WHY MOST ATHLETES NEVER REACH THEIR FULL POTENTIAL

I love sports. Sports have always been an important part of my life. I was a two sport

varsity athlete in high school and college. I experienced sports at a relatively high level. I didn’t

realize it at the time. But, twenty-five years later, I can honestly say that I never reached my full

athletic potential. I’m going to explain why I believe this is the common reality for most athletes.

First, as Christian author Robert Schuller pointed out, success is a never-ending process.

That means it requires continuous effort to maximize the process. Zig Ziglar shares that we are

all born with all the internal workings we need to win. Combining the points from these two wise

men, we see that we are born with all the God-given ability to win by engaging our talents in a

never-ending process of reaching for our goal to achieve success. But, what does that process

look like? If our desire is maximizing our God-given athletic ability, how do we design a process

that will give us that result?

Like it or not, athletic success is determined by performance. Therefore, the process for

maximizing our God-given athletic ability must positively impact performance. In other words,

the process to maximize athletic ability must include the important factors that impact

performance. We have identified four key factors in performance and for ease of explanation will

express this in equation form where P = Performance.

The first factor impacting performance (P) is fitness (F). Your level of fitness impacts

your performance. In evaluating your level of fitness (F), you must take into consideration

obvious variables including: conditioning, strength, and flexibility. It also includes physical

factors such as height and weight, as well as not so obvious factors like nutrition, health, and the

impact of any injuries. Most athletes understand the importance and agree that being fit is a key

in performance. If you are not fit, your performance suffers. The factors contributing to fitness

(F) also vary in level of importance depending upon the sport you are playing. For example, the

importance of your size, weight and strength in your fitness (F) level as an offensive lineman on

a football team is different than the importance of your size, weight, and strength fitness (F)

needs as a cross country runner. As a result, fitness (F) is important in every sport but the factors

that determine fitness (F) vary depending upon the needs of your sport. Accordingly, how you

evaluate fitness (F) varies depending upon the needs of your sport.

The next factor impacting performance (P) is effort (E). Full effort gives better results

than inconsistent or minimal effort. Understand that your effort is a key factor in performance

(P). If you take plays off, dog it, or in any way give less than your full effort, you are not on track

WHY MOST ATHLETES NEVER REACH THEIR FULL POTENTIAL

to maximize your performance. If you give full effort to every conditioning activity, every drill,

every rep, and every play, you raise your level of performance.

The third factor is sport specific skills orS3. We all understand there are skills necessary

to succeed in each sport. If you are a basketball you need ball handling skills, shooting skills,

passing skills, foot skills, defensive skills, etc. The skills also vary depending upon your position.

For example, the ball handling skills necessary to succeed if you are a point guard are different

than the ball handling skills needed to succeed as a post player.

So far, our performance equation is P = F + E + S3 where P = performance, F = fitness,

and S3 = sport specific skills. All young athletes focus on improving these variables in the

performance equation. They get most if not all of the attention of athletes, parents, and coaches.

There is a missing piece. This is why most athletes never reach their full potential. All attention

and effort is focused on these important variables impacting performance. However, there is

something missing, the missing piece.

The missing piece is the Mental Edge (ME) which consists of the mental and emotional

skills that aid athletes in maximizing performance. While most middle and high school athletes

focus entirely on fitness, effort, and sport specific skills, every college athletic program in the

country recognizes the importance of the Mental Edge. That is why they are incorporated these

skills in the training program for their athletes. They recognize the importance of these skills and

provide the training necessary to develop them. Adding the missing piece to our equation gives

us P = F + E + S3 + ME where P = performance, F = fitness, S3 = sport specific skills, and ME =

the Mental Edge.