You’ll never be the best you can be without physical preparation being atop your priorities.
“For most, playing sports is more fun than physically preparing for sports.
And understandably so..
But this does not change the fact that performance potential and the quality of an athletes athletic experience hinges on the pride taken in their physical preparation.”
-Ray Zingler on X
Growing up I played many sports, soccer, baseball, basketball, and then eventually the sport I wanted to play, football.
Both my grandfather and father were college football coaches, so being around the game my entire life naturally created a draw for me to play it.
But dad had a hard rule that I was not to play until the 6th grade.
Which was a 3 year advancement from his father’s rule for him of 9thgrade.
I remember being frustrated because I saw a bunch of my buddies playing pee wee ball and I wanted to do it, too.
And while I didn’t understand my father’s rule at the time, I understand it now.
It wasn’t that he was fearful of me playing football, obviously not. It was that he understood the physical nature of the game, and, “if you’re going to play football, you’re going to be physically prepared to play football.”
Which consequently it was around 6th grade that dad started introducing me to physical preparation.
You think strength training for adolescents is dangerous? Go watch team sports. Then, if you’re up for it, look at the injury occurrence rates of them vs. strength training.
To save you the time, there is about a 100-fold “risk” of team sports injury against strength training, which hovers right around 0%.
My dad’s “problem” though, was that he helped me fall too much in love with physical preparation.
As much as I loved football, I’d grown to love physical preparation for football even more.
Hence why I was training Legs at midnight on a Friday night AFTER our football game, because “I had to get it in.”
While I’m certainly not encouraging anyone to “be like I was”, because I recognize I was not like the average kid who, understandably, enjoys playing sports more than preparing for sports, it does not change this fact:
Performance potential and the quality of an athlete’s athletic experience hinges on the pride taken in their physical preparation.
Good athletes have good, God given, natural ability.
Great athletes do, too, but the difference between the good and the great is rarely found in natural ability.
The difference is found in the quality and prioritization of their physical preparation.
Athletic ceiling will ALWAYS be predicated on preparation.
