, the accomplishment of process goals should lead directly to the achievement of your performance goals. The process goals you set are based on the performance goals you set. If you want to learn a new, say anchor technique, you will need to set a plan to learn and practice it.  This may include finding a mentor to help you understand the skill. The goal of learning this new skill, should in-turn support the more distant goal of being safer and more confident in the mountains.

The planning and goal setting section began by stating that you must know yourself well so as to start where you are. This also takes honesty.

What kind of preparation you can do now, depends on what kind of preparation you have been doing, and are ready to do now. You cannot jump into repelling midway down a line without building up to it.  Before you can rescue a partner, you must be able to locate a beacon in practice.

Building up to it might be where you are, and it is a great place to be.

Start where you are.

Take no shortcuts.

Each step of the path provides the fitness, skill and knowledge you need for the next step. To skip a step is to bypass an opportunity for learning and development.  In backcountry and mountain environments that is also a safety concern.  You can get away with not knowing a skill a lot of times, and then comes a time you wish you’d practiced.  

Each step of the path provides all the joy, struggle, lessons and experience this journey has to offer. So inhabit this and each step completely.

You start where you are every day.

Every time you start where you are, you are in a new place. Sometimes it will feel like a step forward and sometimes you will feel like you’ve taken a step backward, and you need a rest.

That is part of the process.

The final step of the plan, or this path is no more important than any other step on this path.

Pete Vordenberg in the hills—a time during which his entire life philosophy was upended and rearranged by parenthood.

Each day, each workout, each step, each breath is its own purpose, its own reward, its own lesson. Your focus must be on the step you are on. This step. This step is the key not only to the accomplishment to your outcome goal, but to unlocking the joys and lessons of the practice of any sport. Competition is one type of journey. Lessons from the world of competition can be used for even just social backcountry skiing.  Both are similar in that they demand the development and maintenance of a growing set of skills.  This can be beacon searches, communication skills, care of equipment, fitness, technique, route-finding… and setting performance and process goals is a great way to improve these skills for your own enjoyment and the enjoyment of your partners as well. Outcome goals, such as skiing a new line, or skiing in a new zone, can help direct your process and performance goals – you want to learn these skills so that you can do this thing, or do this thing in the safest way. All three types of goals work together not to achieve an end, but to facilitate growth, learning and ultimately increase and deepen your enjoyment of living this amazing life.  Ultimately it doesn’t matter if you ever ski Puckers Couloir. But if you ever had the chance you made that change happen through this process of preparation.  Actually doing it may lend some satisfaction, it may be fun, but even if you do ski it, you’ll find that so much of the joy has truly been in the process and not the outcome.

Editor’s note: Pete Vordenberg is the best to work with—he can turn a phrase, he loves touring, and is funny. And know he’s the type of person who loves to discuss deep questions on the skintrack. Be warned, be the question asker (which will limit your talking and help prevent redlining) skinning with Pete. He has street cred when it comes to goal setting that we normally leave off his bio. Here it goes: Vordenberg is a two time olympic coach, two time olympic athlete, former head coach of the US Cross Country Ski Team, and has had his entire life philosophy upended and rearranged by parenthood.