Play multiple sports.
I went to a basketball camp one summer when I was just a wee lad. The head instructor said that if you only play one sport, you should be exceptionally good at it. If you play more than one sport, your skills in each will degrade accordingly.
Every single person I talk to that played against, or alongside, a professional athlete when they were both in high school, including myself (for clarification – I played against and along side them; I was not, and am not, a professional athete – lest we be confused), have all said the same thing:
“Obviously ‘so-and-so’ is really good at *insert sport played professionally here*, but he/she dominated in every other sport they played too!!”
I’m going to disagree with Coach Forest Larson at my basketball camp, and agree with well respected strength coaches like Mike Boyle, Jason Ferruggia, Mike Robertson, and many many many others. The best way to become a great athlete is to play multiple sports.
This makes sense from a mechanical standpoint as well as psychological.
If you only play one, specific sport, your tissue will also be mapped that way, decreasing your limitations in other directions. If you only learn one set of skills, you may have trouble learning anything else, or even more likely, get burnt out and give-up altogether.
Tell me, how many of you know young, single sport athletes? Of those, how many of them have become injured or burnt out before they reach college? How many of them truly excel vs. are still only average but still really love it?
