"P" Charactersistics of Elite Athletes

Under the heading of "P" there are so many characteristics that is will be hard to keep this post short enough, so lets get to it. Practice, practice, practice it takes 10 years of deliberate practice to acquire skill mastery. Deliberate practice is systematic, sustained, specific, and takes focused effort to improve your skills. The elite have the ability to practice in a way lesser competitors can't. A big reason the elite can practice in this way is that they have an incredible ability to work through pain. Often pain becomes a signal that most athletes see as a time to stop practice, now I'm not talking about pain from injury, I'm talking about the discomfort that comes from training at the highest intensity. This persistence to stay with the task at hand is what enables the elite to make practice deliberate, which is the key to successful skill acquisition. So if you want to improve your skill level, hundreds of thousands of repetitions are needed in a planned out, specific, intense manner. In order to do this you must be persistent enough to work through the pain and discomfort involved with the practice.