At some point in your college career, you might be inspired to make major changes in how you eat or train. In fact, by spending time in the Yin Yang University, you probably will. Just like in real estate where everything is “location, location, location,” everything in training to be an successful athlete is “timing, timing, timing.”

If you don’t have enough time in between workouts, you do not recover fully and your performance begins to degrade and eventually leads to mental and/or physical burnout. (The two are closely linked, but that’s a post for another day.) On the opposite end of the timing spectrum, if you have too much time in between workouts, you will never get stronger, faster or better.

Your body is habituated to your lifestyle. It’s used to eating at certain times, sleeping X hours, studying for Y hours. When you change your routine, the body has to go through an adjustment phase. That’s why no matter how much you prepare, you are sore when practices first get going at the beginning of the season. The greater the change, the more time the body needs to recalibrate. Major changes in diet are especially hard on the body.

It can take 30-90 days for your liver to adapt to manufacturing different enzymes when you change your diet. The same can hold true for cutting back on carbs or eliminating gluten from your diet. It can take 30 days for your body to switch from carb burning mode to fat burning mode. So you can see why the off season is the right time to make any significant changes in diet or training.

The England World Cup made headlines when they hired a big name chef/nutritionist to prepare food for the team. Instead of giving the players what they were used to eating, he prepared a “perfect recipe for success” specialized diet that was going to propel Team England to victory. The only problem was it backfired.

England had it’s worst World Cup performance in years. The British tabloids blamed in-fighting and team chemistry, but if any of you have quit drinking coffee or cut carbs out of your diet, you know how grumpy you can get! By adding the metabolic stresses of adapting to a new diet along with the already enormous pressure of performing in the biggest sporting event in the world, the English coaches screwed the pooch.

TAKE ACTION! First off don’t use this information to justify by habits that rob you of your performance. Eating crap, drinking too much and sleeping too little are not habits you want to keep.

If you have to make changes during the season, make the changes incrementally. For example, if you decide to stop drinking coffee because it’s interfering with your sleep, don’t go cold turkey. Reduce the amount you are drinking slowly over a week and finally stop a day or two before you have your day off. That way you can use your rest day to recover.

Ideally you will save the big changes and experimentation for the off-season or summer. Give your body at least 30 days to adapt. You will feel more confident in your body knowing that you have had time to adapt.

On of my favorite bloggers, Dr, John Briffa, points us to an interesting study of 17 year olds. The study noted a correlation between carbohydrate craving (like the sugar in Gatorade) and lack of energy. There is some evidence linking eating too much bread, pasta, rice, potatoes and sugar to poor quality of sleep.

This brings us to another study at Stanford University linking sleep and athletic performance. Basically the study said if you don’t sleep enough, your performance suffers. Initially I filed the Stanford study in the Duh! folder, but in light of Dr. Briffa’s article linking eating to many carbohydrates and poor quality sleep, I pulled the Stanford study back out.

Here Dr. Briffa explains.

One of the effects of low blood sugar is to cause the body to attempt to top up blood sugar levels internally, through the release of sugar from the liver. To do this, the body can ramp up activity in the so-called ‘sympathetic nervous system’, which plays an integral part in the stress response. The body can also release stress hormones such as adrenaline (epinephrine) that simulate sugar release too.

An activated stress response ain’t so good for sleep. At the very best it will impair the depth of sleep and our ability to feel truly rested. Worse than that, though, is its habit of waking people up at about 3.30 – 4.00 am and then not letting them get back to sleep again until about half an hour before their alarm goes off.

I’ve found in practice that rectifying blood sugar imbalance with a ‘primal’, relatively low-carb diet does wonders for improving energy and mood. And within a couple of weeks, it will have usually sorted out any craving for the carbohydrate-rich foods that usually are the cause of the problem in the first place.

TAKE ACTION! Get sugar out of your life. Stay away from deserts in the dining hall, eliminate soda and sports drinks, skip the cereal at breakfast, leave the sugar out of your coffee, and skip fruit juices. You will be stronger, have more energy and feel more motivated. What’s not to like?

Most DIII women athletes work hard during practice. The Good athletes also spend time in the training room before and after practice taking care of their bodies. The Great athletes also take care of their bodies, minds and spirits off the field so they can practice and play at an extremely high level.

The reason I named this website The Yin Yang University is to highlight the importance of recovery in an athletes life. Most of an athletes life is spent outside the gym and off the field. If you don’t understand how your body recovers and you don’t support your recovery by doing the right things, friction builds physically, mentally and emotionally and at some point during your four years, you blow up. Recovery removes the friction and recharges you between practices, games, and seasons. If you have major points of friction in your life outside of your sport, work to reduce them. Some points of friction are unavoidable, you have no control over them, so you have to work around them and make sure you add in extra recovery.

