“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.” – John Ruskin
In sport, high quality efforts are over time going to be rewarded with high quality results. Sportspeople who make it to the top of their game are totally committed to becoming the best they can be, meaning they’re prepared to do whatever it takes to succeed… and to do it for as long as it takes.
Of course, it’s not the amount of time you spend in training that matters, it’s what you do in that training time that makes the difference. Spending more time in training than your competitors is meaningless if you lack focus and drift from one session to the next without a clear action plan or specific goal. Roger Bannister summed up the need for intelligent effort well when he said, “I trained for less than three-quarters of an hour, maybe five days a week – I didn’t have time to do more. But it was all about quality, not quantity, so I didn’t waste time jogging, ever.”
Success in sport goes beyond a commitment to putting in the training hours, it takes total commitment across every aspect of producing a top performance – including your eating plan, sleeping plan, resting plan, the list goes on. It’s not just one quality effort in isolation that leads to a quality result, it’s making every effort in everything you do a quality effort, and an effort that’s focused on getting the result you want.
“Everything is practise for the game.” – Pelé
As soccer legend Pelé once said, everything is practise for the game. Successful sportspeople know what they want to achieve, and they know what they need to do to achieve it – and they commit to doing it.
However, to fully commit to achieving a goal, your commitment must be mental as well as physical. This means you must believe it’s possible for you to achieve your goal. Let’s say your goal is to move up a grade in your sport. Your performance in an upcoming event will decide whether you make the grade or not. You’re doing everything you physically can to ensure you’re in peak condition for the event: you’re following a training plan, you’re eating a carefully planned diet, you’re getting the recommended amount of rest, and you’re getting the recommended amount of sleep every night. You’re physically committed to doing whatever it takes, but there’s a nagging voice of doubt in the back of your mind.
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford
What you believe influences the way you feel, and the way you feel about yourself and your potential to succeed influences the way you behave and the actions you take, and all of this has a direct impact on the way things turn out for you.
You see, quality doesn’t just apply to physical effort. No amount of physical training will allow you to perform at your best if you’re not mentally prepared to give it your best shot when it matters most. Top performers succeed because they’re physically and mentally prepared to succeed – they develop a winning attitude.
Don MacNaughton is a High Performance Coach and has worked tirelessly to help clients achieve success in the world of sport and business over the past 15 years. The next, highly popular, NLP Diploma and Life Coaching Certificate course starts in April 2019. Click here for more information or to sign up.