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.Most professional athletes willtell you they ve been in the game for a decade, if notdecades.If you ve been training three months, the best ofthe best literally have fifty-two times more experience thanyou!What do you do?Learn from those who ve been there before.Here s a quick hint: Never accept a handball gamefrom an old guy in a gym.Trust me.Gramps over there willbe so kind and, you ll figure, I m in great shape. Grampswill make you run back and forth and back and forth whilehe stands like a statue in the middle tapping the ballslightly, ever so slightly back to you.You ll lose, experience near heart failure, andGrandpa won t even be out of breath.Gramps not only beatme in handball, but got a towel for me to wipe off my face.a beautiful moment of kindness.A kindness that could kill. You see, age is crafty.Old athletes figure out onething from years of doing it wrong: Less is more.You ve heard it before.The Olympic lifting legend,Tommy Kono, has made a living on those words.Trueexcellence also reflects a silky smoothness about it.Lesseffort, more results.We ve all heard the saying, now a cliché, that ajourney of a hundred miles begins with a single step.Theroad to excellence shouldn t be rushed, but most of us do.The high school athlete who sees graduation right aroundthe corner has a hard time hearing me tell him to go homewhen his practice is going horribly. But, I m just having a bad day, he says. Right, so you re practicing to be crappy, or merelysucky today? Go home. This is the great challenge of goal-setting.We set thewheels in motion after listening to Earl Nightingale orAnthony Robbins or Zig Ziglar, and chart master plans withnumbered and bulleted points to be at certain stages atcertain times, yet true excellence has that terrible skill ofbeing effortless.Like the old guy at the handball court,there s beauty in simplicity.And it s terribly confusing.I shake my headsometimes when I try to hold all these thoughts together." I want to get better than crappy, but to do this I needto do less." I want to stop sucking, but to do this I need to bemore elegant in my performances that suck." I want to make the big jump, but I have to jumpslowly to make the big jump. " All the while, I must look pretty doing it.Exactly! So, what can we do to get on the road toexcellence and perhaps find that most elusive of goals?First, know what the standards are for you.Make anhonest evaluation today.Before and after pictures havebeen overdone, I agree, but it s still hard to argue with howgreat they are for honest assessment.If your goals are athletic, look up the records in yoursport, watch the championship DVDs, and read the articlesreviewing the events.In other words, get a clue what you refacing.Next (and this is the most difficult) map a flexibleapproach to your goals.If you decide to be the bestpowerlifter in the world and don t know how to squat, maybethat s something you can t be flexible about.Learn to squat!However, everything else is negotiable.Championshave literally come to victory by opposite approaches.Outline your ideas, some broad strokes across a yellowtablet, and get an idea what you need to address.Next, continually strive to look excellent while youattempt this challenge.When I first started Olympic lifting,there was always a bodybuilding contest after the lifting.Mycoach, Dick Notmeyer, used to tell me to watch how wellthe bodybuilding competitors dressed when they came tothe competition.In street clothes, he d tell me, you couldfigure out the winner because he looked the best.Perhapssomething as simple as focusing on some perfect reps inthe gym might be a start.or trading in your Members Onlyjacket.Finally, excellence is rarely a stressed or rushed effort.It looks easy.Eliminate all the excess and strive forsimplicity.If you can remember Wayne Gretzky playinghockey, he flat moved more efficiently than anyone else.You could say the same about Michael Jordan at his peak,too.Eliminate the excess.Pare down what you do both intraining and in movement.Generally, less is more.It s funny.When I quit trying to throw so far with thediscus, when I simplified the movement, it went a lot farther.And Coach Maughan had a lot less to wipe his eyesabout at practice. The Philosophy of PhysicalCapitalMy wife, Tiffini, has been working in banking sincebefore we met in 1987.Today she s a bank examiner, andyes, she complains every time we watch It s a WonderfulLife.Just as I roll my eyes when I watch a football moviestarring geeky actors who couldn t play in a Powder Puffleague, she also rolls her eyes dismissively over the errorsof the evil bank examiners in the movie.The upside of marrying an intelligent woman withfinancial expertise is that you marry an intelligent womanwith financial expertise.And after we combine her careerchoice with the fact I can barely add two single-digitnumbers, Tiff handles the money in our family.Whenever I ask how much money I have, she says, Honey, you have one hundred dollars. That seems about right.Anyway, it only makes sense that the key concept Ihold in training would be stolen from the financial world.Iinsist on a concept I call physical capital.It s simply this:Physical capital is the sum of all your training, nutrition andrecovery tools.I call them recovery tools, but honestly, most of ussleep without giving a ton of consideration to theimportance sleep holds in muscle-building and fat-burning. Good night, dear, let s really drive out catabolic forcesfrom our bodies for the next eight hours! I don t think there s anyone who would disagree withthe concept of physical capital.In fact, I m sure I don t gonearly far enough encompassing the concept.There arecertainly emotional, financial, social and genetic factors thatlend themselves to success for any and all of your goals.Ifyou want to go to an Ivy League school and both Dad andGrandpa, graduates of said school, are also the largestdonors to the school, there s a chance you might just get abreak at admissions.Physical capital is an account all of us can add toevery day in some different way
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