“I don’t expect my athletes to do extraordinary things; I expect them to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.” -Loren Landow
It is often unappreciated how important the fundamentals are to sport success. While the flashiness is what most often gets celebrated, it must be realized that all extraordinary performances are built on a solid foundation of fundamentals. Proper technique, ingrained over years and years and thousands of repetitions, lays the groundwork for exceptional performance of those fundamentals at a higher level. This goes back to the concept of stimulate-adapt-stabilize-actualize. Just because a skill has been completed once, does not mean it is readily performed immediately thereafter. It must be always revisited, and further cemented in the athlete’s motor pool. As it is repeatedly practiced, honed, and perfected, it becomes less volitional and more reflexive and instinctual. Once this is the case, it is performed at ever higher intensities and speeds, thus creating the performances you see at the highest levels. Ergo, don’t focus on doing the extraordinary – focus on doing the ordinary so well that it seems extraordinary.
