Lessons Learned from the Best Athletes & Coaches in the World
I have been privileged to learn directly or indirectly from many of the world's best in the sporting arena, this is a collection of learnings applicable to all.
Photo by RDNE
I have written before that we fetishise elite sport in the business realms and the this may be true to a degree in the general health and fitness realm too. That said, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn, quite the contrary. The quote “everyone you meet can teach you something” comes to mind - another one of those famous and yet impossible to attribute quotes in the wisdom space.
The below lessons are a combination of explicit and observed (success often leaves clues).
Small Details Don’t Matter Much
I was recently talking with some other coaches in various conversations, and the resounding take away was the the small details mattered much less than the big picture. Young/new coaches often really fixate on details, which often transitions to intermediate coaches who love to discuss the merits of different details until they finally become experienced enough to realise the details probably don’t matter much. In an exercise prescription example from the distance running world, the difference between 8x1km, 10x800m and 5x1600m is largely irrelevant if intensities and rest periods are similar.
This is important in both the health and performance realm; because a good amount of time is wasted on being perfect before starting rather than just starting (I speak from experience, try starting a newsletter - FYI this was planned to launch in 2021). So don’t worry too much about whether beef or chicken protein is better if you aren’t hitting your protein goals for the day, or which oil to cook with if you are still eating take away most nights of the week. More on this sort of “big rock” thinking here.
How is More Important than What
The catch cry of the endurance world at the moment is “intensity control”. For the uninitiated this effectively just means better adherence to the intention of the training prescription (particularly not going harder than prescribed). You read that correctly, one of the biggest talking points (and differences between the world’s best and the rest) is doing what’s prescribed properly. The phrase “simple, not easy” comes to mind here.
The broader context here is that mindful and intentional execution is key to success, whatever that is. Be it an excel worksheet, gym session, recipe or race. Execute as intended, with high quality and the your results will be surprising (caveat: read below “Process Focussed” section).
How You Feel is Usually Better Than Any Other Single Data Source
This has specific context in sport to readiness (or recovery), and perceived effort in the realm of either endurance or resistance training output. There’s quite a bit of research in this realm and I won’t labour the point beyond the fact that: how you feel is a relevant, and perhaps the most important, data point. This is so much the case that there are stories of coaches like Sir Alex Ferguson making sure his office had a view of the car park so he could see how the players walked in. Other coaches will say things like “I greet all the players and how they respond is something I use to gauge how they are feeling and their readiness”.
This has validity in all realms of performance though. Whilst we all have days where we don’t feel the best and need to perform (this is the same for athletes I may add) we usually have some semblance of control over our day’s tasks. On days where your energy levels are higher and you are feeling better - take on the tasks that require more energy, effort and brainpower or even emotional energy (hello report writing). On other days, try to focus on things that are easier or less taxing to get done.
Enjoyment is Key
If there is any doubt about the benefits of enjoyment, spend some time reading up on duolingo. In fact when I was coaching I spent quite a while learning about ‘gamification’ and bringing principles of this into my coaching. After all, until recently, nobody engaged in video games for anything other than enjoyment and yet they could be the most frustrating (and at times complex) endeavours. So the design principles used to create this learning environment are a good lesson in human learning (manageable difficulty, progressive mastery, process, feedback etc). But I digress. Enjoyment is crucial to long term adherence and success. That’s not to say all this enjoyment is type 1 fun, it could be type 2 fun also (see below), but regardless there is some enjoyment. Similarly, the environment AROUND the work can help foster enjoyment, think about work bestie of yours and how helpful they are to your enjoyment of the work. This is the same in sport, believe me. In places like the NFL and big college programs, the environment around the field is as engineered as any training session to try foster team chemistry and a key part of this is enjoyment.
The World’s Best Sleep More
When it comes to performance (choose whatever definition or realm you’d like) the data are unambiguous - sleep is crucial. A single night of poor sleep is probably not something to concern yourself with but given the option of more or less the answer is more, 100 times out of 100. Sleep (or poor sleep) is also linked with injury, willpower (hello behaviour change) and cognitive performance - so it’s not just an athlete thing.
Furthermore, naps are definitely worth it - you’ll make the time back in productivity.
For something really fun - try a coffee nap: have an espresso then nap straight away, by the time you wake up the caffeine will be doing it’s thing.
Thank me later.
Track your Progress
Humans are fairly bad historians, or so medicine taught me (some medical students learn quicker than others - it took me a few times to realise medical records were a helpful starting point before talking to patients) and if you want to argue leave a comment below with what you had for dinner 8 days ago. This is why record keeping and tracking your progress is so important. In some realms this is easier than others, think game tape, competition results, old articles or earnings summaries. But in all those realms and ones in which progress is harder to track, process related tracking is crucial. That is, yes the results are key - they allow you to keep perspective and give an idea of trajectory, but knowing HOW you got there and the non-linearity of that serves a dual purpose. It gives perspective but it also allows you to understand the results in context. It also helps you better know what is working from a process standpoint (see below).
Process Focussed
I am hoping this is old news for most. In fact there are so many places this could be learned it’s almost rude to attribute it to elite coaches - it has roots in aspects of philosophy and religion amongst other places. Perhaps it is close to a ‘universal truth’, but let’s not get too carried away.
In short, we have little control over outcomes in many realms.
Be that sales (market forces, competitor behaviours), sport (competitors, weather, officials) or health (exposure to pathogens, accidents). What we can control is our process, how we do our work. Optimising for this, and detaching from the outcome, allows for optimal performance in all realms. It also yields better feedback - success despite poor process shouldn’t make you double down on that process. In the health examples above; focussing on optimising health means you will recover better from the accident (fitter and more nutritionally sound individuals recover better from accidents and surgery) and better resist or recover from the pathogen (virus season anyone?).
In sharing this I hope to be stimulating thought, reflection and improvement. After all, the most confident (and often best) are the most open about what they do in the sporting world often giving large portions of IP away.
So remember; success leaves clues.
Let me know if any of these have been your observations in your environments (or if you have others you have seen consistently)?
Reference List
Saw AE, Main LC, Gastin PB. Monitoring the athlete training response: subjective self-reported measures trump commonly used objective measures: a systematic review. Br J Sports Med. 2016 Mar;50(5):281-91. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2015-094758. Epub 2015 Sep 9. PMID: 26423706; PMCID: PMC4789708.
Fullagar HH, Skorski S, Duffield R, Hammes D, Coutts AJ, Meyer T. Sleep and athletic performance: the effects of sleep loss on exercise performance, and physiological and cognitive responses to exercise. Sports Med. 2015 Feb;45(2):161-86. doi: 10.1007/s40279-014-0260-0. PMID: 25315456.
Massar SAA, Lim J, Huettel SA. Sleep deprivation, effort allocation and performance. Prog Brain Res. 2019;246:1-26. doi: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2019.03.007. Epub 2019 Apr 3. PMID: 31072557.
Halson SL, Juliff LE. Sleep, sport, and the brain. Prog Brain Res. 2017;234:13-31. doi: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2017.06.006. Epub 2017 Jul 17. PMID: 29031461.
Cunha LA, Costa JA, Marques EA, Brito J, Lastella M, Figueiredo P. The Impact of Sleep Interventions on Athletic Performance: A Systematic Review. Sports Med Open. 2023 Jul 18;9(1):58. doi: 10.1186/s40798-023-00599-z. PMID: 37462808; PMCID: PMC10354314.