TAKE ACTION! Start thinking outside the gym so you can play and practice harder inside it. Here are five areas to begin assessing your own recovery.

1. Sleep - It repairs and recharges your body, mind and spirit. If you skip sleep your body cannot build new muscle, your brain cannot assimilate new information and you are much more like to feel the effects of stress and get depressed or anxious.
2. Eat - the right foods are crucial to an athlete. Each athlete has specific needs for her sport and her unique DNA. The right foods help you cool inflammation, build new muscle, repair minor injuries before they become worse, and keep your brain balanced and calm. The wrong foods cause inflammation, raise your heart rate and slow recovery, and can even make you feel crappy!
3. Homework - Obvious, but it’s the real reason you are in college. Do the work before it’s due.
4. Social - Friends can be the wind beneath your wings or a ball and chain around your ankle. That said, choose your friends wisely. Not everyone understands how hard it is to be a DIII athlete. This goes for significant others as well!
5. Family - The old saying goes you can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your family. Part of getting away from home and going to college is leaving behind your life as a kid and learning to relate to your family as an adult. Not always easy. If your situation is a particular source of stress and friction, talk to your coach about the situation and pay a visit to one of your college’s counselore. That’s what they are paid for!

Even if you are training like crazy for four hours a day, the vast majority of your time, more than 80%, is spent outside the gym. If your attention, energy and focus outside the gym do not support your quest to win a championship, it dissipates the force you create during training and practice.

In this illustration there are 24 arrows representing each hour of the day. In truth, we live minute by minute, but I don’t have the patience to draw 1440 arrows so you’ll have to imagine the rest. As you can see, only the three green arrows are aligned and moving in the same direction. You’ve probably experienced the frustration and lack of power when your teammates are not aligned with each other. Well, the same thing can happen to you internally.

When your time and energy are aligned for a single purpose, you can see how much more can be accomplished than with random unaligned actions. Does this mean you have to become one of those boring people who can only talk about sports? Absolutely not! But it does mean that when you take a break, you take a break that supports your goal of winning a championship. You don’t just unthinkingly stop training for a month because you feel like it. If you organize your body, mind and soul around winning a championship, you make time to goof off and party, but it’s all done within the overall goal of winning.

So go ahead and start to take a look at your life. How much of it is actually aligned with your goals. Keep reading this blog. I will do my best to show you how to align your nutrition, your rest, your play, your schoolwork so that your time and energy is always propelling forward.

Let me illustrate the Law of the Pyramid with a short story. Theo Riddick is a gifted athlete who made a position switch from running back to wide receiver at Notre dame. As any of you who have changed positions know, it’s difficult. You have to suck it up and look foolish as you learn new skills.

Theo is being mentored by Michael Floyd, an All-American who will most likely play on Sunday’s in the NFL. The following quotes are from a story by Chicago Tribune reporter Brian Hamilton. He asks each player about the other. First Floyd, the All American speaks,

"Him being so athletic, he came into the routine really easy," Floyd said. "It's just about picking up the little things, making sure you get depth and go full speed all the time, making sure you run a precise route."

Then Riddick responds,

"The main thing with (Floyd) is repetition. You kind of get bored, going over the same things. He can be telling me something, and I'm butting in like, 'All right, you already told me that.' But when you really look at it, it is about all the details."

This is the perfect example of the Law of the Pyramid. Spending quality time mastering the details is what separates the good from the great. If Riddick is smart, he will listen to Floyd and put in the hard work and not be tempted by boredom. Then he might join his friend in the NFL.

A reader comment brought up a point that needs clarification. Susan Hall asked,

In college, teams have the same amount of practice time, it’s not like you can practice eight hours a day like a professional.

This is a great point and exposes a flaw in my teaching about the Law of the Pyramid. The volume of practice does matter. Research shows that after 10,000 repetitions of a skill, you have mastered it. There is no shortcut there. Clearly the volume of practice does matter. But all things being equal, what you spend your time practicing matters.

Championship teams spend what seems like way too much time on minor details. What the coach and players know, is that the concentration and extra time spent perfecting skills in practice pay off come championship time. While championship teams do not have more time than other teams, what they spend their time on is very different. It’s the concentration, the seeming obsession with perfection of small details, that makes the difference.

I hope that helps clear up the confusion.

Is this one factor holding you back from winning championships?
Sometimes it seems like winning a league championship, and even more so, a national championship is out of reach. The teams (or individuals) that win always seem to have some advantage that you just can't quite match. Is it talent, luck, God given athletic ability, better coaching? Perhaps that's part of it, but there is a bigger factor that is in your control. There is one factor that all championship athletes and teams posses. This one trait is what separates them from the rest of the merely good teams. It gives them that edge that always seems to kick in when it's crunch time. I call it the Law of the Pyramid.

