🥇 The Athlete Development Journal

Simple solutions for complex athletic problems.

Listen to this episode on your way to practice. ⬇️

You can also listen on ​Spotify​ or ​Apple Podcasts​.

Train your mind.

Short-term gains for long-term loss

If you want to become the best 12-year-old baseball player in the world, then you should play as much baseball as possible. You should quit all other sports and solely focus on baseball. You should go to a ton of pitching lessons, hitting lessons, and play as many games as possible.

That’s the best way to get as good as possible in the short-term… but it destroys your long-term development.

Short term optimization almost always comes at a cost to long-term development.

Nixing all your other sports decreases your physical literacy development. Living with the pressure of constant lessons and games leads to burn-out. Having more games than practice decreases the iterations available for trial, error, and experimentation.

Those other kids who slow-cooked the process will eventually slingshot past your microwaved athleticism.

But, this doesn’t just apply to athlete development.

Both Walmart and Kmart were founded in 1962. For the next 20 years, Kmart was the behemoth “winning” company.

They aggressively leased buildings in prime real estate and bought up other companies to optimize their revenue quickly.

Walmart, on the other hand, stayed in small towns. They didn’t spend their money on fancy locations, but on developing their own supply chain and logistics infrastructure.

Because Kmart skipped the boring work of building a proprietary supply chain, they couldn’t lower prices as far as Walmart. By the early 90s, Walmart’s slow-cooked infrastructure allowed them to slingshot past Kmart’s microwaved retail business (which eventually spiraled into bankruptcy).

Shoot, it even applies to a single sprint. If you want to run a fast 40-yard dash, you shouldn’t run the first 10-yards the same way you would if you were trying to run a 10-yard only sprint. Optimizing for the short 10-yard sprint would require staying abnormally low and aggressively over-striding. That destroys the rhythm needed to continuing to accelerate and developing speed for the next 30-yards.

It never feels good to get behind in the moment, but even if you have to tattoo it on your forehead, please remember that short term optimization almost always comes at a cost to long-term development.

Build your body.

5 things you can do in-season to separate yourself

When the season starts, you get super busy. You’re juggling classes, practices, homework, training sessions, games, clubs, and some semblance of a social life. It’s hard, right?

Well, the good news is: problems are just opportunities in work clothes.

Your busyness is a problem, but everyone else has that same problem. So that problem serves as an opportunity for you to separate yourself from the pack.

What will you do during the season that others are too tired, too lazy, or not driven enough to do.

Here are 5 straight-forward things you can do to separate yourself in-season…

1) Journal and perform affirmations

The season is going to be filled with highs and lows. Good plays, bad plays. You’re going to get ripped by your coach. Some of it’s going to be fair, some of it is not. Sometimes you’ll feel super proud of yourself. Other times you’ll feel like you’ve let yourself and your team down.

Your psychological state is the gas in your car. The gas fuels you. It gives you the energy needed to perform.

Without the right gas, your car won’t go anywhere, regardless of how strong of an engine you have, how smooth your steering is, or how clear your directions are.

Taking time 2-3 days per week to journal about how you’re feeling, what’s been going right, what’s been going wrong, and what you plan to do in the future can be massive in keeping your psyche centered and make sense out of all the noise that’s being thrown at you.

To combat all that negative talk (whether it’s internal dialogue or criticism from coaches), performing affirmations every morning and before each practice and game can make a massive difference. I know it sounds corny, but look at yourself in the mirror and say 3-6 positive things about yourself.

• “I am a great softball player.”
• “My worth is not determined by how I play on the field or the grades I get in the classroom.”
• “I am fast, strong, smart, and skilled.”
• “I am a kind teammate and a fierce competitor”

It won’t make a difference right away, but it pays dividends in the long run.

2) Take care of your nutrition

I’ve been around enough high school athletes to know that when the season rolls around, nutrition quality goes down in the dumps.

I’m not asking you to be perfect; let’s just make sure you take care of the low hanging fruit.

• Drink 100 oz of water per day.
• Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.
• Eat 3-4 grams of high quality carbohydrates per pound of bodyweight per day (not just a bunch of Swedish Fish and Oreos).

You do that and you’ll be light years ahead of your peers.

3) Lift weights and sprint consistently and intensely

In-season training helps you stay healthier, perform better during the important times of the year (like playoffs), and see better long-term development.

Too often we lose sight of the forest for the trees. We focus on what’s happening right now and can’t see the long-term plan.

Stopping training once the season starts is like taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Continuing to train during the season is like taking 3 steps forward.

All of a sudden you’re 2 steps ahead of where you would otherwise be (along with being 3 steps ahead of your competition). Repeat this process season after season and year after year and you’ll learn the value of compound interest.

If you’re not sure what good in-season training looks like, I’ve written specifically about what to do ​here.​

4) SLEEP

I don’t have any clue why we have an education system that makes pubescent teenagers wake up for school at 5:30am. You guys should be getting 9 hours of sleep per night, but that’s almost impossible with the demands that you have.

So, being as diligent as you can regarding sleep can go a long way. Put your phone away and go to sleep at 9pm, instead of mindlessly scrolling on TikTok.

Steal a nap any chance that you get.

Beg your parents to let you go in late to school every now and then when you haven’t been able to get much sleep.

It’s worth it.

5) Watch film like a pro

The amount of high school athletes who know how to watch film in a way that translates to game day is essentially zero. Learning how to do that can be an absolute super power.

If you want more info on how to watch film, shoot me an email and let me know.

The Takeaways

1. Perform morning affirmations, pre-game affirmations, and journaling to make sure your psychological fuel stays healthy and effective.
2. Drink water, eat protein, and eat high quality carbs.
3. Sprint and lift two times per week.
4. Sleep as much as you can.
5. Learn how to watch film.

Fuel your soul.

It’s all going to be okay.

I rambled a bit more than expected in the mind and body sections, so I’ll keep this soul section short and sweet.

Whatever struggle you’re going through, however deep that valley is, it’s going to be okay.

Let’s wrap it up with a couple important things…

1. This newsletter and podcast are completely free. I spend many hours each week researching, writing, illustrating, recording, editing, and uploading. The best way you can support it and allow it to continue is to share it with people you know. You can just send them to ​gtperformance.co/newsletter​ and they can subscribe there!
2. Everything in these newsletters, podcasts, social media, and on our website is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice for you or your athlete. Consult directly with a healthcare professional.

Thanks so much for your help in spreading the word about athlete development!

Go be great out there,

Zach

Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS