Become an athlete: Induced exercise part 13.

(Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6  7  8  9  10 11 and 12)

It's time now to consider different kinds of activities you might take on.  But before we move to specific sports, I want to suggest the principle that should guide your selection, as much as you can within the constraints you have.  This is the principle:

I don't just want you to "get some exercise."  I want you to become an athlete.  Fix in your mind the intention of becoming an athlete.  Choose your activity, and design your routine, with becoming an athlete as your goal.

What makes a person an athlete?

1.  An athlete incorporates her sport into her identity.   I'm a skier.  I'm a swimmer.  I run triathlons.  There are a thousand ways to answer questions about "who you are," or "what you do;" for an athlete, the sport appears as one of the first answers, right up there with job and family.

2.  An athlete specializes.  She may take part in lots of different activities, but one or two of them become "her" sport, the one in which she measures herself as an athlete.  She has moved beyond "Oh, I try to stay active" and has claimed one or two activities as her very own, even if she has fun trying lots of different things.  The specialties may change as she moves through the seasons of life, but there is always a concentration.

3.  An athlete sets performance goals.  She goes beyond vaguely trying or hoping to see "results," and instead has specific, measurable goals in mind that she is working towards.  At any given time she can name and describe them, whether they are physical ("I'm trying to break 50 seconds in the 50-yard crawl") or mental ("I'm trying to run for 20 minutes without letting a complaining or whiny thought surface in my mind!") 

4.  An athlete masters the fundamentals before moving up to the next level.  Even if she has a long-term goal in mind, she identifies the steps along the way and focuses on one level at a time, not getting ahead of herself.  She knows that overreaching can lead to discouragement or to injury.

5.  An athlete learns from experts.  She reads books and articles written about her sport, mining them for new workouts to try, ways to correct bad form, inspirations and motivations.  She finds out what community resources, teams, classes, and competitions are available to her and uses them as she can.  She uses what she learns to set her performance goals and to design a workout plan that will help her reach them.

6.  An athlete listens to her body.  She notices when she needs more rest, or when she needs to change her workout schedule for better balance.  She observes pains and twinges and stiffness, takes them seriously, finds out if she needs to rest the muscle or make it stronger.  She modifies her routines, adds strength and balance training if necessary, remembers to stretch.  She seeks medical attention when it's warranted, and learns self-care skills to manage chronic injuries or weaknesses.  She cares for her body with the aim of preserving and extending its athletic competence.

7.  An athlete trains all the time.  Some sports never change:  swimming indoors is the same night and day, winter and summer, and running just moves to an indoor track.  Other sports have definite seasons:  skiing, mountain biking.  In the off-season, an athlete keeps moving, choosing activities that preserve fitness until the weather changes again.  A skier runs and strengthens his lower body all summer long, or maybe cruises the bike paths on skate-skis; a cyclist enrolls in spinning classes and lifts weights all through the cold winter, or maybe buys a set of studded tires and plows through the slush.

8.  An athlete looks to the future.  Imagine the life you want to be leading at age sixty, sevety, eighty.  What can you do now to fit yourself for that reality?  Should you learn a "lifelong" sport now?  Should you make the most of your young years, enjoying a sport that's mostly for the young, and save the low-impact stuff for when you can't take the impact anymore?  Some combination?  Taking the long-term view helps in another way:  we remember that we don't have to plow ahead fast, but can take the time to master the fundamentals before moving on to higher levels of the sport.  There is always something new to learn, and a single sport can hold interest for many years when new goals are set one at a time.

I urge you to take up at least one activity that will help you claim the title "athlete."

You may be able to choose a sport that easily makes you feel like one.  If so, great!  But even if you are constrained to activities that don't feel "athletic," you can approach them with an athlete's attitude.  I will write more about applying the athlete's attitude to specific kinds of physical activities in the next post.