Introducing the Law of the Pyramid
The one common element champions posses is they know they cannot escape the hard wired way we learn and develop skills, attitudes and abilities. Once you understand how human beings master skills, then you can completely own those skills, not just be good. You will then have the science that champions use to win again and again. It’s simple, but not easy.

Imagine one of the great pyramids in Egypt. That pyramid can only be as tall as the base allows. As the pyramid gets taller and taller the base required becomes huge. Without enough support, it doesn’t matter how many stones you drag to the top. They topple over and crash to the ground. Becoming a champion is like building a pyramid. The effort required to make the leap from good to great is massive and often seems unproductive and a waste of time. That is why so many teams and individuals remain merely good and do not become champions. They fail to put in the work necessary to be the best.

To oversimplify, there are three stages to learning any new skill, the beginner stage, the intermediary stage, and the mastery stage. Let’s take a look at the three stages of becoming a champion and how the Law of the Pyramid determines how high you can go.

Stage #1: The Beginner
In the beginning stage, it’s easy to see results, there is almost a one to one relationship between how much work you put in and the results you achieve. Most athletes go through the beginning stages while still in elementary school. This stage is fun because you rapidly progress getting better from week to week and even day to day.

Stage #2: The Intermediate

The second stage is the intermediary stage. At this stage athletes begin to focus on their sport and learn skills, techniques and strategies specific to that sport. For example, lacrosse players learn to cradle with both hands, swimmers learn to improve their start. Because these skills are more advanced and take longer to learn, the results achieved for the level of effort begin to decrease. It is at this level that the more dedicated athletes begin to separate themselves from their peers. It’s clear who will go on to college and play and who high school is the highest athletic level they are willing to work for. I’m not slamming the choices people make. My daughters peaked at the high school level and then turned their attention to music and theater. They are happy in college working on mastering a different set of skills.

Stage #3: Mastery
The final stage is the mastery stage. Most athletes stop before they complete this stage. They have gone through their entire athletic careers getting better and better, often very quickly, and sometimes seemingly effortlessly. They are good, better than 95% of their competitors. They might lead the league in scoring, or be one of the fastest people on the swim team, but when the end of the season comes and it’s championship time, they always seem to get left behind.

These athletes (and teams) are paying attention to the results of their training and ignoring the Law of the Pyramid. What you’ve already figured out by now is that as you get better and better, the results you achieve for the work you put in diminishes. Most athletes give up, thinking that if they continue to work hard and see little improvement, “Why bother?” I don’t blame them. It’s much easier at this point to put in the minimal work to maintain very good skills, skills that are better than 95% of their competition, than to keep working for seemingly no payoff.

You can clearly see from the illustration above that the last peak of results must be supported by the most amount of training. This is where the merely good athletes and teams fail. They rightly recognize that they have come face to face with the Law of the Pyramid and results are few and far between. So they stop. At this point it takes only a minimal amount of training to maintain what are, by any measurement, very good skills. After all, it’s a heck of a lot more fun to party with friends all night Saturday than to get up Sunday morning and work out.

In team sports, it’s a little more tricky because you need to change the culture of the entire team (and maybe the coach) before your team can break through and win their first championship. But it can be done, it has been done, and in fact, it’s the only way a championship has ever been won.

So what are you waiting for? Share this with your teammates. Enroll them in becoming champions today. And remember, “Think outside the gym.”

I love Seth Godin and read all his books. He thinks deeply about success in the business world and his insights carry over into sports. Today in his blog, Seth identifies two types of learning, the first based on technique and a second that goes beyond technique. As an athlete, it’s important to master your technique, but technique can only get you so far. There is another level of learning beyond technique. According to Seth there are two types of learning:

Type 1. You can take a class where you learn technique, facts and procedures.

Type 2. You can take a class where you learn to see, learn to lead and learn to solve interesting problems.

...The first type of schooling can even be accomplished with self-discipline and a Dummies book...

The second kind, on the other hand, is where all real success comes from....

Like a samurai, as an athlete, technique is everything, but it is also limiting. By focusing on technique during a game or event, your muscle memory is turned off and you cannot respond quickly or smoothly enough. Seth’s post helped me understand what Miyamoto Musashi, the famous Japanese samurai calls the most advanced level a samurai can achieve, the “no technique” technique of sword fighting.

Any technique or move has it’s limitations and your opponents (or the laws of physics) will find a way to stop you. Being attached to any one technique is the cause of the dreaded Sophomore slump where a highly successful Freshie struggles her second year. If you learn to adapt and change, “solve interesting problems,” as Seth says, you will understand the importance of technique, but not be boxed in by it.

Read the rest of Seth’s post here.
Learn about samuraI Miyamoto Musashi here.