I have three favorite sayings when it comes to being the best athlete you can be. First, “If you want to perform like everyone else, be like everyone else.” In other words, if you want to be a decent athlete among many, do what they do.
Second, an old Texas adage says, “If you all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you’ve ever got.” In other words, if you keep doing the same things that you’ve always done, you can expect that you will stay on pretty much the same trajectory as you’ve been on. I’ll get to my third favorite saying shortly.
The problem is that there are so many areas that contribute to athletic development:
Becoming the best athlete you can be means maximizing every one of these performance areas; no small feat considering that it’s nearly impossible to stay on top of the latest advancements, much less be an expert in every one of them. Your greatest challenge is figuring out what you need to do in each area to optimize its contribution to your sports development.
Unfortunately, there is no instruction manual on how to be a great athlete, no step-by-step guide on what it takes to be the best. Sure, you can identify best practices and use them. For example, the chances are that if LeBron or Serena or Tom (Brady) are doing something in their training, it probably has value. And, having worked with many professional and Olympic athletes over the years, there is no doubt that most of them are innovators constantly looking for new ways to get stronger, tougher, and better. (Though, interestingly, I recently spoke to the High Performance Director of an Olympic team and he told me that, for everything they do with their conditioning, there is no real evidence that any of it makes a difference once their athletes get on the field of play.)
These ideas apply not only to individual athletes, but also junior sports programs and even Olympic and professional teams. Do the Red Sox do things that differently than the Yankees? Does Manchester United prepare its athletes in ways that different compared to Barcelona? Though there are certainly variations across youth sports clubs and professional teams, for the most part, I would say that they are doing pretty much the same things. But, as another saying goes (not my third favorite), “If you’re always following the pack, the view stays the same.”
Now we arrive at my third favorite saying, this one from Peter Drucker, the well-known business guru: “Innovate or die.” This adage is the antidote to my first two quotes; it ensures that you constantly look for new ways of getting better.
Innovating is important in one of three situations you might find yourself heading into your next sports season. First, you may have hit a plateau in which last season your development and results didn’t improve or decline, they just stayed about the same as before. Clearly, you have gotten stuck in your development and continuing to do what you did last season will only cause you to remain stuck (remember Einstein’s Law of Insanity: “Doing the same thing and expecting different results;” another favorite saying!).
Second, you may have had a disappointing season in which your development and results went backwards. Not only did you not improve, but you actually got worse. And the higher you climb in your sport, the more likely this becomes. It seems self-evident that if you keep doing what you did last year, next season isn’t likely to get better either.
Third, you had a great season, with big improvements in your development and results. In this scenario, the natural tendency is to think that if it worked last year, let’s keep doing it. This could be a mistake. Yes, you want to continue to do things that are obviously beneficial to your development, for example, keep a disciplined sleep pattern and stick with your nutrition plan that maximizes your energy and recovery.
At the same time, in all three cases, you must innovate to continue the upward trajectory of your development. In the first two situations, to get you back on that upward arc and, in the last situation, to keep you on it.
Why do I believe that innovation is so important? Well, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the heart of the tech industry where innovation is the god worshipped by all. Additionally, along with my sport psychology practice, I work with tech companies to help them to, you guessed it, innovate. Because, quite simply, leaders in the tech industry (and every other industry, for that matter) understand that if they aren’t continually innovating, their companies will go the way of Blockbuster, Kodak, and Blackberry. And that’s not a way you want to go in your sport.
This spirit—innovate or die!—needs to be embraced by athletes, youth sports programs, and Olympic teams, and professional clubs to not only survive, but to thrive and continue to develop.
How to Innovate
It’s easy to say that you want to innovate in your athletic development. It’s an entirely different thing to actually find and use new ways of becoming the best athlete you can be. Here are a few ways you can approach your training and preparations in new and creative ways.
First, see what the best athletes, coaches, and programs in your sport are doing that is innovative. By leveraging technology, for example, with social media, blogs, and YouTube videos, you have direct access into what the best in the world are doing in their training. Though you may not be innovating directly, applying their methods to your training is innovative, particularly if none of your competitors are doing it.
Second, experiment, in other words, try new things that may or may not work. The reality is that most innovation develops not through some structured process of discovery, but rather just by playing around and seeing what works and what doesn’t. For example, related to conditioning, think about what you have to do in your sport physically and look for ways to replicate the movements in the gym.
Third, see what the top athletes, coaches, and programs in your sport aren’t doing and do that. Finding innovation in any sport is a real challenge because almost every serious athlete and leading sports program already do the basics such as conditioning and technique. But there are still opportunities for innovation. For example, though I might be a bit biased here, one area in which you can innovate in your training is by developing a comprehensive mental training program; few athletes and fewer teams have such a program in place so, by committing to a mental training program, you give yourself a leg up on your competitors.
Finally, see what others outside of your sport are doing. In many industries, new ideas often come from other sectors and the same can apply to sports. Look at what athletes in other sports are doing, particularly ones with similar physical requirements and movement patterns. For example, if you’re a soccer player, you can learn a lot from football running backs and tennis players who use many of the same types of strength, agility, and mobility as used in soccer. You can transfer some of their training methods over to your sport to your advantage.
In sum, as you continue with your training program and competitive schedule, please do take what worked in the past and continue to use it. At the same time, always be on the lookout for new and different ways to improve some aspect of your training and development. By finding that balance between tried-and-true approaches and innovative methods, you keep pushing yourself forward and, in the process, put yourself a step or two ahead of your competitors.
