Peak Performance Should Not be Your Goal

One of the most popular phrases in sport is “peak performance.” Athletes in all sports typically think of peak performance as performing their best, as being at the top of their game. That sounds good, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to achieve peak performance? And when I came out of graduate school, peak performance was what I wanted my athletes to achieve.

But as I became more experienced as a consultant and a writer, I began to appreciate the power of words and how important it is that the words I use are highly descriptive of what I want to communicate. I decided that peak performance was not descriptive. I saw several problems with peak performance:

A peak is very small, so you can’t stay there long. Would you be satisfied if you had one good race and several poor ones?
Once the peak is reached, there’s only one way to go—down!—and, and as with most peaks, the drop is usually precipitous. Have you experienced those big swings in race performance where one week you’re totally “ in the zone” and the next you’re completely out of it?
You may arrive at the peak too early or too late, missing a chance for success. Have you felt the frustration of lost opportunity because you weren’t mentally “on” for your big race?

So I needed a phrase that accurately described what I wanted athletes to achieve. I struggled for several years unable to find such a phrase until one day I had one of those rare meetings of readiness and luck. Walking through the meat section of a supermarket I saw a piece of beef with a sticker that read Prime Cut. I had an “aha” experience; I knew I was on to something. I returned to my office and looked up “prime” in the dictionary. It was defined as “of the highest quality or value.” I had finally found the phrase, “Prime Performance,” which I believed was highly descriptive of what I wanted ski racers to achieve.

I define Prime Performance as “skiing at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions.” There are two essential words in this definition. First, “consistently.” I’m not interested if you can have only one or two great runs and then some poor ones; that is not enough to be truly successful. I want you to be able to train and race at a high level day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, all season long. This means training and racing with minimal ups and downs instead of the large swings in performance that are so common among racers. Second, “challenging.” I’m not impressed if you can ski well under ideal race conditions against an easy field in an unimportant race. What makes the great racers great is their ability to ski their best under the worst possible race conditions against the toughest field imaginable in the biggest race of their lives.

Want to learn more?

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