When I was in high school, my basketball team played a small Catholic high school from northern Wisconsin. In watching warmups, you would have thought that my team would have dominated, as all but three of our guys could dunk, and we were much taller, faster and stronger than our competitors. I doubt one guy on the other team could dunk, and a bunch probably couldn’t touch rim.
What happened in the game?
We got our ass kicked, that’s what happened. I believe the score was something like 10-40 at the end of the first half.
How did the other team destroy our squad of rim-rocking giants? For one, they were well coached and had confidence in their game, and our group crumbled like a deck of cards in a strong wind with no ability to regain organization or direction.
Outside of this, what made the other team “athletic” enough to beat us, and for the question this article series poses to answer, what makes a good athlete in general? This of course, is talking mostly about team sport athletes, and those who can score more points than their opposition when the clock says “0.00” as opposed to running the fastest possible 100m dash or jumping higher.
We hear about natural athletes who have a knack for the sport. This is even true in sports where a particular level of speed is absolutely required, such as football, where a player who didn’t run the greatest 40 yard dash relative to his peers is still highly successful. What leads to this ability to get above the crowd and win at your sport?
Aside from running fast and jumping high though, what does it mean to be “athletic”? How do you become an athlete that puts more points on the board than your competitors? Below, I’ve complied a list of factors I’ve found build winners that go beyond strength, speed and power.
- Time spent playing one’s sport
- Multi-sport athletes with deep movement skill roots
- Mental resiliency
- Process based players
- Coachability and Self-Sacrifice
- Visual skill and Spatial Coordination
- (Selective) Hindbrain dominance
- Confidence
- Driven
- “Clutch”
- Disciplined
- Competitive
In the industry of sport performance, there is a dedicated army of relentless strength staff and medical personnel, preparing their team physically to the best of their ability and avoid injury, and yet, athletic players still might not reciprocate that preparation in the win and loss column, particularly as the skill demand of the sport increases.
In my own coaching experience, I’ve worked with a lot of types of athletes, and as I become more aware of new schools of training, such as brain based programming and vision, combined with an amateur fascination with sports psychology, leadership and team culture, I feel that I’ve come to grips with some other factors of what really makes athletes “good” in their sport, outside of vertical jump, speed, strength, injury prevention and armor for both momentum and collision that physical preparation coaches excel at improving.
This isn’t to downplay the importance of physical training for sport. Proper physical conditioning is a factor that can make good teams great, and keep great players on the field longer without getting injured and seeing downtime. Along with building power, strength and physical armor, it can build confidence, culture, and be a symbol of the teams discipline and desire to win, and is a critical piece of the equation.
The strength coach is often referred to at the “heart and soul” of the team. It is no wonder that many football strength coaches are starting to get the salaries they deserve in relation to other staff members.
I don’t write this article to discourage any dreams of higher, faster and stronger, as this can be not only a biomechanical, but mental advantage when properly harnessed.
The purpose of this article series is that of perspective, both for the aspiring athlete and parent, as well as physical preparation coach looking to make a maximal impact on performance by having awareness of all factors of athletic prowess. It’s also designed for the sport coach looking to find lowest hanging fruits, and cover all bases of sport preparation.
I also write it to help promote understanding between various camps in the total performance team of the athlete. As our knowledge of the mind, motor learning and group dynamics grows, so will the ability for these skills to be developed.
The above list could be compiled into a full-length book easily (and perhaps some day, it will be), but for now, let’s hit on each point briefly. Here we go.
Athlete Builder #1. Time Spent Playing One’s Sport
We all know the 10,000 hour rule (10,000 hours is the time required to reach mastery in one’s sport), and yes, it is extremely important, but it isn’t a cure all for being good at something. It is also important to be gifted in what you are doing for better efficiency of this rule.
More refined ideals of the 10,000 hour rule have brought the point to which you are an expert in a particular craft to between 3,000 and 20,000 hours, depending on your talent and practice style.
As far as genetics are concerned, this is speaking for sports that don’t require a particular physical benchmark, such as the 100m dash in track. If you don’t have double copies of the ACTN3 gene, you can sprint for 50,000 hours and you won’t be an expert, although you may be technically good… you still won’t be making the state sprint final.
In terms of being good at a sport, there are some skills that athletes should be doing early in life. From jumping off one leg, to working on a swim flutter kick, throwing a baseball, dribbling a basketball and good old-fashioned sprinting, there should be some early exposure to critical skills to begin the process of neural myelination in those pathways.
“This kid is laying down those early skill myelination pathways!”
Don’t confuse this early skill acquisition with early specialization however, kids love to play and emulate their parents, and just because you start something early doesn’t mean you won’t play other sports or burn out. There is an “optimal age” of first sport introduction by Eastern Bloc scientists, but I personally think that if a kid loves to play, then who should stop them?
