What makes an athlete great? What does it take to turn an average runner into a fast sprinter? What work is needed to add 45 pounds to your bench press? What changes in your technique are needed to add 15 feet to your throw or 10 inches to your jump? How much work does it take to become really, really, good?
I work with young athletes, and recently I’ve had different individuals with different goals ask me this same question. I gave each a rough game plan and did my best to get them down the right path. To my delight they’ve all seen some improvement but then the same question has come up again, why am I not better?
“I saw it on Youtube”
People today want to be succesful and they want to be succesful now. With all the information available on youtube and the internet in general, people become overloaded with ‘knowledge’ and cycle through programs on weekly basis.
I’ve talked to some athletes who have ‘tried everything’ in the span of a month but still can’t seem to add 15 lbs to their bench. The more I listened the more I realized how complicated they were making things and not sticking to anything long enough so I usually suggest scaling back to a more basic approach. But it’s hard to compete with the latest internet marketing genius that makes eye catching videos and unbelievable promises and the basics seem, well, too basic. It’s hard to sell ‘long term’ when everything is a click away from our fingertips.
Long Term Results
For example, I followed a program that took my bench from 315 to 405 lbs. The same program took one of my athletes from 185 to 275. I’ve routinely coached kids that packed on 100+ lbs to their combined lifts (squat/bench/deadlift). That gets people’s attention, but when I tell them it took months and sometimes years of hard focused work to get there they lose interest. They want to do it in a couple of weeks and preferably with as little sweat and as many breaks for selfies to post as possible.
Nowadays people want to have all the results their hard work will give them as long as they don’t have to work too hard at it. It’s like Ronnie Coleman said “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody want to lift no heavy-ass weights.”
The Answer
So how do you become great? The answer is a lot simpler than people think. You work hard, day after day, week after week, year after year. You do the basic drills that your sport requires, 5 days a week. You work on flexibility, resistance, and agility training to supplement your sport drills. You ignore all the doubters and distractions that take you away from your training. When you start to see results and your training becomes easier, then you increase the intensity, the volume, or both. Most of all, you stay hungry and never satisfied. You have to remember you are not training to be good, you are training to be great.