The Ideal Way to Build a Young Athlete’s Discipline
Discipline is the act of pushing oneself to do what it takes to pursue a goal even when it’s not comfortable. Moreover, discipline is an act of consistency. It’s not discipline when you push yourself only when you feel like it. Instead, discipline is the summation of hundreds of small decisions to do hard things to maintain or make progress.
These decisions are not made because they make you feel good. These decisions are made because of one’s belief system.
Therefore, the root of building discipline is forming a belief that daily habits and routines are necessary for success. Without this belief system, a young athlete will not develop the will to push themself when things aren’t comfortable.
To get a young athlete to form a belief system that builds discipline, their daily habits and routines must provide results. Results that the athlete can visually see with measurements.
As a result, the ideal way to build a young athlete’s discipline is with daily goals. These daily goals should focus on improving something that the athlete can easily measure. For example, push-ups, pull-ups, speed, vertical jump, cardiovascular conditioning, or even something like memory.
Once a young athlete sees with their own eyes how showing discipline helps them achieve their daily goals, and how achieving daily goals funnel into their larger goals, their belief-system will change. Which in turn will change how they view the importance of discipline.