The Pillars of Peak Performance
Which pillars are you following well?
Which ones do you know about or have forgotten?
Which ones can you improve upon?
1. SLEEP
At least 8 hours of sleep every night (not just the time you have your eyes closed or are in bed, REAL sleep) is recommended for optimal mental focus, recovery, and fatigue resistance, and more good stuff.
2. CONSISTENCY
Are you being consistent with your training? Are you consistently working on your mental weakness? Are you consistently working your hardest and smartest? Are you consistently making gains? Do you give up easily?
Yes, being consistent is hard and sometimes not always in your control. But, when you are built off a consistent strong plan, body and mind, you are in the right place to perform well.
3. SKILL
You've got to work on improving your skills related to your sport or competition for peak performance, there is no way around it. Working on both physical and mental skills isn't just important for "winning" more, the process teaches you about yourself and creates that strong body-mind connection all athletes need to succeed.
4. THE MIND
The mind is a tricky subject to touch upon because not everyone is the same. This means, for peak performance, your best mental toughness, feeling of readiness, decision quickness, dedication, focus, and confidence stems from within. Your peak performance mind is something YOU personally develop and work into overtime; especially when considering the feedback you've been given from others, yourself and your successes and failures. Your personality, needs, experiences, and main competitive goals are also factors that help you develop your peak performance mind. There are many proven mental training programs, coaching services, and devices you can try, too. When in doubt, stop thinking and start feeling!
5. TALENT
Things that we just do well without much to no previous training or experience, that's talent. Having particular genetics and a specific body type also helps. But, at the end of the day, hard work always beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.
6. FUN
When performance is fun lots of things fall into place: your more relaxed, you get into flow state better, your focused better and with less effort, and (above all) you enjoy yourself thoroughly. Fun is a major perk of competition and peak performance. Just make sure to always make having fun (whatever that feels like or looks like to you) a main goal.
7. ROUTINE
A specific pre-performance routine puts your mind, body, and spirit into a place where you can tap into your peak potential. You've got to go through this transformational ritual/routine as turns you into a warrior from your "usual, 'ol boring self". The routine doesn't need to be complex or hard, sometimes all it takes is a few breaths and some visualization, but do it every time before performance to let yourself know it's time to let it rip.
8. YOU COMPETE WITH YOURSELF
Winners focus on winning and losers focus on winners. Taking a personal growth approach to performance is key for peak performance. It helps you focus deep, learn, improve and adapt in real time, and worry less about what others think. Competing with yourself puts your mind straight into the essence of what you are doing. It allows you to center down on what you can control vs. focusing on outside factors.
9. NOTHING LEFT ON THE TABLE
In other words, you explicitly tell yourself to do what it takes however it takes to get where you want to go. You forget about your worries, doubts, thoughts, fears, pride, greed, discomfort, soreness, etc. and become one with the challenges you've set out to accomplish. You give "yourself up" to get access to the strongest and most powerful parts of your mind and body.
10. PRACTICE
Practice doesn't make perfect performance, perfect practice makes perfect performance. Enough said!
11. PEAK HEALTH, NUTRITION
Peak performance requires that you be in peak physical and physiological health. Agreed? In fact, working on and maintaining health is arguably way more important for peak performance than all the hours of training and effort you put into practice. YOU are #1 most important piece of equipment to invest and be concerned with.
You do this by fueling right, eating right, supplementing right and all at the same time make sure what you consume is effective in both the short and long runs for both your health and performance.