The start of a new sports season is the time to improve your fitness and further develop your technique, tactics, and over-all performances for the upcoming competitive season. How you use your training time may very well determine how well you perform and whether you achieve your sports goals for the season.
Training is hugely important because whatever you do in training is what you will do in a competition. Another way to look at it is to think of training as the time when you instill physical, technical, tactical, and mental skills and habits that you will use in a competition.
Here’s the catch. Depending on the quality of your training, you will either instill good or bad skills and habits. If you practice good skills and habits, they will come out in a competition and they will help you perform well. But, if you practice bad ones, those will come out in a competition and they will cause you to perform poorly.
Just so we’re on the same page about what I mean as I discuss training and competing, here are two definitions you should know:
Prime Sport: “Performing at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions.”
Prime Training: “Maintaining consistently high training quality resulting in optimal preparation for competitive success.”
To help you understand the real value of training, let me introduce you to my 10 Laws of Prime Training (plus a bonus 11th):
First Law: Prime Sport is not achieved on the day the competition, but rather in the days, weeks, and months before the competition. Many athletes believe that if they’re ready to go on the day of the competition, then they are prepared to perform their best. But I have found that success is determined more by what you do in the time leading up to the competition. If you’ve put in the time and effort to develop your physical, technical, tactical, and mental skills and habits, you will have the capabilities and the belief to perform your best on the day of the competition.
Second Law: Athletes should train like they compete. Whenever I give a seminar to athletes or coaches, I ask this question: Should you train like you compete or should you compete like you train? Most say, you should compete like you train. Their response is understandable in some ways because if you could compete in the positive, relaxed, and focused way that you train, then you would certainly perform well. But I believe that competing like you train is impossible for one simple reason: competitions matters. Training is easy because it doesn’t matter that much if you make mistakes. But if you perform poorly in competitions, it definitely does matter.
The problem is that many athletes train at 60-70% focus and intensity, then expect to be able to jump to 100% in a competition and perform their best. Unfortunately, this leap is too great for most athletes and they perform poorly. Training like you compete means putting as close to the same level of motivation, focus, and intensity into training as you do in a competition. It’s probably unrealistic to think that you can train exactly like you compete, but if you can get close to it, say 90%, then the last 10% that comes in a competition will be an easy step up. Only by training like you compete can you compete like you train.
Third Law: Preparation is the foundation of all physical, technical, tactical, and mental skills. There is no magic to acquiring skills. There are no special techniques that enable you to learn faster or better. Developing skills of any sort requires three steps: (1) Awareness of what you’re doing incorrectly and what is the proper execution; (2) Control to engage in the skills correctly; and (3) Repetition to ingrain the new skills. Only with this preparation will you be able to use those skills effectively and with confidence in competitions.
Fourth Law: Take responsibility for everything that impacts your sports performance. The only way that total preparation can be achieved is if you know every area that influences your sports performance. These areas include all of the components of physical, technical, tactical, and mental preparation. If you address every one of these areas consistently in your training, you can be sure that when you get to the competition, you will be totally prepared to perform your best.
Fifth Law: Sports preparation is about the Grind. To be your best, you have to put a lot of time and effort into your training. I call this the Grind, which involves having to put hours upon hours of time into training, well beyond the point that it is fun and exciting. If you let these immediate negative aspects of your training override your long-term goals of working hard and putting in the time, your motivation is going to suffer and you’re not going to perform your best in the big competitions. You must accept the Grind because, though it is periodically tiring, painful, and boring, failing to achieve your goals is much worse.
Sixth Law: Patience and persistence are essential to achieving Prime Sport. Good skills and habits take time to develop and you will experience plateaus and setbacks along the path toward your goals. You may become frustrated, impatient, and want to quit. If you let frustration and impatience overwhelm you, you will never achieve Prime Sport. If you understand that progress takes time and that there is no way to hurry progress, you will have the patience to experience Prime Sport. Drawing on that patience, if you persist long enough in the face of obstacles, the improvement will come and you will make Prime Sport the rule rather than the exception in your athletic performances.
Seventh Law: Prime preparation requires clear purpose, prime focus, and prime intensity. You must have a clear purpose that tells you what you’re doing to improve in training every day. You must consistently maintain focus on your purpose during training. Your body must be physically capable of performing the purpose by being rested, healthy, and at your ideal level of intensity.
Eighth Law: Consistent training leads to consistent competitive performance. Consistency is essential for Prime Sport and is one of the most important qualities that put the best athletes above the rest. Consistency in sports comes from consistency in training. Consistency relates to every aspects of your training and life. In addition to the obvious areas such as conditioning, technique, and tactics, it also pertains to attitude, effort, focus, intensity, emotions, sleep, and diet. Any area that influences your performance must be consistent before you can be consistent in your racing.
Ninth Law: Failure is essential for athletic success. I know that sounds contradictory, but you cannot succeed without failing. Failure shows you what is not working. It means that you are moving out of your comfort zone. Failure means you are taking risks and pushing your limits. Failure teaches you how to deal positively with adversity. Only from failure can you find true success.
Tenth Law: Prime Sport comes from “one more thing, one more time.” You can assume that most of your competitors are working hard to become the best athletes they can be. If you want to defeat them, you must ask yourself, “What can I do to get the edge over them?” Here is a simple rule I learned from an Olympic champion: “One more thing, one more time.” Anytime that he thought he was done with his training, he would think about what his greatest competitors were doing, and then take one more run, do one more set of weights, or do one more lap on the track. By doing one more thing, one more time, you are doing that little bit extra that will separate you on the day of the competition. Note: This law needs to be balanced with the realization that doing too much can lead to burnout.
BONUS: Eleventh Law: Prime preparation is devoted to readying yourself to perform your best in Prime Time. I define Prime Time as competing against the toughest competition, under the most demanding conditions, in the most important competition of your life. I’m not interested in your performing well in unimportant competitions, under ideal conditions, against a field that you know you can defeat; anyone can do that. Your ultimate goal is to perform your best when it really counts.
By following these 11 laws, you set yourself up to perform your best not only consistently, but also in your equivalent of the Olympics or the World Cup.
Want to learn more about getting mentally prepared to perform your best? Download a copy of my free Prime Sport e-book.
