I know, I know, I know.

This sounds like an advertisement for a new sporting product or new piece of sporting training equipment…the sporting equivalent of the “knife that cuts through a shoe” or the “miracle mop” that does everything around the house including walking the dog, cooking dinner and putting the kids to bed.

But no….this is serious. You can achieve More with Less…this is how to do Less but get a Better result.

Three Ways to Do it….more, more, more.

There are three ways of doing things: three basic ways of approaching training, preparation and coaching in sport:

• The More Way: Train hard.
• The More with More Way: Train harder.
• The More with Less Way: Train smarter.

But let’s define “smarter”.

Let’s start with a sport like Tennis.

The More way of doing things: “Let’s hit a bucket of balls across the net”.

The More with More way of doing things: “Let’s hit two buckets of balls across the net”.

And the More with Less way of doing things: “Let’s be totally engaged with the training task of hitting balls across the net, lets focus on each ball we hit and challenge ourselves physically and technically in some way every time we hit a ball”.

The Mathematics of Mediocrity:

The aim of all training in competitive sport is to prepare athletes to perform to their full potential in competition or, if you like, to train the way you want to play!

So go back to our Tennis example.

Let’s say there are 100 balls in the bucket. And I hit 100 balls over the net. And of that 100 balls I hit over the net, my mind is only fully engaged with 10 of them. So, in terms of how my training relates to my competition that’s a success rate of………10%.

Now convert a 10% success rate to an actual Match situation. You l.o.s.e.

If however I have another bucket containing just 10 balls and I hit those 10 balls over the net with the same focus, concentration, passion, intensity and engagement that I use in competition…..what’s the success rate?

100%!!!!! and anyone who has a 100% success rate in a Match can start booking a flight to Wimbledon or Flushing Meadows. You are going to the top.

Don’t Count the Repeats: Make the Repeats Count.

This is the critical concept of the More with Less philosophy. Doesn’t matter if it is swimming laps, catching baseballs, throwing footballs, shooting baskets, shooting pucks….it is all the same principle…..don’t count the repeats: make the repeats count.

Doing more, in itself is not the answer. Just increasing training volume (i.e. how much you do) is not going to give you the results that you think it will.

Doing less but with complete, total physical and mental engagement in the task is the answer.

And now the Punchline……

So right now, some of you are probably reading this and thinking, “So this guy is telling me success is easy, to work less and there is a quick way to get to the top”.

Wrong.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The More with Less philosophy is actually harder, more challenging and more demanding than the traditional “More” and “More with More” methods because of the level of athlete and coach engagement required.

There are no “free” hits in the More with Less philosophy.

There are no “easy” repeats.

There are no “sloppy efforts”

No more mindless miles, senseless sets, pointless practices or wasted weights-sessions. It’s about efficiency, effectiveness, enjoyment and excellence through engagement.

For the More with Less philosophy to work, your athletes need to be more attentive, more “on-line”, more switched on and more engaged than ever before.

For the More with Less philosophy to work, you need to coach better than you have ever coached in your entire life: you need to be more engaged than even your most engaged of your athletes.

And the Future?

At a time when coaches, parents and indeed sports are grappling with how to make their “product” – i.e. their sport, more attractive to young athletes: young athletes who are “lazy” and who get easily bored and distracted when exposed to traditional training methods, the More with Less philosophy offers some real possibilities for the future.

The best of news of all is, that you can, without spending a cent (or a dinar or a drachma or whatever currency you use), without buying any new miracle products, without building any new facilities or purchasing any new equipment, achieve more with less.

Wayne Goldsmith