The Mind Of A Real Ace Athlete!

by Kenney on 03. Sep, 2007 in Featured

Being an ace athlete requires a mindset. You must believe in your heart and mind that you are meant to be an ace athlete.

This mindset will put a fiery enthusiasm in each of your training sessions and performances. You will not settle for mediocre results; you will aim for the best results. Armed with this mindset, you are not just aiming to win competitions. You are aiming for a generation of ace players.

Olympic athletes, especially from nationalistic countries like the U.S. and Russia (especially the former U.S.S.R.), have been training hard with the prestige of their country in mind. Olympic bets are out to compete for future generations.

Nationalistic countries often produce a succession of world class champions because they train not only to be real “ace” athletes and win for their countries, but they also aim to someday reproduce ace players of higher caliber.

Not all the international sports players are like-minded. Some athletes are near-sighted and they focus only on their present win. Once the medal is at hand, they go back to their countries and celebrate, and then retire.

On one hand, many international athletes can be branded as ace athletes. They start out young and train under a real master of the sport. They excel and beat their own excellent records, and finally come out champions. Then they themselves train others.

On the other hand, not all winners in international sports are ace athletes. They train hard for the present, even under masters, but lack foresight to live the philosophy of ace sportsmanship.

A mindset that carries the ace sportsman’s philosophy has the following foundational components:

A. You are not your own.

You are not in training, or competing, just to please your ego. It’s not just for some purpose; it’s for a corporate mission—others are in it with you. The “others” besides you are your master-father-trainer, his “sons” in training, the trainer who “fathered” your “father,” and your future “sons” who will be training under you. All of you are keeping up to maintain excellence and a reputation.

It’s actually a lineage. A founder up the line mastered the sport in a peculiar way. He became champion using a style of his own, and he had a secret formula for coming up with such a winning style. He had trained other selected few in this style, who also trained others. These others did likewise, and so on. You may find yourself somewhere down the line, and soon your turn to add to this lineage would come. Now, all of you in this lineage all fight for a common cause: To keep this peculiar style the champion of all styles.

It’s really a battle of styles. Filipinos have a different style of playing a game compared to how the Chinese, Japanese, or Thais do.

However, the style develops and evolves, takes new forms, and comes out better than before. Due to the philosophy of aiming to be better, the style becomes updated due to the changing needs of the real arena, the real sports field “out there.”

Hence, you will see that being an ace sportsman is really a corporate or joint task done individually by members of a particular lineage style. You can just watch the difference of how basketball was played by a team ten years ago, and then by new members of the same team ten years hence. You will also hear or read from sports commentators how boxers of a particular country take on a peculiar style and seem undefeated for a number of seasons, until another group of boxers from another country develop their style and come out ace champion boxers.

You must bear in mind that being an ace athlete means:

Cooperating with others with a similar goal and;
Committing to a peculiar sports culture and outlook

B. Embrace the whole sport – its culture and history.

An ace athlete does not only want to play the game according to its rules and regulations. An ace athlete absorbs the whole sport into himself, as a person. In a sense, the athlete becomes “it.” He embodies the sport and becomes closely identified with it, not only by being a champion of the sport, but also by learning everything he can about it.

Western players of Asian sports like Karate, Judo, and Tae Kwon do, often behave like their Asian counterparts. They adopt the same discipline and patience, use the same terms in their respective languages, same outfits, even the same battle cries and salutes.

But ace players will go even further in adopting the cultures native to the sports – the religions, philosophies, arts, and to a certain extreme, even the food and the way of talking. Some of them even re-design their offices or houses to look like a place where the sport originated.

To most ace players, excellence in the sport includes getting the “feel” of everything connected to it. Some ace athletes based in California, USA who are winning championships upon championships, require their students among other things, mastery of the history of their sport’s country of origin.

For a show of deep commitment to the sport and loyalty to their coach-father, they are also required to visit the said country and take pictures of themselves there as proof of their trip.

Some sports are closely related to their culture and history. You cannot fully appreciate their beauty and meanings unless you learn their backgrounds. Some fencers study the styles of historic fencing in Spain, France, and England. They try to know details of how the game was used in sports and in combat. Some serious baseball and football players even visit the town where heroes of the sports became popular and where they first made their feats.

You may do similar trips as the aforesaid, which however are not really necessary, but the main thing here—the working principle—is that ace athletes must be so serious as to know why and how the sport began and developed from a local game to a popular sport.

