Want ‘elite’ performance – work on good habits!
My latest read is the international bestseller Atomic Habits by James Clear. I’m halfway through, but I’m already looking back at my football career, the good and bad habits, and how they affected the teams I played for.
For context, habits are regular practices or routines people follow, often automatically. They can be both positive and negative and play a significant role in shaping our daily lives and long-term outcomes.
At Leeds United, the Thursday training session before a Saturday game was very methodical, detailed and long! It was set-piece day, both attacking and defending. We would work our way through defending set plays in our defensive 1/3rd, middle 1/3rd and attacking 1/3rd, both on the left- and right-hand side.
We would then work our way through attacking set plays in our defensive 1/3rd, middle 1/3rd and attacking 1/3rd, once again both on the left- and right-hand side.
We repeated this for every game, so it became ‘routine’, and we automatically assumed the correct positions. We just repeated our habits at Anfield, Highbury, Stamford Bridge, or Old Trafford, hanging on to a point or a lead with 10 minutes to go.
However, another significant benefit to our good habits was that they freed up our brainpower to deal with the unexpected. We weren’t thinking about where we should be on every set piece, as it was automatic. Amidst the heat of the battle, we could decipher those unexpected threats or changes and react to them. Did the man I was marking get replaced? Have we lost our main header of the ball? Has the opposition changed their corner routine? Do the playing conditions dictate a different approach?
Good habits can raise your performance to the next level….. I now need to read a bit more to eliminate the bad ones!
#GoodHabits #HighPerformance #Growth