Author: Dr. Jim Taylor

Prime Sport Alert!: Prime Training: It’s All about Quality

Despite what many athletes and coaches believe, competitions aren’t won on the day of the competition, just before the competition, or even during the competition. Rather, they are won in training in the weeks and months leading up to the competition. What you do in training will determine how you perform and the ultimate outcome of the competition. Training is where the development of Prime Sport begins. It’s the place where all of the physical, technical, tactical, and mental requirements of sport are established.

Despite this importance, I’m constantly amazed by the poor quality of training that I see athletes engage in, even at the world-class and professional levels. I see poor effort, ineffective focus, and little intensity. Yet these athletes expect to perform their best in competition. That’s unlikely to happen because they’re not engaging in prime training. Prime training involves maintaining the highest level of effort, focus, and intensity consistently throughout a practice session. Without prime training, Prime Sport will never be achieved.

Too often, I see athletes begin training without any clear idea of what they’re doing there. They have nothing in particular they’re working on to improve. When this happens, athletes are not only not improving, they’re also making it more difficult to improve because they’re further ingraining old and ineffective skills, which makes it harder to learn new skills.