Transcription
Have you ever wondered what separates an average athlete from a world champion? In the last 15 years, I've trained with thousands of athletes through my career as a professional triathlete and later as a performance specialist for elite teams and world-class athletes. And in this process, I discovered three powerful traits that the athletes who go on to become world champions possess that other athletes just don't. And in this video, I'll show you what those traits are, as well as how you can use this knowledge to start creating world-class performances in your own life.
Last year, I had a group of my talents try to learn a muscle up. Some of them were able to do it in the first couple of tries, but most of them weren't. We then went on to our normal physical training, but one of the athletes just did not want to work out. You see, he wanted to keep trying to do the muscle up. Now, this guy was a BMX rider, and it would serve him very little to be able to do the muscle up, so it would be better for him to just do his normal physical training. But he refused. He wanted to keep trying. For the next two hours, I saw him struggle to try to get up on top of that bar, and he failed every single time. We all went home, and I did not see him again for another week. But when we came back, not only could he do the muscle up, but he was better at it than anyone else in the group.
This same guy is one of the most talented people that I've ever worked with, and I've seen this obsession with learning in almost every single athlete that I've seen make it to the World Elite. You see, they become extremely annoyed when they can't do something, so they just keep trying until they do it. When was the last time that you wanted to do something, but you quit? What if you decided to just keep going? If you pair that decision with the next powerful trait, you'll be amazed at what you'll be able to accomplish.
In 2018, I was selected to compete at the world championships in aquathlon, a swim-run event. Swimming was my weakest discipline in Triathlon, but since the world championships was held in Denmark, we had a chance to compete with more athletes, so the entire national team was invited. And when I got that call from the national team coach, I thought to myself, "I can't do this. I'm not good enough. There are so many people in the world that are better than me." But I still wanted to prove to the national team coach and to myself that I belonged in that field. So I worked relentlessly at my swimming. In the spring of that year, when the World Championships came around, I was so nervous on that start line that I peed a little in my wet suit. Yeah, not proud of that one. But determined to show the world that I belonged in that field, I went into the race with more rigor than I ever had in any race prior to that one. And to my surprise, I came in fifth. Fifth in the world. Me? Did I feel good enough after that? No. Now I just started to feel inferior in Triathlon, and the whole cycle repeated itself.
And I've seen this in almost every athlete that becomes extraordinary. They feel like somehow they are impostors and they are simply not good enough, so they do everything in their power to show the world that they are enough. Which is kind of paradoxical, because there's a third trait that world-class athletes have, and if you possess that, I think you'll find yourself achieving more than you ever thought possible.
In 2022, a scientist called Hauer and his colleagues wanted to find out what the number one predictor was for good talent environments to keep producing world-class athletes. What they found was that more than anything else, the number one predictor for an athlete's success was not training or genetics or some special mental trait. It was simply well-being. In my experience, well-being in this context does not mean contentment, but rather continuous progress and personal development. You see, the best athletes in the world don't do anything different than you and I. They just keep going and keep finding new ways to improve, just 1% every single day, which is what makes all the difference.
But there's still one gigantic issue that most people face, and it's this: even though you've just learned the common traits among world-class athletes, if you don't follow a system, you'll never become truly great. So, to make sure you're equipped to take advantage of all the things that I just taught you, you can watch this video right here to learn a simple system that I use with world-class athletes that'll instantly make you better.