How I’m Setting Goals for Myself & Others
How to increase the chances of your dreams coming true
The Shift
This is a simple shift from how I learned to set goals.
When I was a high school basketball player, I recall the head coach having us all list our goals. I wrote down how many points and assists I wanted to average, what accolades I wanted for myself, and what accomplishments I wanted for the team.
That was that.
I failed at basically all of them.
First: Credit to the coach for even having us list goals.
Second: I’ll bet if you added up how many points per game we all wanted to average, it would have been physically impossible in a 32-minute game!
In reality, we all listed our dreams, not actionable goals.
The shift is to set a goal you have more control over, which then increases the chances of your dreams coming true.
Real Example for Myself
My dream is to have the greatest combination of skill, explosiveness, and youthful mobility of any 40-year-old, 6’1” basketball player who’s ever walked this Earth.
My goals for this year include much simpler tasks, though.
Since becoming a dad 5 1⁄2 years ago, the most I’d felt comfortable squatting with a full range of motion was 275 pounds.
Now I’m comfortably at 305 pounds, with knees and back feeling great.
This isn’t to say that everyone should work on this exercise. I wrote a much more detailed article on SAFE deep squatting a few weeks ago.
My goal for 2026 is simply to feel comfortable walking into the gym and working up to 315-pound deep squats.
That’s it!
When I did 305 this week, I walked into the gym, no other warm-up exercises, started with an empty bar, and pumped some bottom half reps. Then 135 pumping the bottom half. Then 185. 225. Then nice full reps with 275 and 305.
(Note: The game of basketball is brutal on the knees and stiffens the body. We do not have to bend our knees fully in the game. We are among the athletes least likely to full squat and most likely to be in pain if we try… which is precisely why it’s the #1 most life-changing thing for basketball, in my coaching experience!)
For me, the ability to walk into a gym and start deep squatting without knee pain is priceless. I had to completely rebuild my lower body functions to do this, and I accomplished that with just one little winning session at a time.
When I rebuilt my knees, my goal was simply to get to the gym and work on knee over toes exercises without pain.
That’s not an impressive goal, but it stacked up to a shocking transformation and eventually full-ride college basketball scholarships.
Once I found I could dunk a basketball, my goal became maintaining that without knee pain.
I’ve now been dunking for over a decade without a knee problem, even though I had been told by a doctor to drop basketball forever due to my knees.
Now that I’m in my mid-30s, I realize I have a chance to make perhaps the most remarkable age 20 to 40 transformation of anyone who has played basketball, in terms of aggressive driving, dunking and youthful movement.
Thus, I set a new goal of gradually getting stronger in a deep squat, with sub-goals that relate to healthily being able to do so.
If I could go back and help my high school self set goals, I would list actionable, measurable parts of the process that I could control, and I would then enjoy a magical high school career compared to what I went through with knee surgeries and pathetic athleticism.
The Rule
You have a dream?
Good!
Now you better have ACTIONABLE, MEASURABLE parts of that process which FOR SURE increase the chances of your dream coming true.
Unsure what those measurable components may be? Find someone who was in your shoes and has walked the walk!
Another subject for another day, but apprenticeship is a lost art in modern society. All too often I see people with dreams following the advice of those who theorize but haven’t walked the walk.
My free hoop dreams system is an example of actionable, measurable goals which have directly produced D1 scholarships and knee/dunk transformations in myself and others. No system is “perfect” but at least this one is actionable, measurable, and real.
Based on my experiences with basketball, I know you could create such systems for any other pursuits.
Long Rant on This Subject & What I’m Doing in Coaching/Education
In my 20s, I coached 4 years of high school basketball.
In those 4 years, I helped 13 players earn full-ride college scholarships.
Then, goal-setting was pretty simple.
Here’s a real example:
A 6’8” player joined my team. He had been playing center, not allowed to shoot deep, not allowed to dribble the ball up the court or drive to the basket, and not aggressive and athletic enough to dunk in games.
I immediately got him onto an ATG regimen, got him doing my dribbling regimen daily, and encouraged him to dribble and shoot like a guard in games.
