Premise: you experience 80% of your potential gains during the first four years of training.
Key points:
1. Openness to experience. Curiosity about the 20%.
2. Hard work is necessary but not sufficient.
3. Accuracy becomes more important because you’re past the point of diminishing returns.
Difference between beginner and intermediate? Consistency.
Difference between intermediate and advanced? Work ethic.
Difference between advanced and elite? Time. Details. Accuracy.
Time – you have to last long enough to go from 80% ability to 100% ability, most people aren’t patient enough for that, they’ve already gotten 80% of the gains, why keep going? You have to care and be curious about the last 20%, the more advanced you become, the less there is to stay curious about – it is well documented that the athletes with great, but unrealized potential exhibit past negative time perspective, which leads them to become discouraged by inevitable instances of slowed progress and failure
Numbers highly advanced casually produce: 10 years.
This is especially common in training-dependent sports.
Psychology of elite athletes:
HIGH
self-efficacy
emotionality
present fatalistic time perspective
past positive time perspective
openness to experience
Achievement motivation
LOW
past negative time perspective
emotional competence – coping, voids
future time perspective – not judging or predicting
Details – as an advanced athlete, you have surpassed that 4 year mark where returns for your effort significantly diminish, while a 1% difference between beginners is insignificant and has little predictive value, a 1% difference between advanced is, relatively, a much bigger margin
Accuracy – Is your training program producing the desired resultant preparedness? Are the molecules that make up your nutrition and your supplementation producing maximum recovery? Are your sleep and lifestyle maximizing natural recovery processes?
(caveat) Genetics – by definition, elite is exclusive, environment being equal, genetics will separate
There are a lot more beginners and intermediates than there are advanced and elite. Which explains why the vast majority of marketing in the fitness industry is geared towards consistency and work ethic. There is much less marketing around patience or accuracy.
Citations
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635651/full
