How to be Good at Anything
It took me over 20 years of practice to achieve what I did in freestyle motocross, it’s known that sports like FMX, BMX and other action sports take time to master, that is why usually athletes don’t begin to reach their peaks of their sports until their mid to late 20’s, sure there is exceptions to this rule but they are rare and often explainable. Usually teen prodigies that got an early start in their sport or had mentors from an early age, or both.
So I guess that’s it? End of story? It takes many years to be good at things and if you start late then too bad…. Well not quite, if you remember to the previous paragraph there are exceptions to the rule. So what makes them special? Why are there world champions at 19 when most athletes who achieve that have to wait until they are 25 or even later? Well as I said, early start, good mentors or umm…. natural talent? Age and guidance yes, natural talent? Nah
I really see the natural talent argument as a bit of a cop out, especially with action sports. Now before you get up in arms let me explain. In endurance sports the top athletes not only work hard but also tend to have genetic advantages such as having a higher proportion of slow twitch muscle fibres, and a greater propensity for the utilisation of oxygen in energy production. On the other side of the spectrum, power sports athletes, like Olympic weight lifters, would have a higher proportion of fast twitch muscle fibres as well as having the insertion and origin points of their muscles being farther from the joint than the average person, creating a mechanical advantage over the average person. So yes, in those instances there is natural ‘talent’ because they have a genetic advantage, but action sports tend to be less reliant on these kinds of attributes, effectively levelling the playing field so that genetics play a much smaller, potentially insignificant, role in an athlete being the best in the word.
Ok so it’s not natural talent, and age is relative, if someone starts at 5 as opposed to 15 years old then it would make sense they reach their peak earlier and potentially surpass their competitors due to being able to compete at an elite level for longer. So what now? That leaves mentorship or professional guidance. This makes sense does it not? but, not everyone has that resource available to them, or the financial ability to pay for it.
Now before you pack up on your dreams, not all is lost. I even propose that a professional mentor may not always be the very best or fastest way to learn a new skill, especially in this day and age with the technology we have access to.
The advantage of a mentor is that you have someone to guide you and correct you, tell you what is important to learn and what is less important. The disadvantage is that you potentially are taking on the shortcomings of that mentor and the fact that just because they have done it, that does not necessarily mean they know how they did it or how to teach it.
So then, where to from here? Well let me start by saying that learning a new skill is a skill unto itself, that’s right, with practice you can become better at learning new things. Which is what I am going to tell you about. If you understand how to learn then you can short cut the learning process removing much of the trial and error process that learning typically endures. In fact, I often use these methods I am about to tell you when teaching athletes and clients new skills in the weights room, and why typically I see such rapid progress in them.
When learning something new, you first need to identify any transferrable skills you have and how they can be adapted to fit into what you are learning. This will save you a heap of time and is one of the reasons people that can do lots of different things seem to pick up new skills more rapidly than people that don’t have a wide variety of skills.
Next you need to identify the fundamentals of the activity so that they can take priority when learning to create a base to build off. For example in skateboarding it would be more efficient to learn to ollie before you learn to kick flip rather than going directly to a kick flip. As simple and common sense as this sounds I have seen it time and time again with young athletes that want to learn the cool tricks first and forget about the fundamentals which then limits their progression. The same goes in the gym, people read some crazy bulking program designed for a seasoned athlete then without doing the foundational work required they attempt the program which usually results in them, failing, quitting, or, what happens most of the time, they get injured.
Next you need to identify which of the above mentioned are the easy pickings. What skills are important but easy to learn, and what are relatively unimportant but hard to learn, this will help you prioritise your practice. For example in freestyle motocross learning how to do balance wheelies is fairly easy and will teach you a lot about weight distribution, throttle, brake, and clutch control which are essential to the sport. Cornering speed, on the other hand, is a more difficult skill to master, still teaches you these things, but that particular skill is less essential to the sport so it should therefore take a lower priority.
Next you need to break down and identify the key differences between the best in the world and the average pro, these will be the key specialised skills you are required to excel. For example, in soccer one of the key differences between good and great players is their acceleration over the first few steps of a sprint. So in that case, spending a couple of hours a week in the gym working on that aspect of their training would be more effective and efficient at improving a player than them doing 20 hours a week of kicking drills to hone a skill they already have. This is where videos and the internet can come into play, Particularly in learning sporting skills. You can watch footage of elite athletes doing their sport, break it down and understand what is going on and then compare it to footage of yourself so self analyse and correct.
Finally you need to plan and put it into practice, and to be honest this is where most people fall short, committing an hour a day to learning your new skill, even if it is only a few hours a week, with proper planning and a focused approach it is astonishing how rapidly you can pick things up. The funny things is that most onlookers will never bother to ask how you got so good and just put it down to natural ability.
I use this and many other techniques to help my clients and athletes progress rapidly to achieve their goals not just in training but in life, if you want to take control of your body and get the most from your life then contact me today.
Train hard and be safe.
Your strength coach,
Cam
