I think that we can all appreciate the importance of keeping our players fit and healthy. One means of achieving this in our athletes is through the maintenance of a stable and constant training stimulus. As most of us now realize, when we see large spikes in training load, and especially the high-speed running (HSR) component, we often see injuries.
Successful entrepreneurs often tout the importance that daily morning rituals make to achieving their exceptional outcomes [1]. Those routines, conducted from 4 to 6am every morning for example, are claimed to reduce stress levels, make them happier as well as more productive. Rituals may include fasted exercise in their own home-based gym, meditation, self-reflection and day planning, topped off with a special diet or supplement. Since such morning habits are reportedly used by highly successful people, the ‘best practice’ approach suggests that embracing those should help others to become successful too. An alternative way to approach the question however, may be to ask whether having morning routines is in fact the chicken or the egg? Put differently, maybe it’s not the routines that make people successful, but rather that their success allows them to have the liberty and opportunity to have such routines? Put another way – are such routines enabled because you already make a few million each year, and have a bunch of people running your business for you?
As an immediate follow-up to the ‘context’ post, I wish to use this quote from the agnostic Robert G. Ingersoll as a stepping point for further comment on the importance of pragmatism when it comes to making decisions in the high-performance setting.
To open this blog post series, I thought I might start by discussing some of aspects that are often overlooked in sport science and coaching courses with respect to daily life in the trenches of elite sport. Most people who have worked in the elite performance setting for more than a few years would agree, that what makes them successful (or not) often has little to do with what they learned at school.
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