Note: All of these are controllable.
“You want to be the best athlete you can be?
Prioritize Nutrition & Rest.
Get brutally strong.
Sprint & Jump with max effort.
Devote time to practicing your craft.
Play with violent intent inside the lines.
Practice great humility outside of them.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
You may not become the best athlete in the world, but I promise you, you can be the best you can be with focus on these 6 principles.
1. Prioritize Nutrition and Rest.
Think of performance potential in the context of a cross country drive. You are far more likely to safely and efficiently get to your destination if you fill your vehicle with high quality fuel (nutrition) and stay up to date on standard maintenance protocols: oil changes, tire rotations, etc. (rest, if you will).
The human body works similarly, your potential as an athlete starts and ends with the kitchen and the pillow. Don’t overlook these little things. (They are actually the big things.)
2. Get brutally strong.
There is no athlete in the world who cannot benefit from the ability to produce more force. Notice I use the term, ‘produce more force’ and not ‘squat more weight’, of course many athletes can and will benefit from building a stronger squat, but just becoming globally stronger will increase your athletic potential.
Strength is becoming increasingly demonized and unpopular, but I assure you, like Mark Bell says, “strength is never a weakness.”
3. Sprint & Jump with max effort.
I make this point after the brutally strong point because strength is the prerequisite to speed and power. You have to have a reservoir of strength to pull from before you’re able to produce the necessary force into the ground required to run faster and jump higher.
What do the best athletes do? Run fast and jump high? Correct. Do those things (correctly). Less is often more with sprinting and jumping.
4. Devote time to practicing your craft.
I don’t need to spend too much time here because most are already doing an abundance of this and not placing nearly the emphasis needed on 1-3, but yes, practicing skills within your sport(s) is essential, just remember the emphasis you place on 1-3 will determine your ceiling of output potential on gameday.
5. Play with violent intent inside the lines.
We live in a world that is further softening by the day. I’m not encouraging athletes to play maliciously, outside the rules of the game, but I am saying you have to have an attitude of violence in your heart in between the whistles if you truly want to be the best.
6. Practice great humility outside of them.
The best dogs (literal canines) I have, have great On/Off switches, when they need to be on, you do not want to jump the fence, when they are off, they’ll belly up next to you. I believe in this concept for great athletes, as well.
The neat thing about all 6 of these principles, is that each and every one one them is controllable. If you want to be the best you can be, put your focus here.
