If you’re like most athletes one of your primary goals is to improve performance. No matter how you define it – getting faster, getting leaner, getting stronger – athletes focus upward. But improving performance requires that we do things just a bit different than the average. It requires that we adopt small, but powerful, key habits that help keep us focused on our goals. Here are my four key habits to improve performance.
1. A Reality Check
Don’t let athletes who are fitter, faster, stronger than you fool you into thinking that “it comes easy to them”. It’s easy to think that certain athletes are better because they have superior genetics & gifts. Although there may be some truth in that, most athletes’ successes stem from their day-in-day-out commitment to doing exactly what they need to do to get better. Remember that improvements of any kind are small, sporadic, incremental & NEVER equal to the workload. In other words, there are hours upon hours of hard work that come together to create a very small moment-in-time performance.
2. Stay Focused
Too often the lure of Big Change = Big Results steers athletes off of their steady Eddie course into unpredictable territory. And while there are certainly situations which warrant a radical trajectory shift…putting too many of those shifts too close together leads to chaos. I’m sure you’ve done it…I know I have. You have a plan in place. But then the latest issue of Runner’s World comes out with an article detailing a 400m interval workout…and you think…yikes, I’m not doing 400m intervals…I should add those in! And then, a few weeks later, you see a YouTube on the benefits of doing Olympic-style lifts…and you think…well, I’ll just add those in too. And then, a few weeks after that, you read a book about the benefits of HIIT…and you think…I really need to do that too. I think you get my point! My opinion: Pick a focus & stick with it for a season. Then, and only then, can you more objectively determine what worked & what didn’t.
3. Do the Things You Know You Ought to Do
This is a big one in my book. If someone asked you, “What are the things you know you should do but aren’t?”, I bet you’d have a list!
- Get more sleep
- Eat more protein
- Do mobility work more frequently
- Lift weights
- Work on a positive mindset
- Do more prehab
So, what’s stopping you? Seriously…what’s stopping you? To get started, the best thing you can do is…just start…just start doing. Don’t try to find the “perfect” time or create “perfect” situation because it’ll never be “perfect”. Just start. Don’t overthink it or try to get all the answers in place. Just start. Don’t do too much contingency planning. Just start. Besides, the hardest part is making the decision to start. Once you’ve broken the inaction barrier, then inertia often takes over & we find that doing is actually pretty easy & satisfying. So, in the words of Nike: “Just do it!”
4. Embrace Failure
Many of us (me included) view our performances through a fear of failure lens. We see failure as something to avoid, as a negative, as a reflection of our own self-worth (i.e., I failed, therefore I must BE a failure.) The result of this mindset is that we are conservative. We create conservative goals which barely stretch us & we stick to conservative plans which (almost) guarantee success. In effect, we do…but we don’t really grow & improve. The saying “We learn more from our failures than our successes.” really is quite true. One of the best ways to improve performance is to take a few risks, push ourselves out of our comfort zones & embrace that fact that we just might fail doing it! And what happens when you fail?? You get to learn all kinds of cool stuff that will make you better the next time. It’s a win-win!
So, there you have it, folks. Four key habits to improve performance. Four key habits that you can implement to make yourself a better athlete. Let the improvements begin!
Happy Training!
Coach Michelle
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