You often see it though, from young Stefan Holm jumping over a makeshift high jump bar, to Andre Agassi swatting at a makeshift tennis ball mobile in his crib, some form of early myelination can lead to very high-end skills later on.
To be good at one’s sport, you gotta put in the time in specific, deliberate practice (lifting weights doesn’t count, unless there is a contextual relationship). Part of the time spent also lies in harmony with the next factor in the athlete equation, that of “movement fluency”.
Athlete Builder #2. Multi-Sport Athlete with Deep Movement Skill (Movement Fluency)
If I’m a sport parent of a football player I think is going to be the next Adrian Peterson, and I am presented with the off-season choice of having my kid do spring ball and lift weights OR have them run track in the spring, what is the better option?
For most of us reading this, it’s a no brainer for running track (just look at the rosters of powerhouses such as Ohio State or Alabama who are overwhelmingly dominated by multi-sport athletes), but sadly, many parents somehow see otherwise.
I believe that once the data of the extreme failure rates of early specialization start to override the self-validating drive of parents, we may see a reversal in this trend.
In the process of LDTE (Long Term Athletic Development), it’s all about building movement skill, or “movement fluency”. Here is a hint: A 12 year old who specializes in football and weightlifting is not building movement fluency. Same goes for basketball, tennis, swimming, or any other sport.
As much as I love lifting, this doesn’t count as your second sport in high school
Those who do well in sports, and are just good “athletes” have deep movement skills that often go outside their own given sport. In my dealings with youth track and field athletes, the best technical runners by far are those who have backgrounds in things like gymnastics.
Which ones have the worst sprint form?
Easy to tell.
It is kids who don’t do other sports, and who run cross country in the fall (and even do distance running year round).
Side point… if you want to ruin your child’s athletic future relative to their genetic capability, get them doing lots of distance running (and competitions!) early in life. There are some rare cases of athletes who only did cross country and then track sprints or jumps throughout high school and succeeded, but this is far from the optimal situation, and I’ve found that these athletes have a very difficult time adjusting to, and succeeding in, college track and field. I do not consider distance running playing another sport for anyone, in fact, there is probably a negative transfer in doing an endurance sport for any team sport athlete in the off-season. I think in some situations, low-mileage, short season cross country can be OK, but this really isn’t the norm.
In high school, the best athlete in my school played soccer in the fall, then went right to the basketball court. He barely lifted weights, hated squatting, but could dunk at 5’9 and was first team all conference. He also many of the athlete building qualities of this series.
Our star point guard before that (who transferred to a big city league school and won the state championship) was also a standout on the varsity baseball team. In fact, looking back at those players I graduated with in high school who went on to have successful college sport careers, be it basketball, track or soccer… these were the multi-sport athletes in our school. The one-sport specialists ended up quitting in college or having marginal careers.
In an extremely enjoyable article by Scott Raymond there are multiple stories of athletes who utilized other sports to help their game. Jewell Loyd, the number 1 pick in the 2015 WNBA draft credits her experience as a tennis player for her footwork on the basketball court. Destinee Hooker and Tiana Dockery, some of the best volleyball players in the nation, have been champion track athletes in addition to their primary sport. Football players have been recruited by their ability to dunk a basketball.
Even several of the Olympic swimmers (swimming is a sport known for early specialization due to how different it is vs. land sports) I work with were still playing other sports such as volleyball or soccer in high school, and most all were playing other sports in middle school. The list goes on, and on, and on.
Being strong and utilizing a resistance training program properly is important, and becomes even more so in the process of sport specialization as it unfolds later in an athlete’s career, but to think that just getting physically strong and playing one sport since middle school will get you far is a dead end street.
What do you think that college coach cares more about? The fact that you are in the high school’s “1000lb” lifting club, or that you made it to state in the 100m dash? I used to coach at a college that had plenty of guys in the 1000lb club, and only 1-2 guys who ran track in the spring (this being NCAA DIII where this double is very common)… and they went 1-11 on the year, and lost over 20 games in a row in the years to come.
Also, as we’ll get into later in this series, you stimulate dopamine when you learn new skills. When you cross-over sports in high school and renew a giant battery of skills and movements, you get a huge dopamine rush not present if you kept grinding out the same practice types over and over again.
The take-home message? Do not specialize in high school if you want to be a great athlete. Play other sports, and do general resistance training programs that compliment the demands of each of those sports, as well as train your weaknesses (if you are a good squatter but poor deadlifter in high school, focus on bringing up your deadlift). Also, find time to enjoy other sports in offseason (or even in-season) periods when you are at a point of specialization.
This isn’t quite the end of why it’s important to play other sports as well in being a total athlete, and we’ll get to this in other points, such as mental resiliency and leadership in this article series.
In part II, we’ll talk about the points of:
- Mental resiliency
- Process based players
- Coachability and self-sacrifice
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