Choosing the Best Hydration
As a professional athlete, you’re continuously looking for new ways to improve your performance. Sometimes you get caught up in so many different techniques that you might forget about the basics. Here are 2 tips from one of Australia’s most famous athletes.
Lee Troop – Coach of the High Performance wing of Boulder Track Club.
As times change, so is the way we do pretty much everything. With the development of new technologies, we now have more options than ever. This applies to being an athlete as well. With so many new ways of improving their performance, some athletes listen to so many different pieces of advice.
Although this is a good thing, it can sometimes do more harm than good. Due to an excess of information, it’s easy to start thinking about all the ways that can make trainings easier. Many different methods and products make athletes try to find an easy way out. This leads to them not progressing the way they should and prevents them from actually improving their performance.
A good coach should be able to help their trainees understand is the things that will guarantee results. This is why Lee Troop uses an approach that is a bit different than what you see every day.
Case Study: Lee Troop’s Coaching Methods
Lee Troop is undoubtedly one of Australia’s most famous athletes. During his time as a long-distance runner, he achieved many impressive goals. All of this happened before technology took over, and before the information overload that athletes expose themselves to.
Lee is a coach now, and he believes in a mix of the old-fashioned way of training and the best of what today’s science has to offer. For this reason, he trains his athletes in a way that ensures their progress and ultimate performance.
The first thing that Lee points out as an issue is a lack of devotion. He states that, as the world is becoming increasingly harder, it’s rarer now to find athletes who are ready to give 100% to training. Instead, many of them just start training and hope that they’ll get better. When that doesn’t happen, many of them either quit or suffer from severe lack of motivation.
He also criticises the paralysis that comes from many choices. He believes that reading so many things that all sorts of experts write about can lead to confusion. This is because there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every athlete is different, so the advice isn’t applicable to everyone.
Lee says that if you actually want to be a successful athlete, you need to choose what you read carefully and not fall for every method you come across. He also gives advice on how to reach your full potential. Here’s what he has to say:
1. Keep It Simple
Many athletes believe that they always need to adapt to new ways of training. Even though this might be true to some extent, there’s one thing that never gets old – hard work. Instead of finding different solutions to make training easier, you should focus on the core aspects of being an athlete.
Persistence is the key to improving your performance. As Lee puts is, it’s those long, boring training that will get you to where you want to be. So as long as you’re willing to arm yourself with patience and willing to sacrifice some things, you’ll be on your way to reaching your full potential.
2. Don’t Avoid Tiredness
Another thing that many athletes try to minimise is tiredness. As soon as they feel it, they look for ways to eliminate it. This is not a good approach. As a runner, you’re supposed to feel tired. Lee states that tiredness is an essential part of being a marathoner.
This is because after long periods of training and feeling tired after your training, you become more resilient and develop a strong marathon base.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take care of yourself after training. Good recovery techniques are very important, but it’s also important to embrace tiredness as a part of your training process.
The Final Word
If really want to reach your full potential, try adopting Lee’s methods. There’s a reason for his success, and as a coach he’s helping many athletes to reach their goals. As you can see, sometimes it’s good to take a break and get back to the basics, instead of forcing yourself to adopt so many habits.
This doesn’t mean that Lee is against the modern approaches to training and athletics. A good example is SOS, which he gives to his athletes to help them rehydrate. If you want to see what it is that makes SOS his choice, visit our shop for more information.
