The Long Game: Why Patience is Your Ultimate Performance Enhancer

It is that time of year when you reflect on the training and competition year that has passed and look forward to the battles to come. Generally, you likely took one of two approaches to December: you either embraced the holiday for rest and relaxation, or you used the extra free time to kick-start the new year with a massive training block.

Regardless of whether you rested or grinded, there is one thing you must do now: identify the areas that need improvement and plan exactly how to implement the changes required for the year ahead.

Beyond the Podium: Defining Underlying Goals

We all have “obvious” goals. You want to finish an event in a certain time, or for the ambitious, stand on the podium. These goals are lines in the sand; they motivate the hard days.

However, making these achievements a reality requires more than just sweat. It requires underlying goals—the subtle objectives that support the main mission but aren’t easy to post on social media.

Analyze your performance gaps:

Endurance Limitations: You may find that while your explosivity and power are dominant, you cannot sustain them to the finish line. You need to improve endurance to recover between hard efforts.

Technical Flaws: There could be ingrained aspects of your technique that limit your speed or agility.
Injury Prevention: Poor movement patterns might be aggravating niggling injuries that constantly set back your progression.

Everyone, even the seemingly unbeatable, has weaknesses that can be turned into strengths.

The Science of Adaptation (No Shortcuts Allowed)

Here is the catch. This is not some magazine tagline promising “six-pack abs in six weeks”. This is a real, long-term approach to making yourself a better athlete.

You must accept that this process will not be complete in a few weeks. Improving endurance, strength, speed, or technique does not happen after a handful of sessions.

Cellular Adaptation Your body has adapted and developed at a cellular level based on the training you have done over years. Building something different requires that same magnitude of long-term adaptation.

The “Performance Dip”: Why You Might Go Backwards

Ironing out flaws in technique is often the hardest part of the process. Your movements are ingrained in your nervous system through hundreds of thousands of repetitions. Simply “telling yourself” to move differently won’t correct that.

The Hard Truth: It is highly likely that your form, and your results, will seem to go slightly backwards initially.

The Discomfort: New techniques will feel “wrong” at first because your body is addicted to the old way.

The Resistance: When performance dips, it is incredibly hard to resist the temptation to revert to the method that “feels right” and used to get results.

But remember, to go beyond your previous results, you must change. You need changes in training to stimulate a change in output. Even when things click in practice, it takes massive repetition to make that movement instinctive under the extreme fatigue of competition.

The Payoff: Building the Machine

The big picture is the only one that matters. The good news is that once you have perfected your technique and built your body into an unbeatable machine, that fitness does not disappear overnight.

The body craves homeostasis; it wants to stay the way it has been for the longest time. Once you establish a new baseline:

Maintenance is Easier: It is much easier to maintain improvements than it was to make them.

Resilience: A solid foundation will carry you through periods of injury or illness, and your fitness will return much faster than it took to build initially.

Summary: Mastering the Art of Patience

What is required, beyond intensive analysis and meticulous planning? PATIENCE.

This is often the hardest aspect of training to master. The world tries to convince you there is always a shortcut. There isn’t. You have to stay the course and accept the reality that nothing worthwhile comes without diligent work and perseverance.

The new year is here. The plan is set. Now, do the work.