7 surefire steps to help you reach the pinnacle of the potential.
“Want to be the best athlete you can be?
Train with a real Strength Coach.
Build a Large Work Capacity.
Increase your Relative Strength.
Run hard Sprints (correctly).
Perform a variety of Jumps.
Have a PhD in your Sport.
Have a High Sport IQ.
Simple, not easy.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
Notice I said “best athlete you can be” and not “the best athlete”?
We hear people use the phrase “best they can be” all the time, but soon after realizing they don’t have the genetic potential of the outliers, that initial desire quickly becomes a pipe dream.
But for those who actually want to be the best athlete they can be, here is the formula:
1. Train with a real Strength Coach, Year-Round. No, not the guru bro on your block, but a real, qualified, proven strength coach. This will take doing some homework, but once you find him (or her) this will be without question your most important athletic potential resource.
2. Build a Large Work Capacity. Think of work capacity like a reservoir. The larger the reservoir, the larger the capacity you have to store more things, in our case, athletic performance potential. Being the best you can be starts with having the requisite bandwidth to act on the notion.
3. Increase your Relative Strength. For most, strength is the limiting factor. Some specialist guru will get on here and argue with me, but for MOST athletes, strength, despite it’s lack of popularity is the one quality that will improve EVERYTHING else, athletically. You can’t skip over strength if you want to be the best.
4. Run hard sprints. Take a look at your sport. How far are you typically sprinting? Good deal. Run regularly, quality sprints of that distance with complete recovery times. You’ll get faster. Speed matters.
5. Perform a variety of Jumps. The best athletes are bouncy and springy. They can get up in the air, but they can also come down. Improving your jumping ability will not only increase athletic power, but also athletic resilience. Like Van Halen says, “Jump!”
6. Have a PhD in your sport. This is common knowledge. If you want to be the best you can be, you have to practice your sport, MANY in today’s world are (over) doing this, the problem is they’ve skipped over 1-5.
7. Have a High Sport IQ. You can know how to play the game all you want, but do you understand, in depth, the game within the game? The average and good ones don’t. The Great ones do.
