The Complete Guide to Becoming An Athlete and Sports Competitor

Chapter 1: What Does a Athlete and Sports Competitor Actually Do?

Let's clear something up right away: being an athlete and sports competitor is a job. It is a demanding, repetitive, often tedious job that happens to have a few glorious hours of competition attached to it. If you are picturing yourself on a podium or in a packed stadium before you have ever sat through a four-hour video review session or a third wind sprint in the rain, you are picturing the wrong part of the career. This chapter is about the other ninety percent.

The Core of the Job: Training and Preparation

Your primary responsibility as a professional athlete is not what happens on game day. It is everything you do so that game day is possible. For most athletes, that means a training cycle that runs year-round, not just during the season. A professional basketball player, for example, will typically play 82 regular-season games. But the actual work begins in late September with training camp, and continues through the summer with individual skill development, strength and conditioning programs, and league-mandated rest periods. The season is the test. The off-season is where you build the answer.

A typical training week during the season might look like this: on a Monday, you might have a film session at 9 a.m. to break down the previous game's mistakes, followed by a walkthrough practice from 11 to 1, then a weights session at 3. Tuesday would be a full-contact practice, which