The 80/20 Rule For Peak Performance

You may have heard of the ’80/20 rule’ before and how it (almost) universally applies to success factors in any endeavour.

In a nutshell, success does not come from doing everything great, it is achieved by doing the essential things very well and managing around the rest.

How does this apply to performing at your best in triathlon?

It’s a slight twist, but truth is that your psychology (or ‘inner game’) accounts for 80% of your performance, and mechanics or techniques provide the remaining 20%.

That is because it’s your psychology – your thoughts, decisions, emotions, perspectives, attitudes, composure in the moment, or fears and stresses — in training and racing that determine how you execute your mechanics. The quality of your technique is a result of how well you’ve directed your focus, attention, interpreted the feedback and pushed your physical skills a certain way.

If you want to improve any aspect of your technique or skills, you’ve got to put your focus on it, be committed to it, notice and interpret the feedback in the best way to continually improve.

If you don’t, you will fail to make progress in expanding your physical capacity and training your nervous system in the most efficient manner.

So how committed are you to improving your technique?

What you want to improve, and what you actually do are often very different things. You show up for your training carrying the stress and worries from work, you haven’t planned your day well enough so you’re in bit of a time crunch and end up over-forcing your technique, or worse…you simply let life get in the way and skip training altogether.

If you’re not seeing the improvement you want or are not giving 100% in your workouts, it’s not because of your mechanics or technique. It’s because your inner game is not effectively directing your body, and not summoning the powerful emotional states that leads to a focused, energetic, full-on-sweaty session on the bike, in the pool or on the trail.

Your best performance — aye…your best self – demands your inner game to lead the way.

So, the next question is: What are YOU doing to develop, improve and learn how to harness your inner game to achieve your best performance…and to be your best self?

If you’re not sure where to begin, start with our free ebook 8 1/2 Steps to Making 2011 Your Best Triathlon Year Ever!

And to really maximize your race day performance, you must read Race Faster NOW!

Tags: bike, mechanics, mental skills, peak performance, racing, results, run, skills, swim, technique, training, triathlon