Elite Athletes Aren’t Kids and Kids Aren’t Elite Athletes
Kids play sports because playing sports is fun. Elite athletes play sports because of their drive to be the best. Parents and coaches must never confuse this difference.
Kids are not elite athletes. If playing sports is not fun, kids won’t play. On the other hand, doing what it takes to become an elite athlete is not and will never be fun. Winning can be fun, but putting your mind and body through the training pain required to win at an elite level is not.
As soon as a coach or parent starts pushing a kid to be elite, the fun is gone. What’s more, fun is not even a priority at all for a coach or parent who pushes an athlete to be elite. It can’t be.
In fact, the only way to get one’s mind and body to perform at an elite level is to do so by completing boring, repetitive tasks that are far from fun. This is what makes elite athletes different. Elite athletes are able to endure the absence of fun for long, sustained periods of time using self-motivation.
First Fun, Next Passion, Then Satisfaction
Elite athletes aren’t elite because they were able to endure the absence of fun as 10 year olds and be the best at a few “national” events in their youth. Not at all. Elite athletes are elite because they had fun as kids and fell in love with their sport. Once they fell in love with the fun part, they then made the choice to prioritize satisfaction over fun.
This is what confuses some parents and coaches about youth sports. Fun comes from social bonding, satisfaction comes from social comparisons. Fun comes from unstructured play, satisfaction comes from the structure of achieving a defined goal. An activity can satisfy you and not be fun or it can be fun and not satisfy you. However, if you don’t learn to have fun with an activity you never learn to care about the satisfaction you gain from that activity.
What’s more, it’s the satisfaction an elite athlete gains from working hard on their passions that motivates them to toil for long hours doing things that aren’t fun. Often, when an elite athlete describes hard work as fun, they are really saying it’s satisfying to work hard to be the best at something they’re passionate about.
Elite athletes go through process stages to move from having fun to pursuing satisfaction. If a parent or coach tries to get their kids to skip a stage, this process breaks.