Sports training for the workplace
 
Lifting weights hurts. Running until you drop sucks. Repetitive practice gets boring.  Training sessions are usually harder than the main event. But when that event arrives, you can bet that no athlete ever wishes they’d practiced less.

That’s a long-term view that is generally accepted amongst athletes, and I think it should apply to our work lives too. Here’s how.

One more rep!

If you’ve ever worked with a personal trainer, their single most annoying habit is their making you do “one more rep!” when you think you’ve finished.

Last month I agreed to attend a client pitch with my boss on a scheduled annual leave day. When she realised I had the day off, she quickly told me not to bother.

It had been a long week and I’d been looking forward to a morning on the couch watching the Boston Celtics live.

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But I knew that it would be a great project to work on if we won it, and the potential client could turn out to be a valuable contact. I recognised a development opportunity and insisted on coming along.

Just like sport, in order to get ahead in business, we sometimes have to employ the discipline to do that one extra rep.
 
Follow Through

Olympic champion 400-metre runner Michael Johnson gives the single greatest sports training tip applicable to the workplace.

He says the biggest mistake you can make in a training session is to skip your last set just because you’re tired. According to Johnson, you should always follow through on what you plan to do, or you risk selling yourself short.

Think about how that can be applied to your work life. If you’ve planned something for the day, week or month (your monthly reporting, for example) and then don’t do it, you’re selling yourself and your business short.

You’ve obviously planned it for a reason, so why not follow it through? Besides, do you want to be the person who’s known for over-promising but under-delivering?

Someone is Training While You’re Sleeping

A young basketball professional once lamented to me that, while he was recovering from an injury, others who would like his spot on the team were improving around him. As he put it: “there’s always someone training while you’re sleeping.”

You may not see yourself as particularly competitive, but to be in business— by nature— is to participate in one big competition for your customers’ money.

Next time you’re considering whether or not to go to that networking function to find new business, attend that training workshop to improve your skills, or work on that strategic plan to keep your business on track, remember one thing: if you don’t, a competitor probably will.

Recapping some ways we can apply sports training to our work lives:

1. One more rep! Get ahead – do that ‘extra rep’ once in a while.
2. Follow Through. Be known for doing what you say you’re going to do.
3. Someone is training while you’re sleeping. If you don’t put in the effort, someone else probably will.

In the end, that meeting I so gallantly volunteered my day off for was postponed anyway; you can’t discount the brownie points I earned there though!