Every year, I conduct goal meetings for my club players. In these meetings, after the players write up their goals, as we describe in "Volleyball Cybernetics," we get together and I go over their goals to make sure they are on target.

Usually the goals are fine, but the players need a little guidance in writing up their plan on how to achieve them. When we finish going over their goals and their "new and improved plan," we get to the most important part of the meeting.

You see, setting goals with a specific plan for how to achieve them is an excellent step toward self-improvement, but it's not the end – not if the players want to improve as much as they can!

I'm going to let you in on a little secret here: I probably read about 25 ezines a month on mental training, motivation and goal setting. Each one of these professionals has their own specific program for teaching people how to achieve self-improvement, and they do a very good job of teaching their methods. But, even though every program varies slightly in approach and/or technique, there are two key points that are consistent across the board-no matter what.

1. Whatever you tell yourself, you will believe. Of course, we've known this for a long time, but there is an ever growing body of scientific research backing this concept up, and also more and more programs out there teaching people how to use self-affirmations correctly.

2. Whatever you believe you can do, you really can do (within the laws of physics, of course). Check out any mental training expert's program and they will tell you the first step to self-improvement is changing how you think about whatever it is you want to get better at doing.

Now, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know here, so what's my point?

Just this… Get your players to add the following two steps to their training program and they will not just increase their level of improvement, they will multiply it!

First Step: Have them develop a set of self-affirmations to go along with their goals. These affirmations should be short, to the point, and stated as if the goal has already been achieved.

For example, if a setter has a goal to improve her ability to get to any ball and put up an attackable set at a "level seven," she might use, "I get to every ball and set it right to target."

Note: If you have a player you are unsure of in her ability to figure out what to say in her affirmations, have her write down what she comes up with and bring it to you to review. You can then "troubleshoot" her affirmations and make any changes you see fit.

Next, tell your players to repeat their affirmations every day as often as they can. Give them some examples of when they can do this, for example, on the way to and from practice, during a water break, during a break at a tournament, or any other time they don't have anything else they really need to think about at the time.

Also, make sure they understand they should say the affirmations to themselves in a positive, upbeat voice.

Second Step: Have them do visualizations of themselves playing at the level they will be at when they achieve their goal. For example, if their goal is to "hit down the line at a level eight," then they need to see themselves doing this in a game situation.

It takes a maximum of three seconds to do one visualization of a skill performance, and many players can even do it quicker once they get good at it. But, let's just take that number as a good working example. This means 20 visualizations can be done per minute, which makes one hundred in five minutes!

Most of us usually take a good 15 to 30 minutes to fall asleep on an average night. We just lay there going back over the events of the day, or thinking about what might happen tomorrow. Both of those things we can't do anything about at the time!

Well, now at least part of this time can be put to good use. I ask my players to decide how much time they are going to devote to this each night. I let them know that I can't tell them how much time, because I don't know how good they really want to be.

Then I tell them to take the amount of time they choose and divide it by the number of goals they have. I give them this example: 15 minutes divided by 5 goals is 3 minutes per goal, which is 60 visualizations of that goal being achieved each night. I conclude by telling them they should do these visualizations every night.

Finally, here's the key selling point in getting your players to use these two steps: It doesn't take even one more minute in the gym, not one more drop of sweat or muscle soreness to do these two things. They can do them when they are going to bed, or anytime they are simply bored.

These methods will help them improve much more quickly, meaning they will get dramatically better results from the time they are in the gym. What a deal!

Dave Cross is the founder of the "Yes I Can" volleyball programs and camps. To learn more about "Yes, I Can!" Volleyball visit: www.yesicanvolleyball.com.