Things You can Do to Get Better at Sports

The lure of competitive sports is strong, with many people like Peter Benedict St. Andrews following them closely and others having dreams of becoming a top sports star who is loved and envied the world over. For those who want to be sports stars, in the mind it is really easy to have everything go right including receiving the trophy as your winning team’s most valuable player.

But there is a reality that is that nobody becomes a professional sports star without giving everything they have from an early age, to learn and constantly improve their skills. And even those who are born with fantastic natural ability have to spend years working hard on perfecting their skills. So for most of us, reaching superstar sports status is not attainable, but there are things you can do to improve your sports abilities. If you do, you will need to approach it in the right way. Here is a guideline.

Research

In order to get great at a sport, you need to become a student of the sport. You need to understand the mechanics of playing it and how to approach the game. This includes things like reading books about great players and coaches in the sport and what they did to become great. It also includes watching footage of professionals playing. When watching, look to pick up details and nuances. Find someone in the tapes you admire and try and emulate that person. People would say that basketball Kobe Bryant played a lot like Michael Jordan. During his career Kobe revealed that he watched thousands of hours of footage of Michael playing and emulated everything he could about the superstar. In the end he achieved a similar level of greatness.

Commitment

When you decide you want to improve at anything, you are agreeing to dedicate yourself to that goal. This will require a time and focus commitment that will cause you to have to sacrifice other things in your life. You may need to give up those weekend drinking sessions with the boys, or stop eating out at fast food joints three times a week or begin to get up earlier on weekends to practice, or probably all three. Whatever you will have to sacrifice, you need to be prepared to take it on because without making this type of sacrifice, you will probably not get any better.

Sweating the Details

The professionals work on every single detail of their game because they know that in order to be great, you need to be great at all things about your game. So if you are a naturally gifted defender and you are not very good at offense, you need to put the extra work in to become a good offensive player. Similarly, if you play offense well but are a limited defender, you need to dedicate the time so you are not a liability on defense. Be honest about the work you need and sweat the details because the details are often the difference maker in sports.

Develop a Game Attitude

Now that you have done your research, made a firm commitment to getting in shape, and sweated the details of the game, you need to prepare yourself for the games. Start with working on developing a routine to prepare yourself for each game. Most professional athletes have a specific way they prepare and this is because it mentally and physically sets you up for the high level of competing you are about to undertake. Your preparation may include listening to certain music, meditation, eating a certain type of meal before a game, or some other ritual you adopt. The bottom line is do it the same way every time. The second part is to develop a game attitude that you bring to games. This is serious business so you need to treat it as such. This does not mean that you cannot have fun, but it does mean that you treat the game like your life depends on it.

So there you have it, a guideline for getting better at sports. Take these suggestions to heart, be patient, and most of all, have fun.