It’s a term you hear a lot thrown around social media and podcasts these days; you need to take a ‘hollistic approach’ to your training or development. But what does that actually mean? Why should you try to become a ‘hollistic athlete’? Do you really need to do all that to maximise your development?
Lets take a look.
But first, lets define what is actually meant be a ‘hollistic athlete’. In short, its an individual who leaves no stone unturned when it comes to their development in efforts to maximise their potential. This means there trying to take care of everything from their strength and conditioning to their recovery, sleep, skills, IQ, nutrition etc. They are covering all the bases possible, leaving no weak links in the chain.
To train and live like this whether it is for sport or the good of your health requires a lot of commitment in terms of energy, time and knowledge. It is by no means easy to adapt a ‘hollistic development’ approach to your sport. But, by the end of this blog I aim to have made it a little bit easier and practical giving you a place to start and a direction to head in. So, lets get into it!
- What do you really need to improve at?
As we’ve said already, theres a lot to cover when it comes to attempting to cover all bases to optimise your body and skillset as an athlete. So, lets start with a list of the eight main areas you need to take a look at:
- Strength/Power/Speed Training
- Condititioning/Fitness
- Nutrition
- Sleep
- Recovery
- Sport IQ
- Sport Skills
- Psychological/Mental Skills
Next, rank yourself out of 1-10 for each of these areas. Be honest with this and put some thought into it. No one is going to be or should be a perfect 10/10 in any area, but what we’re looking to find is the areas in which we’re seriously lagging behind and need to focus in on.
Once you’ve done this now ask yourself the question of ‘why did I give myself that score?’. This can be both positive and negative, if you were an 8/10 for you strength training why so? Are you seeing progress and doing it consistnently? Why is it going so well for you? Whats facilitating your progress with it? On the flip side, maybe you give yourself a 4/10 for you sleep habits, again why so? What are the barriers holding you back from getting more sleep or better quality sleep?
Do this for every area above, and do it as honestly, no matter how uncomfortbake it may feel. The areas that you feel most uncomfortable being honest with yourself about are probably the areas that if you hone in on will bring about the biggest performance improvements for you. Thats why its important to be honest becuase how you answer these will set up the next part; your plan for improvement.
The areas that you feel most uncomfortable being honest with yourself about are probably the areas that if you hone in on will bring about the biggest performance improvements for you.
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2. Making The Plan:
So, by now we should be aware of what areas we’re doing well in and what areas are most in need of attention. For now, the areas most in need of attention will be the focus as they are where the greatest room for improvement lies. The next step is to take those areas and the barriers you’ve identified hindering your progress in those areas and build a plan as to how to improve theDeveloping your plan can be done through answering these three questions in detail:
1 . What specifically do I need to improve at?
The key here is to be specific. For example, don’t just say ‘I need to improve my sport IQ’. Be specific, what about it do you need to improve? Is it your it your understanding of attacking different defensive coverages? How to get shots off vs tall defenders? The more specific you are now the less time and energy you will waste.
2. What has prevented me from improving in these areas in the past?
These are the barriers you identified earlier. What is holding you back from improving in your weaker areas? If you feel your strength training could be better, whats holding it back from being better? Does your gym not have the right equipment? Is it you lack the knowledge to build a good program? Again, be honest and specific as addressing these barriers will be how we unlock the potential improvements.
3. What do I need to do to improve now?
What would now help facilitate changes to your behaviours to start you on the path to developing in your weaker areas? Think of this from the perspective of building new habits rather than changing old ones. Lets say you want to imrpove your mental skills, specifically your confidence while playing your sport? What can behaviours can you implement to improve your confidence? Maybe you decided to implement a new coping routine, like wiping your shoes everytime you make a mistake, symbolising wiping away the mistake and starting afresh. A new positive coping behaviour is a lot easier to implement than trying to change a an old behaviour, likenegative self talk for example.
4. Bonus: How will I track my progress?
How do you know if your improving if your not measuring it or tracking it in some way? Strength and condititioning is easy, track numbers, times, weights etc., they don’t lie? But what about things like sleep? Or skills? 90% of the time some sort of technology or a daily journal will help you track your progress. You might score yourself out of 10 how well you slept, combined with your sleep score off your FitBit. Or a log of things you did well in a game or training and see how your stacking up against what you’ve been working on.
3. Get To Work:
At this stage you now have a detailed plan of your overall strengths and weaknesses when it comes to your overall athletic development. Now, you need to set your goals and get to work.
This should be relatively easy as you now know specifically what you need to improve and and how your going to do it. The last step is to develop a time frame and plan of action, both short term and long term. For example, if we’re looking to improve our diet to lose excess fat to improve our performance, our goals could look something like; ‘by the end of July (three months time) I want to have lost 3 kg (long term outcome goal), I will acheive this by getting into a caloric deficit of 400 calories per day (short term process goal). I’ll track my progress using MyFitnesspal and hire a nutritionist to help me clean up my diet as I’m unsure what to eat/not eat.’ Goals set, progress trackerd, barriers adressed. The last step is to do it, and do it consistently!
Closing Thoughts:
Hopefully by now you have a greater understanding of what it means to take a hollistic approach you your athletic development and health. But more importantly you are equipped with the tools and knowledge as to how to round out your overall athletic development by routing out your strengths and weaknesses, and creating a step-by-step plan to begin to improve in your weaker areas to bring up your overall health and athletic performance.
And remember, taking a hollistic approach to training is by no means easy. You will run in to challenges and speed bumps along the way. But remember you now have the knowledge and ability to break down any barriers in the way of your development.
Now go build.
Aaron.
Silent Grind Performance 
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