It’s limiting them.
“You improve your sports performance by becoming a better athlete.
Better athletes have more tools.
More tools = more value.
More value = more opportunities.
Buying into the narrative of ‘more’ specificity ‘just because’ isn’t developmental.
It’s limiting by definition.”
-Ray Zingler on X
Go out and run a mile.
Depending on the shape you’re in, this could go well, or, very poorly.
But regardless, get your time.
For the sake of the example, let’s say its 9 minutes.
And now you want to improve that mile time.
What do you do?
Well, what commonsense would tell you to do, run more miles.
Let’s say over the next 8 weeks, you committed to running a mile, 4 times per week.
After that 8-weeks your mile time would undoubtedly improve.
And that’s awesome.
But let’s say you kept up with that same 1 mile, 4 times per week, for 5 years.
Eventually, you’d hit a point where you couldn’t improve your time.
Why?
Because your body would have adapted to that stimulus. It could no longer improve by simply repeating the same thing it’s already accustomed to doing.
So, what do we have to do to improve that mile?
Mix up our training, right?
We’ve got to run 100m sprints, ¼ miles at high speeds, 2 miles at slower paces, lift weights, train plyometrics, & etc.
We’d essentially have to break up the homeostasis in our body to get it to adapt to new, improved levels of performance.
This example is precisely how improved sport performance works as well.
If our kids, simply do the same thing year-round, whether its lacrosse, baseball, or tennis, they will get better initially, but eventually they hit that point where “their mile time isn’t getting any better.”
And what do most do without realizing it?
They continue to subject themselves to the “more” narrative, doing nothing but showcasing, what they’ve already showcased for the last 5 years.
They haven’t gotten any better.
They’ve accepted, “this is my ability and now I’ll just showcase it a lot, hoping a recruiter catches me on a good day.”
Leave it up to chance and you’re destined for failure.
It’s the most helpless, limiting feeling in the world.
You just don’t figure it out until you’re looking back, realizing you could have been better than you were.
The key is to build qualities that translate to your sport.
It’s “throwing wrenches at the mile” to get even better.
Focus on becoming a better athlete.
Not a limited single sport player.
