I tend to be an athlete is fairly observant of what is going on around me. I do this to gather information about the athletic experiment I am currently conducting. It so happens that I’m the subject of the experiment and am trying to develop a set of strengths, talents, and abilities that will empower me to succeed in my sport. These aren’t simply physical skills that can be observed and measured, but mental, social, and emotional skills that need to be carefully monitored and fine-tuned to keep everything running efficiently. When I am able to self-regulate my performance, and increase my abilities in a systematic and logical manner,  I will be able to develop confidence in my competence, and find more success than failure.

Naturally, I want to be around others who are similarly driven to succeed. On a team, or in an individual sport, knowledge is power, and the more people you have thinking about a problem, the more likely you are to solve it. On a team, some people are able to specialize in their field to such a degree that they outperform anyone else in that maneuver or behavior. When you surround yourself with multiple experts, you will be able to learn from them and make the tweaks you need to make in your own performance. As a general rule, if you are serious about succeeding in any given area of your life, you should spend your time around people who are good at what they do. When you surround yourself with people who are not very good at what they do, you are likely to remain in the middle of nowhere and not make any progress at all.

I believe that to be a successful athlete, you need to be ready for any situation that may arise. If you study the game long enough, you’ll be able to spot patterns and trends for both successes and failures. When you see these patterns emerge in your present game, rather than making decisions based on gut instinct, you can then make rational, informed decisions on what to do or what not to do. But even still, some circumstances are completely unpredictable and will likely catch you off guard. It is therefore very important to assemble a special tool bag that is filled with strategies and counter strategies to deal with wildcard situations. 

Some strategies can be learned through research and study, while other can be learned through trial and error. In any case, your brain should be constantly engaged, whether or not you’re playing. Even when you’re watching a game on television, you should turn off the commentary and practice observing what’s happening on the screen, compare it against historical data you’ve already learned, and then think outside the box to come up with workable solutions. The more you practice this strategizing skill, the faster and more accurate it will become, which will ultimately give you the confidence to pull it off in real time so that you can win the game and not let yourself get outplayed or defeated.

When it comes to communicating with others, I prefer to use words that have been carefully considered because I believe that they’ll achieve my intended result more quickly and efficiently than something that is thoughtless or driven by an emotional reaction. It’s one of the reasons I am known to be more calm, cool, and collected than others. I like to talk about topics that are applicable and meaningful to me, and I like to communicate with people who are similar to me in terms of education, background, and life experiences. I usually try to make sure that I’m listening closely to what people are saying because I don’t like to waste time or energy on a conversation that isn’t moving forward or isn’t intriguing. Its one of the reasons I often avoid small talk and trivial chit-chat with strangers. But when we’re talking about things that capture my attention, I try to stay involved and communicative. I might even say something clever, witty, or spout out some little-known factoid.

No athlete can have too much knowledge. That knowledge can come from a variety of sources, including experience, education, data, theory, and intuition. A good athlete knows how to tap into all of these sources, and others, in order to learn what they need to know to master the sport. This means you need to be smart and use your brain to learn the history, science, mathematics, trigonometry, chemistry, physics, logic, and psychology that are associated with any sport. Only ignorant people cling to the old stereotype of the dumb, meat-head jock who can’t think for themselves and must rely on their physicality to find success in life. Nothing could be further from the truth. World-class athletes are some of the smartest people you’ll ever meet, who know how to add knowledge, reason, and expertise to their physical abilities.

If I’m playing a team sport, I expect other players to be just as competent as I try to be. If someone fails to improve their game play, make progress on their personal goals, or repeatedly fail to perform as expected, rather than immediately writing them off, I’ll do my best to encourage them to step up their efforts because a team is only as strong as its weakest link. I might even invite them to train with me so they can see how much effort I put into my practice. If they don’t have the capacity to increase their skills or capabilities, that’s one thing; but if they have the ability but are too lazy to put in the effort, then I’ll write them off. If the team is to succeed, everyone should try to become increasingly skilled, capable, and competent. No one should sit on their haunches and plateau out, munching chocolate bonbons. The key to success in sport—as well as life—is constant improvement, more accuracy, more efficiency, and more expertise.

