Challenges When Optimizing Performance in Sports

Today it is commonly acknowledged that training your mindset is as important as training your skill set.

To that end we use sports psychology and coaches as an integrated part of any top athlete’s training regime.

Some trainers are also working with tools to understand and optimize team dynamics and performance. This, however, is far from the norm.

Being a top athlete in any sport is typically a very costly affair, and the support from associations and sponsors is far from covering the full load, unless you belong to the very, very top of your game. That leaves a lot of families and athletes in a constant surge for money and means to live out their passion and support their training. When money is a factor, often the equipment and skills-based training and development is prioritized because it seems as the most logical step to improve your performance.

The challenges to beat

Today, most top athletes use some sort of traditional coaching, which in itself is also a very useful tool.  In my opinion, however, coaching has two challenges:

• Coaching is subjective and biased– colored by the experience and knowledge of the coach and his/her interpretation of you.
• Coaching is expensive with prices ranging from 10s to 100s of thousands.

 

Being a top athlete is extremely expensive, and I have often seen how the personal development tools are deselected or down-sized to cut down costs, in order to prioritize the highly important skills-based training and equipment. The problem is that skills can only take you so far. At some point, it is your attitude, behavior and resilience that makes you stand out from the rest of the competitors – either as the winner or the looser.

 

How much time and money do you spend on your personal development compared to what you spend on your professional development?