The Seven Behaviors of Highly Successful Athletes

By Charles Staley

There are many behaviors which lend themselves to successful training outcomes. For the purposes of this column however, I’ll focus on seven behaviors which I believe are tantamount for unprecedented levels of success:


1) Delayed Gratification
It has been said that the pain of self-discipline weighs ounces; while the pain of neglect weighs tons. Maturity is defined by the willingness to sacrifice now in order to experience a greater outcome in the future. This applies especially to nutrition and supplementation, since the positive outcomes of a sound nutritional program take weeks, if not months, to experience.


2) Consistency
Training is a form of motor learning, and learning requires repetition. Training consistency can be dramatically enhanced through a variety of techniques, but one of the most powerful methods is also the simplest: scheduling.

There is a VAST difference between thinking "Tomorrow I’m going to work out." and "My workout is between 7-8am tomorrow morning."

In the first case, you might have a vague time-frame in mind, say 8:00am. However, by 7:30, you’re behind schedule, so you reason to yourself that you’ll train after work. Then, by the time you leave work, you realize that you didn’t bring your gym clothes with you, so you think "I’ll just train after dinner."

And of course, after dinner, you’re tired and distracted by the television, and guess what? You missed your workout! Now, you might rationalize that you’ll just do the workout tomorrow instead. This leads you to the incorrect assumption that you simply rescheduled your workout rather than skipping it, which is exactly what you did.

On the other hand, knowing that you have a workout (or a meal) scheduled at an exact time, you’ll be much more likely to prepare for and keep your appointment. If you DO fail to keep to the schedule, you’ll be much more likely to feel a sense of consequence for your decision.


3) Goal-Directedness
The failure to develop goal-directed behavior accounts for more failure than all other causes combined. Most people understand that goals much be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-referenced (S.M.A.R.T.), however, many people fail to carefully weigh the benefits of achieving the goal versus what must be sacrificed.

If, upon careful inspection, you are deeply convinced that the benefits justify the sacrifices, you’ll create the psychic and emotional fuel necessary to sustain your motivation when the going gets rough (as it inevitably does!).


4) The Autotellic Mindset
Autotellic people do things primarily for their own intrinsic value, whereas exotellic people do things primarily for the secondary, external reward. In my experience, autotellic athletes are far better able to sustain their motivation. The take home lesson is this: people who just LOVE to train go much further than those who just want to look better.


5) Open-Mindedness
Closed-mindedness is, in my opinion, a genetically-ingrained survival trait. Thousands of years ago, a Neanderthal man looked under a rock and found some grubs to eat. The technique obviously had value, and it made more sense to look under more rocks than it did to look up in the trees.

But for this Neanderthal to go beyond mere survival, he should in fact look up in the trees, for if he did, he might find better food choices. In many ways, athletes are the same way.

At some point in their athletic careers, they are convinced to train in a certain way, and because this way lead to a certain degree of success, they now pronounce this "way" as the "only way." So remain receptive to new ideas, because usually, the thing you’re looking for is where you aren’t looking!


6) Fatigue Management
We LOVE to feel fragged after a workout, so much so that subconsciously, we tend to actually modify the workout to produce more post-workout fatigue, rather than to permit a better training performance.

When you’re trying to do gradually more and more work from session to session, fatigue-management skills are essential. I’ll address several unique Q2 fatigue management strategies for an upcoming column.


7) Lifestyle
Many athletes spend untold hours examining and re-examining their training, nutrition, and supplement schedule, while at the same time completely ignoring the fact that their life is antagonistic to their training efforts, rather than supportive of them.

Late night partying, exhausting job schedules (I know what you’re thinking here, but jobs CAN be changed if you have a good-enough reason), and general inefficiency can wreak havoc on the best laid plans.

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2 secrets to effortless fat loss

Brought to you by Tom Venuto

1. MAKE TRAINING FUN

At the age of 42, my friend John Bartlett transformed himself from what he described as a “240 pound physical mess” with 41% body fat, into a 175 pound bodybuilder with mounds of muscle and six pack abs.

The most surprising part is, he never did “cardio” in a gym. John lives in the red, rocky hills of Arizona. In addition to his weight lifting, John mountain biked, sometimes for an hour or two a day. Was he burning a lot of calories? You bet. Was he “working hard?” I suppose that depends on your definition of “work.”

Sometimes recreation and “fun hobbies” can become your biggest calorie burners. If you believe fat loss can only occur by doing a certain mode or type of exercise, such as cardio machines in a gym, (even if you hate it), then you haven’t grasped the importance of the energy balance equation yet and you’e limiting your choices, which can easily lead to boredom and dropout. Your body doesn’t care HOW you burn the calories, you just have to burn them.

A program can be highly effective and efficient, but if it doesn’t suit your disposition or if it’s too extreme (or boring) to adopt as part of your lifestyle, then it will fail you in the end. Hard work is always necessary for success, but for some people, the line between work and play has been blurred because they enjoy their training so much. In some cases, the enjoyment even turns into passion.

Here’s a good question: What could you do to burn a lot of calories and have fun in the process? Your choices are virtually unlimited. martial arts, ballroom dancing, team sports, hiking, beach volleyball? There is no magic fat burning workout, so stop looking for “the one.” If it burns a lot of calories, it will help you get leaner. Start thinking out of the box.



2. MAKE LOW CALORIE, HEALTHY FOOD TASTE GOOD

If you think that fat loss requires a diet consisting of bland rabbit food that tastes like sawdust, you couldn’t be more mistaken. Fat burning food can taste absolutely delicious! I should know better than anyone because for years, not only did I believe you had to eat 100% “clean” to get lean, I also believed that you had to eat plain, bland food to the point of self-sacrifice and self-punishment. (I was wrong.)

Truth be told, I do actually prefer a fairly plain and very simple meal plan, at least compared to most people’s standards. As a bodybuilder, it’s just the way I’ve gotten accustomed to eating. But contrary to rumors which say I’m some kind of cyborg and not a regular dude from jersey, (I’m a regular dude, I swear!), I do like tasty food and I enjoy a good meal as much as anyone.

What’s more, I recognize that most people demand tasty food and nutritional variety more than I do and that any diet that requires foods tasting like dirt is not going to last...

If you choose a diet that offers no variety or forces you to eat food that tastes like sawdust, it doesn’t matter how effective that diet is for burning fat in the short term, it won’t be very conducive for helping you to stick with your program over the long haul.

Make your training fun and make your food taste good - you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes!