Beijing Blast Number Four: Beijing 2008 is already over - and London 2012 is closer than you think.

By Wayne Goldsmith | In Beijing Blast

Well, let’s hope you enjoyed the spectacular Opening Ceremony because the Beijing 2008 Olympics is already over.

And London 2012 is closer than you think.

It takes a long time to develop a world class athlete.

Four years is not nearly enough time.

That’s because what’s required is so much more than the physical skills, fitness, strength, speed, power, agility and endurance…….much much more. It takes the SEVEN Cs:

Confidence - the first step to Beijing requires faith, belief and confidence: in you. You have to believe you can do it. You have to have faith in yourself as someone who dream and someone who is prepared to work hard to make those dreams a reality. Most Olympians are not super human - they are ordinary people with big dreams doing extra-ordinary things.

Composure - Emotion has no place in the competitive arena in the Olympics….for athletes. Parents get emotional about the deeds of their children. Fans get emotional about the success of their nation. But for athletes, the only thing emotion and excellence have in common is they both start with “e”. And in addition..

Control - Successful athletes in London will need to be able to control the emotion of their Olympic moments - control their responses and reactions to the emotion of the Olympic environment or…..the environment will control them and determine the result.

Courage - courage to face every challenge in front of you. Courage to dare to be different and to try new ideas and new directions regardless of people telling you “it can’t be done” or “that’s not the way to do it”.

Crisis Management - being able to deal with set backs, adversity, injuries, illness, accidents, financial problems, personal issues - to be able to deal with every obstacle that is thrown at you and be able to manage it and move on towards your London goals.

Creativity - one of the most important aspects of winning in the future is to be more creative, more innovative and smarter than your opposition. Greatness comes from being different, being unique, being an individual - by not following everyone else, by not getting side tracked by trends and fads - but by doing it differently and most importantly - doing it your way!

Consistency - You’ve got about 1500 days until the London Olympic Games. Putting in the occassional brilliant training session on about 27 of those days will not win you a gold medal. No need to be brilliant at training even on 270 of those days. But you need to be consistently good every day. You need to prepare at a higher standard, more consistently than anyone else in your sport and event anywhere in the world. Consistency is king!

So, London is coming very very soon - start training today!

Wayne Goldsmith

 

 

August 9, 2008

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