I wanted to take this blog post to talk about missed opportunities. As the school year has come to an end and another summer begins, for athletes what they do this summer can have a big bearing on how they play in the upcoming fall and winter seasons. Summer may be a time for the beach, the lake and spending time with friends, but it is also full of opportunities...opportunities to become a better athlete. But there is a catch to these kinds of opportunities and the catch is if you miss them you can’t ever get them back.

I have trained a number of girls who have gone on to play college basketball and I have seen the workouts that their different colleges send them and regardless of what college it is most all of them are expected to do a lot of shooting on their own during the summer. Lots of shots, sometimes 100 or more per day. Doing that will help them get better. But it’s the consistency and commitment of doing it that makes the difference. Not 100 shots one day skip a few days then another 100 shots. That’s not the same.

If player A shoots 100 shots a day 5 days a week  (at the park, in their driveway, wherever) and player B shoots 100 shots once a week, player A will have shot 2,000 shots at the end of the month whereas player B will have shot 400 at the end of the month. Who do you think is getting better?

And that’s being generous to assume player B is shooting 100 at least once a week. Lots of high school players aren’t shooting at all. Do you play basketball? How many shots did you take last week? 100? 50? None at all? Are you going to be player A or player B?

What about workouts? A football player hitting my gym 3x per week on our program will be power cleaning twice a week to the tune of about 30 - 50 total reps per week of power cleans at various intensities. That’s 120 - 200 reps of power cleans a month. Do you think the football players who aren’t doing anything are going to be more ready than these players who are doing 200 cleans a month?

The list goes on and on, soccer players practicing footwork, track athletes continuing to run and sprint, volleyball players playing volleyball. One of my athletes, Kathryn Johnson, a standout rising sophomore volleyball player from Wheatmore is in Orlando playing for a team at AAU Volleyball Nationals. When she gets home she will be gone again in a few weeks to Arizona for a week to compete on a volleyball national high performance select team. When she is here she is in the gym 2 - 3 times per week training and playing volleyball on other days. Is there any doubt that Kathryn is getting better this summer?

But the problem is that these opportunities come with a cost. Some cost money, some cost your time and energy....but they all have a cost. What I try and get my athletes to see is not the cost of doing, but rather the cost of not doing. The "cost" of missed opportunities is often far greater than the cost of doing them in the first place. Days go by quickly in the summer, too fast sometimes. It’s easy to lose perspective but the summer is a very limited time in which to take advantages of these opportunities. Once a day has passed that day cannot be gotten back. A day without taking those 100 shots is just gone. A day without working out is just gone.

So I am not saying you shouldn’t have any fun this summer. You have worked hard all year doing schoolwork, playing your sport, training and practicing. It’s OK to have some fun in the summertime...but understand that you can balance the fun with the work and the athletes who want it the most will be the ones working. You may be letting opportunities to get better go by....but your competition is not. And that’s the worst kind of missed opportunity, one that you have given up that the competition has taken.

And last but not least, don’t let opportunities pass you by to have fun and challenge yourself at the same time. This past weekend myself and one of my athletes, Sierra Cefali ran a 5K at the Tour De Kale in Denton. Tour De Kale is a great charity event put together every year by some good friends of mine. If you are not familiar with it you should check it out here www.tourdekale.com Now Sierra nor I are actual distance runners. We are definitely not "hardcore" competitors when it comes to 5K but we ran it and we had fun. We challenged ourselves to do it. And actually for us it’s a warmup for some bigger challenges we are going to tackle later in the summer including a 10K mountain trail race and the Warrior Dash.

Now for me there is no real reason to do these other than just to say I did it, to challenge myself and to create a bonding experience with one of my athletes. I don’t look to be competitive, just to have fun and say that we did it. And my athlete Sierra, well she is doing all of this on top of summer league, volleyball camps, basketball camps AND training at my gym 2x per week. Sierra is not missing any opportunities. And Sierra will be a better athlete AND a better person as a result of putting in this time and effort.

So I encourage all athletes to think about how you are spending your time this summer. Are you going to be getting better this summer or worse? Are you taking advantage of opportunities to get better or not? And if you let these opportunities go by are you prepared to pay the cost of missed opportunities?