Ingredients for sporting success: reliability, consistency and being better than ‘average’

A new week and some new goals to tackle.

Last week we covered sports science testing to validate if all your training meets the standard and demands of your sport.

This week we are focusing on the performance side of your training.

With your assessment results you will be put into categories of poor, below average, average, above average, good and excellent.

If you are waiting to compete at pro’ level, then you need to be hitting the top ends of above average and good.

We term the “above average” ranking “High Performance” and “good” ranking the “Peak Performance” category”.

If you are hitting “excellent” or “elite” times then you definitely have some genetic advantages, skill and talent contributing to those scores because very few achieve those scores with mastery.

The tests you conducted, or have still to go through, have to depict the sporting demands.

A marathon runner has different needs to a footballer or a rugby player in basic and positional needs.

The reason you assess two or three times a year is to understand if your hard work is paying off.

During a training session, you continually do micro assessments, one or two tests a week, to add to your tracking which will allow you to see your improvement or regressions over time.

Your ultimate goal as an athlete is to become more balanced in all areas of sports performance.

This is critical to reduce injuries, reduce wear and tear on joints and muscles and to keep you consistently performing at a high level.

Coaches demand consistency in performance because they need to formulate a game plan around you in relation to a winning outcome.

Your inconsistencies place doubt in the coaches’ mind that you are perhaps not the person for the sport and this applies to all aspects of your game.

You can be the fastest athlete on the field like an Usain Bolt, but if you can’t pass the ball accurately with a hockey stick, then you have no use for the coach.

Those who make it in sport have first and foremost, reliability in performance, consistency in outcome and the ability to do things the “average” sportsmen can’t.

To become exceptional, you need mastery, and this takes a calculated and informed approach to your training.

This is also why top-level athletes have multiple coaches.

Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers has achieved success throughout his career and won his sixth Super Bowl title at the age of 43 last Sunday. Picture: Getty Images

Tom Brady at 43, is still playing professional American Football for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and at the top of the list of the greatest quarterbacks of all-time.

At his age and his sport being a contact sport, technically he should not be playing at his age. To make it seem even more humanly impossible, he has had a total of 10 598 attempted throws, with an avenge of 64% success rate in completions.

The only way this has been made even remotely possible is he has had some of the best “behind the scenes” training and coaches working on his recovery and performance.

What sportsmen need to clearly understand, is that “volume of training” does not make you better, more than likely it will hurt you.

All that you are doing is over-developing specific muscle groups abnormally and the adjacent or assisting muscles or supporting muscles.

Think about our swimmers. They are riddled with injuries most of the time because most South African swimming coaches have an old school mentality.

Walk into any gym and watch these poor kids and athletes swim longer and harder, day in and day out.

SA swimming coaches on all levels believe more laps in a pool means faster times, which is absolute nonsense.

Yes, you need time in the pool for mastery of stroke, but you do not need to swim another lap once you have done your quota in chasing the gains.

Michael Phelps, the greatest swimmer the world has ever seen, had three sports science coaches working on him. His training regime included boxing, sled work, strength and power training with high intensity classes.

Michael Phelps is regarded one of the best swimmers of all time. Picture: Getty Images

He worked on areas that were weak and needed balancing and he got massive gains from doing things non-traditionally. His coaches did not tell him to swim another lap to break records.

There was no point in swimming for longer and harder, in fact scientifically it would have put him at a greater risk of injury.

Thinking out the box to gain the advantage was key to winning medals consistently and if this is the secret recipe, then you best start coping and tailoring a winning formula.

Once he reached a state of autonomy in the pool, it was obvious that the only gain that would add value was training outside the pool.

There are very few professional athletes in South Africa that seek professional advice once they have turned pro’.

It’s a sad reality that they think they have made it, yet if they only knew how hard it is to keep their position, and if they were smart, they could earn so much more money.

You are at home thinking to yourself; you don’t have opportunities; you have some of the best advice to get ahead of your competition.

You have to follow a winning formula and all it takes is your willingness to want to be better than the professional ahead of you.

Look out for next week’s article on game-nutrition for peak performance.

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