Right now, if you were to look across social media, you would see an endless number of people who will tell you that, “You can be whatever you want to be, you just gotta grind harder than the next person.” Basically, they’re saying that in order to be great, you have to outwork and want victory more than the next person.

Well, I’ll tell you what. Every year, professional football teams cut athletes who have done nothing but work towards being a professional football player for the last 15 years of their lives. Think about it. Hundreds of people lose their dream and will have to find something else to do for a living other than being a professional athlete. Trust me when I tell you, they wanted it bad and they still failed. The talent pools that feed into the NFL and NBA are the biggest talent pools in professional sports. Becoming an All-Pro NFL player is more than the equivalent of winning a gold medal in Judo, greco-roman or freestyle wrestling because the talent pool is so much deeper.

Taking that into account, if you want your athlete to be something special he will have to have some type of physical gift or affinity for the sport. That’s the hard truth. No amount of work is going to take Steve Rogers and turn him into Captain First Round Draft Pick. Only hard work, good coaching, mentoring and being athletically gifted will get you into the elite club called the NFL.

Other things that people may try will not help you.

• Fancy supplements: Will only burn a hole in your wallet. The benefits of protein powders and creatine are highly overrated. Moreover, supplement companies are counting on gullible and naive weightlifters to purchase these useless products.
• Steroids will be of no use: unless you’ve already made it to the NFL. When you start using PEDs in high school, you are starting to young and by the time you reach the NFL, the effectiveness of the PEDs will have plateaued.

As much as it pains me to say this, but every athlete has to do some soul searching and decide if they are cut out for greatness in professional sports because, becoming great has two pre-requisites:

• You proclaiming your own greatness means nothing, everyone else has to proclaim it.
• Working hard is a given, but your talent will set you apart. Remember, hard work only beats talent when talent refuses to work hard.

Until next time …

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