How to be the best at any endeavor.

I just got off the phone with my coaching mentor, Jamie Rice. Coach Rice is the head hockey coach at Babson College whom I played for, for my final two years. This winter I took the assistant coaching position at North Quincy High School for boys varsity hockey. I have high hopes of having a positive impact on these kids. I think when I originally approached this gig, I was going about it all wrong. After speaking with coach, the outlook that he presented is so much smarter that I feel like a DB based on my previous thoughts. I really think this has tremendous carryover to life as well.

One of the points coach brought up really opened my eyes. He said to think about the way I train beginners. You don't take a beginner and have him load up a bunch of plates and go for a deep back squat or a heavy clean. We do things like mastering a set of 25 pushups, 3 x 8 in the pull up, and 3 x 8 perfect technique in the overhead squat. From there we move on to getting very strong in basic movement patterns. That makes perfect sense to me. I wish I had thought about hockey that way. My high school guys need to be VERY good at really basic stuff. Things like handling a puck with speed, playing from the middle of the ice out, passing and receiving pucks, and defending. If we can be the best in the league at these things, who the f#ck cares if we know how to play a left wing lock or a trap. No one in our league will be better at handling pucks, skating, passing, and defending. That will give us a great chance of winning every night. Relating it back to training, I am confident that if my high school players can do a heavy split squat (foot elevated), climb a 25 rope with no leg use, deadlift 1.5 bodyweight, and win foot races, that will put them in a position to be the best player on their team. That's really it. The athletes who can do these tasks are always the strongest, fastest guys or girls on the ice. Let's see if I can swing this analogy to my life.

There are probably 4-5 things that I should focus on that would have the largest impact on my bottom line, my health, my relationships, and my financial health. Right now I will try to figure these out. Stay tuned for my next post as I try to get into more life detail on this. In the meantime if you are reading this with the intention of getting lean or strong or whatever. My advice to you would be to pick 4-5 things and be better than everyone else at them. A quick list might be.

1. Lift weights with high intensity (in other words make it hard on yourself) 4 times per week.
2. Do some type of fast paced cardio or bodyweight circuit 2 times per week.
3. Cut all starch out of your final meal of the day.
4. Limit Booze intake to 2 nights per week.

If you get REALLY friggin good at these 4 things, you might find in 4 weeks that you have really improved your physique, your confidence, your outlook on life.

For a salesperson maybe its:

1. Make 25 calls per day to new prospects.
2. Visit 3 of your best customers daily in person just to say hello and listen to their concerns.
3. Align yourself with one new organization or team or strategic partnership per month.
4. Find a way to get new proposals and quotes out there even earlier than promised.

Not a sales expert, but use your imagination. I bet if you were better than everyone in your field at those 4 things, you would rank in the top 5 in sales.

Just some thoughts. Let me know what you think.

TSull
tom@sullivantrainingsystems.com