Result: He wound up making lots of threes, got shockingly natural at dribbling the ball up the floor, was throwing down monster dunks in games, and went from zero scholarships at any level to FULL-RIDE DIVISION 1 SCHOLARSHIP.
And if you’re wondering how this player did afterward… Well, I never heard from him again! He never trained with ATG again, and I’d be willing to bet he dropped all the successful actions that had transformed him in one season.
MY FAILURE is that I only focused on him as a basketball player. I failed him as a human being.
At the time, I didn’t realize that how I educated players off the court was even more important than the game of basketball.
Basketball is a game. It entertains fans. Fans pay. This can become a career - but it’s not a real battle that matters long-term, and even those who “make it” often wind up broke and/or depressed after their careers.
How well you do in your sport doesn’t make the world a better place.
American sports income has skyrocketed while overall health, education, and economic stats have plummeted.
That’s why I’m going back to the roots (literally) and building my own school system.
In less than 4 weeks, my 3- and 5-year-olds will begin planting seeds.
Growing fruits and/or vegetables is POLICY #1 for ATGU. (ATGU - Athletic Truth Group University - is the name I’ve settled on for my school system. ATG was my original biz name and it got me this far. Gonna rock it till the end!)
I will write more about this in 4 weeks after we do the first gardening, but to summarize, my kids will:
Grow things
Learn how to prepare them as food
Take abundance to market
Do finances on the payment they receive
Eventually learn how much of their earnings the government will take, and learn how to do their taxes as part of school
Learn how to save and invest the remainder
Learn how to budget all of this!
From the simple act of planting seeds in the earth, I will prepare my kids for the real world better than any current school system I can find, while also giving them valuable time outside, healthier food, and too many other benefits to count.
This is why “grow something” is ATGU policy #1. My entire school system will boil down to a list of policies so simple, I can fit them on one page.
Of course, my students will also become great readers and writers and artists and musicians and athletes and so on, and I’ll keep you posted every step of the way.
Notice that in the process above, I didn’t mention how much money I’m expecting my kids to make when they take their crops to market.
My goals for them are more about the actions that I can control which increase their chances of happy, healthy lives that make them more powerful to lift up the world around them.
As for basketball, this is my first year back coaching a high school team, and I’m at a school that’s only had one player earn an athletic scholarship in its 50-year history. That lone exception is me, since I was in this school system till I was 14.
I want to give a very special shoutout to this school system regarding one simple action that changed my life forever.
From age 6 to 14, the reading system was:
Teacher has a huge wall of age appropriate books.
Students get to pick any book they want to read.
That’s it.
Repeat all year.
The teacher was there in case a student could not figure out the meaning of something they’re reading, but otherwise the teacher stayed out of the way!
The room was mostly silent.
I’ve never seen a teacher have to do less work.
Yet I’ve never seen a more effective class at producing literacy.
The entire American public education system would make a huge leap forward with just this simple act.
The goal wasn’t some arbitrary state measurement.
The goal was simply reading anything you want to read about and understanding what you’re reading.
I mostly read sports books.
Dumb to just read about sports, right?
Well, by age 14 I had a genius-level IQ by adult standards.
It’s very possible that there’s no Kneesovertoesguy or ATG without the reading program I was in from age 6-14.
Then from age 15 to 22, in public schools, my IQ went DOWN.
By age 22, I hated reading.
Fortunately, I was a good enough reader from the age 6 to 14 program that once I found Charles Poliquin (my knees over toes inspiration), I was able to devour every word he’d publicly written, quickly and with full understanding.
Fast forward to the basketball team I’m coaching today.
These kids can read well!
But they can’t dribble and jump well.
This off-season, I get to assign them EXACT GOALS WHICH THEY CAN CONTROL.
We have a middle school player who is already taller than me and does want to play college basketball. He’ll be in high school next year and I’ll immediately start him on varsity at POINT GUARD, because I have the actionable, measurable goals to support his dreams.
He’ll be the best player in school history, much better than I, and we will use his success to further establish systems for future generations. He will possess the priceless combination of personal success and legitimately raising up the lives of others.
Thanks to everyone who followed my rant this far.
Yours in Solutions,
Ben
ATG Online Coaching (Affordable access to all my programs, with form coaching so you eventually get each movement as I would help you get it in-person.)
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