Ultimate Athlete - What it takes to succeed in sport!

Author: Jeff Wood

March 19, 2010

WIth the Olympics just behind us and the success of Canada’s Olympic team now officially in the record book for the most gold medals won by a nation in the history of the Winter Olympics, I think it is a great time to take a look at what it takes to be successful as an athlete.

Manitoba had some very notable athletes at these olympics including medalists Clara Hughes, Jon Montgomery, Jennifer Botterill and Jonathan Toews.  We have had the pleasure of working with the latter two athletes over the past 4 or 5 years.  I can tell you that I just about hit my head on the ceiling of my family room from jumping so high when Jonny scored the first goal in the gold medal game.  It was great to see such a great young athlete, step up under pressure and really be a leader on a team of superstars.

So the question is: how did he do it?  What has he done over the last several years of his life to become the athlete he has become at the age of 21?   What do successful athletes do to become the best of the best, Olympic Gold Medalists, World Champions and the like?

Over the next several weeks we will review the key factors to becoming the Ultimate Athlete.

Today, we will spend the next few minutes talking about COMMITMENT.  Every successful athlete must be committed to doing all of the little things necessary to get to the top level in their sport.  That means they set goals and work hard to achieve them, they eat the right foods, in the right amounts at the right time, they are mentally tough and they persevere when they encounter set backs.

Commitment means studying other elite athletes and/or successful people and their habits to see what makes them successful and applying some of those techniques into your life.  Back to Jonathan Toews for an example.  As a young hockey player Jonathan heard that Guy Lafleur would often go to the rink in the yard and shoot pucks at all hours of the day.   So, one day to his dad’s surprise there was Jon in the back yard rink shooting pucks at 3:00 in the morning.  He was trying to model himself after other great players even at a young age.   Now I am not saying you should be out shooting pucks at 3:00 in the morning but I am saying that extra work outside of regular practice time is important to your success as an athlete, regardless of your sport.

If you are not an athlete and want to become more physically fit or lose body fat, it doesn’t matter, you must model yourself after other successful people in order to become successful yourself.

Another thing great athletes are committed to is logging or diarizing what they do day in and day out.  Whether it is writing down everything you eat or your training or how you felt at practice today or all of those things, this can be a valuable tool to monitor your progress toward your goals.  It can tell you if you may be overtraining or why your body fat percentage is not decreasing or even why your sport performance has been so great as of late.   This practice may seem to be very tedious but it is another critical component to becoming an Ultimate Athlete.

As you can see commitment plays an important role to your success as and athlete or in any other endeavor.  In order for you to become the best you can be (the next Jon Montgomery, Jonathan Toews or Jennifer Botterill), you must be committed to it.  You need to learn from others and model them and record everything you do so you can better understand you and what makes you tick.  Take these first few steps this week and next week we will talk about some of the physical attributes required to be an Ultimate Athlete.

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