Valuable secrets may be in store for the diligent researcher as historical backgrounds are uncovered, contributing significantly in the understanding of the mechanics or technology of a sport—which cannot be conceived if you merely play the sport by just knowing its rules and regulations.

It is helpful to know that Karate was developed when weaponry was outlawed by the Japanese, particularly the Satsuma and Shimazu clans, in Okinawa (the Ryukyu islands) sometime in 1470. The Okinawans secretly developed an imported hand and foot fighting art from China, making it relevant to the limited space they had and to the common preoccupations of Okinawans.

Thus, an ace Karate player will train better if he meditates and focuses in thinking that his body and limbs are to be as effective (and deadly) as real weapons of war. And he will know, through research, that the real masters cross train in the art of weaponry by sharpening their skills in Karate. An adage says, “When you’re good with weapons in hand, you’ll be invincible when empty handed.” Thus, to be a Karate champion, the ace athlete is to seriously consider cross training in weaponry arts.

It will help to have a knockout punch in boxing if you know about a Roman boxing and wrestling champion during the peak of the Empire. Milo, a contemporary of Theagenes, then the most noted boxer of his time, lived sometime in the fifth century B.C.

He carried calves as a boy and whole cows as a young man. He was able to punch cows dead with a fist blow to the head. Of course, in sports boxing, you’re not out there to kill foes with a blow to their heads. But you will have an idea how to develop a good, single action knockout punch.

You have to cross-train in weight training. Jogging, shadowboxing, and punching bag workouts are not enough.

In ancient Egypt, the earliest sign of sports boxing was in 4000 B.C., when gloves were simply made of thin leather that covered the hands, arms, and elbows. From this, one can obtain some techniques of blocking using not only the hands, but also the arms and elbows.

Moreover, ancient Greek athletes really gave life and limb to win in sports events. Doesn’t this give you a clear picture of dedication and commitment? The earliest record of an Olympic event in ancient Greece is in the 23rd book of the Iliad. From this, the life and training of an athlete is seen as nothing falling short of ace sportsmanship.

C. There’s always room for improvement.

Be thankful for your skills now, but don’t stop there and maintain status quo. Each morning, go out and train. Try to beat your all-time highest record. Yesterday was yesterday. Today is a different day. Yesterday’s achievement was good only for the past. Today, you need a fresh round of achievements to last another 24 hours.

Room for improvement is often said to be the need of poor performers, but it is not only for mediocre players. This phrase of encouragement is also for top players. You may be doing excellently today, but there’s still room for improvement to do much better tomorrow. This push to do a bit more each day instills in the ace player the:

1. Humility to accept his weaknesses – This frame of mind reminds the athlete to avoid having a swell of pride and thinking too highly of himself—and not being able to see his other needs and weaknesses. He is lured into believing in his “perfection.” Pride can often spoil a performance, especially on the Day.

Yes, he needs to boost his confidence; but he must be reminded that, like all the others, he needs to push himself a little bit more forward to do much better. Nobody is good enough to ignore more improvement. This also prevents him from the pitfall of complacency that often attacks many achievers who tend to rest on their pedestals too long and be side tracked by blinding accolades.

Yes, triumph must be celebrated, but it never equates to perfection. Victory does not eliminate weaknesses. After a short party, the athlete must go back to athletic sculpturing to weed out whatever weakness needs to be (or could be) discarded.

In the 1970s, world-renowned boxer Muhammad Ali once had a weak jaw from a smash and fatal jab of Ken Norton. He worked out the weakness, and soon became invincible once again, especially when contenders found that the frail jaw was weak no more.

But a more apt example is the boxing champ Manny Pacquiao who, though champion in the super feather weight division, and famous for his south paw (devastating left punch), worked hard on his right punch so that both his left and right punches are explosive like dynamites!

2. Drive to conquer weaknesses – Acknowledging your weaknesses is just one side of the story. You don’t stop there. It’s no use to be humble and then let it stay at that. Next step to humility is the practicality to launch forward to turn weaknesses into strengths.

Some players try to hide their weaknesses from their opponents. This is effective for a time. But it will soon be found out. Many contenders are hell-bent on defeating you. They will carefully take note of your preferred moves. These moves are usually your strengths, and moves you seldom do are usually your weaknesses.

