"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.

"O" Characteristics of Elite Athletes

This topic is sometimes considered unhealthy and unnatural but to the elite athlete it is as normal as taking a breath. I am talking about being obsessed with performance, the greatest have an obsession to make themselves better. They take every opportunity to take chance out of they picture. They want to be able to control all of the variables that they can. Another characteristic that people miss is that the elite are not like the ordinary. Ordinary people don't have the same thought processes, same discipline, same energy, or else they would be elite. The elite are not just ordinary people who do great things, they possess skills that are extraordinary and obsessive.

"N" Charateristices of Elite Athletes

Neuroplasticity...what the heck is that? And what does it have to do with elite athletes? Well as you may know neuroplasticity refers to the ability of our brains to change. The ability for the brain to reorganize itself by making new neural connections. Elite athletes are constantly developing and learning within their sport which keeps their brain working on making new connections. These new connections increase the likelihood that the athlete can associate one event to another thus having more experiences to draw from thereby increasing performance. It was always thought that our brains were hardwired and couldn't change. We are finding out that our brains can change and grow with each new experience. Which is what the Elite do better than most, which is to use the past to better the present.

"M" Characteristics of Elite Athletes

Happy New Year everyone! We are at the half way point in the characteristics series and find our selves on New Years day with the letter "M". On this day of resolutions, the word that first comes to mind is motivation. While the word conjures up all kinds of images of goal sheets and to do lists, it is really not any of these that the elite have in terms of motivation. I am sure that the elite do use some of these items in some form or another, but, what I believe the elite have is the ability to take actions that move them closer to the outcomes they are looking for, be it improvement of a skill or the analysis of a competitors game. In short they work toward their goals when others don't. As some marketing guru at Nike said "Just Do It" and that is what the elite certainly do!

"L" Characteristics of Elite Athletes

In this edition of characteristics of the elite athlete, we look at the letter "L". The first thing that comes to mind for most people is that the elite have a love for their sport, I have never really bought into that idea that you must love your sport in order to excel in it and obviously after reading Andre Agassi's book and the comments of many other elite athletes that a love for the game is not a prerequisite for excellence. One characteristic that I know is a factor in creating excellence is that other "L" word Labor. As has been said and will be said many times in the weeks ahead hard work is required across the board for high achievement. The elite are in no way shape or form lazy and if during any time in their careers they seem to get a little lazy their performance suffers. From all the labor that these athletes do they seem to create another word that gets thrown around a lot and that is luck. When opportunity and preparation collide in the battleground one athlete is deemed to be lucky to have gotten a break, when in fact had the athlete not learned the value of laboring in his craft the opportunity for success would have merely floated by.

"K" Characteristics of Elite Athletes

Probably the most notable trait that the average sportsman attributes to the elite is, that of possessing a so called killer instinct. While there may be something in our genetic make up that would enable some to kill their prey without any hesitation, in athletics I'm not sure that this scenario would fully apply. The elite all have a great sense of competition and knowing when their opponent is weakening or doubting ones abilities. In this way the so called killer instinct would be very prevalent, but the elite don't want to kill their opponents they want to have a good competitive effort, so that they may test their own skills under the toughest conditions. They also have a keen knowledge of their opponents weakness's and strengths and try to minimize their own inadequacies and capitalize on their opponents thus defeating them and reaching the goal of the elite which is to compete.

"J" Characteristics of Elite Athletes

Job noun 1. An action requiring some exertion; an undertaking. If we look at this definition of a job rather than the usual definition of an activity performed for a fee, it fits the elite athlete in a much different way. We have all seen athletes who treat their sport in a very job like manner. Punching in punching out. While putting in time is an essential part of becoming an elite athlete, just putting in time is no guarantee of success. The elite know that the key word in the definition of a job is exertion. There must be an extreme amount of exertion in the time that is being put into the job.