There are two kinds of athletes in the world: Those who want to learn something new and those who don’t. I’m the learner type. I want to know why things are the way they are. I tend to ask lots of questions and do a fair amount of independent research. I am curious about the sport, about other players, about the history, about the techniques, about the strategies, even about the opinions of the fans. My objective is to try to learn as much as possible that will help me become a better athlete, and then use that knowledge to make incremental course corrections until I achieve the success I want. To do that, I need a coach who is knowledgeable and competent, someone who can answer all my questions and help me understand my weaknesses and strengths. I need someone who can help me design better training plans so I can eventually find as much success as I desire. I’m also looking for a coach who is rational and in control of their emotions, who treats everyone without bias or partiality. I need someone who is methodical, if not scientific, in their approach to training, who isn’t afraid of embracing new ideas and philosophies.

As an athlete, I love to help other athletes solve problems and often bring new insights to their awareness. I can communicate with most people in all kinds of situations and am generally patient and tolerant of others who are honestly trying to learn how to play a better game. I am a natural teacher, able to explain complex concepts in simple ways. I am able to guide less skilled athletes through a fairly complicated process without making it seem too confusing. I try to encourage everyone to work smarter and more efficiently, training their ability to use their mind just as much as they use their body parts. Every move and every action should be carefully considered in their mind before directing their body to execute the plan, and that needs to happen at the speed of thought. This takes enormous amounts of time and practice to get right, but it is what sets me apart from other players.

There is no such thing as a perfect sport or a perfect performance. There are always ways to improve it. Someone has to spend some time and effort thinking about things that haven’t been thought of before. That’s where I shine the brightest. It might be refining the rules, changing expectations, analyzing footage, shifting paradigms, throwing out traditional strategies in favor of something innovative or unexpected, designing new plays, or developing new training regimens—if it requires analysis or original thinking, you want me involved somehow. As an athlete, I am constantly on the look out for new solutions to old problems, such as using sensors placed on the body or in “smart clothing” to measure and track performance in real time, or using lasers and GPS to measure position, distance, velocity, trajectory, acceleration, and other motion metrics. Or perhaps its testing out new gear or equipment that reduces or eliminates injuries while maximizing performance. Or perhaps is importing strategies from an entirely different sport in order to find more success.

Being a good athlete means having the skills and talent to be able to perform your sport well. But being a great athlete means you know something that most athletes don’t know—something that makes you great. If you haven’t found the thing that makes you great, then you might want to spend time learning everything you possibly can about your sport. I don’t mean a shallow swim on the surface, but a deep dive to discover what lies beneath. This takes more time and effort than most people are willing to spend and is one of the things that will make you great.

If you are involved in a team sport, you should get together with other players so you can pick their brains and learn what they do well. Then, it’s important to freely share the knowledge you have learned with your teammates so that they can get better too. Even if that secret knowledge turns them into a stronger competitor, that competition will likely drive you to become even better and discover even more insights. On the other hand, if you believe there is nothing more to learn, that you have already arrived at the top of the mountain peak, then you are seriously limiting your potential to grow. An athlete should always be humble, reminding themselves that there is always someone who is healthier, smarter, faster, and more talented than you. You have to discover how to minimize your own weaknesses and maximize your own strengths.

Almost everyone appreciates a feature upgrade to a software subscription that features new bells and whistles which send warm fuzzies up your nervous system. The same thing is true in athletics. My aim is to be the best athlete I can be and obtain some degree of mastery in my sport. I have some built-in, customized hardware, which is my body, which has some built-in limitations. It is unique and no one has the same model. I also have some temporary, downloadable software, which controls is the way I think. By optimizing what I think and how I think, I can, bit by bit, learn how to take full advantage of my body’s hardware. If the software becomes flawed or buggy, my thinking about training, practice, and refinement renders some aspects of my hardware unusable and it sits idling away, aging its way into obsolescence. That is why, as an athlete, I constantly focus on refining my thoughts about my athletic performance and trying to enhance it as much as I can. This quest for self-improvement and development keeps me on a perpetual search for new tips, ideas, strategies, tactics, methods, techniques, and procedures that will amplify my abilities. I am always on the lookout for brilliant thoughts that will heighten my performance.