Example A:

Some Chess players are so obvious when they, for instance, are willing to sacrifice other pieces to save their queen and perhaps a rook or knight. They play well using these. Some opponents might counter such strength by devising strategies to trap the queen and other relevant pieces.

A good attitude is to either:
1) Learn strong strategies using different pieces other than the queen.
2) Hide such strength by putting equal emphasis on all pieces to divert your opponent’s attention. But make sure that you train yourself to be good with all pieces. Such camouflage tactic is only temporary.

Example B:

It is easy to spot whether you are a forehand or backhand tennis player. When you often use a right forehand to return a ball, your opponent will easily concoct a plan to fire all his shots to your left side, sometimes to your extreme left where your right forehand becomes unusable.

When he sees this, he takes delight in his discovery and gives you a rapid succession of returns to your weak side. Or say, he tries a super top spin against you several times, and you fail terribly to return each time.

Or, after a succession of his powerful swings that send the ball far to the back of your court, he notices that you have become comfortably settled there, just waiting for a fast ball, and very far from the net. For sure, his next stroke will be a very slight swing to send the ball just inches beyond the net, and that will send you scampering in vain to return to the ball.

Example C:

No matter how good you are, if you use only your right or only your left hand to dribble and shoot the ball, you can’t be a basketball champion for long. Foes will easily take notice and be able to accurately guess your next move and intercept or interrupt whatever you are up to with the ball in hand.

The best thing is to train both your right and left hand in handling the ball.

Thus, an ace athlete will never be caught resting on his laurels. He always sees a level higher than where he is standing, and he will always go for that extra mile.

D. Unleash the immeasurable potentials.

The last foundational component of ace sportsmanship philosophy is that the athlete believes he is an asset to the team and the sport as a whole. He intently believes that there are potentials in him waiting to be drawn out through training.

His potentials are like the seeds of a fruit covered by husks and skin that must be peeled off. The thick, ugly husks make it look like no edible fruit can be found inside it. You have to pull off fiber after fiber and peel off the skin until the very fruit, which is the real essence of it all, finally appears. Inside the fruit are seeds that have the potential to reproduce bountiful harvests.

An ace athlete knows that inside him is a champion. Through training, he sculptures his body to get rid of hindrances that delay the perfection of his skills until gradually, the champion in him emerges. Being a champion, he can then reproduce himself in others by helping others draw out their potentials.

A mere desire to win in a sports event may enable you to be champion for a while. This makes you a temporary champion. However, this does not necessarily mean the immeasurable potentials in you have been uncovered and released. The more latent potentials will only surface once you aim to be a champion for life—always aim to be better with or without competition.

There are athletes obsessed about being champions because they want to prove to everybody that they are the best. They will even compete against teammates to prove that they alone are responsible for the win. They want to show that without them, the victory would not have been possible.

Obsession with winning to prove oneself is not a quality of an ace athlete.

It is purely obsession – selfish, destructive, and greedy obsession. It goes against teamwork because its sole motive is to prove “I’m the best!” Obsession can produce champions and win the over-all championship for the team. But the champion it produces is often the kind that people hate.

Some players would try to make all the scores for the team. They work so hard, but they are usually very demanding, hot headed, and manipulative. They treat teammates as props for the show where they get the lead role—in fact, the only role. Obsessed players have no loyalty but to their ego. They approve of anything that will make them stars.

Basketball often is a breeding place for obsessed players. You see players who try to be forward, center, guard, and even referee and scorer all rolled into one. Some of them want to play audience too, if they could. An obsession to prove self-worth is one of the dismal signs of immaturity, and this can be hardly termed as something of an ace.

Ace athletes work for a common good. They will pour all for the prestige of their team, school, or country. They may prove that the style or technique of their father-trainer is better than the rest, but they will never compete for selfish ends. They cannot claim that “I am the best!” because they workout hard to beat their weaknesses—and admitting weaknesses is something non-ace athletes cannot do.

Hence, the mind of ace players never strives to prove they’re anything except athletes who realize they need to train more and more.

To Your Immediate and Lasting Dominating Athletic Success!

Kenney Jr.
Championship Circle
Director

[tags]athletics, athlete, how to become a great athlete, sports, sports instruction, athlete instruction, sports training[/tags]

Kenney

I have one goal... to help athletes be more & get more out of the sport that they love, easier!!! Championship Circle - BE... more, Sports Training, Drills, & Help Giving athletes (everywhere) the equal opportunity to BE... well, GREAT!!!

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