When we take a closer look at these amazing feats of athleticism from athletes across the spectrum of sports, we begin to realize that these physical qualities can be broken down and better understood.

Qualities that immediately come to mind when thinking about elite athleticism are related to strength, power, change of direction, and agility. Watching all these qualities in action at elite levels is an amazing experience. The experience of doing them is also amazing. Whether we realize it or not, we are all athletic to some degree, and we all have the ability to demonstrate our athleticism in the context of sports, athletics, training, and performance.

The best part about training like an athlete is that it’s for everyone. More importantly, it’s a mindset, and it’s about adopting a holistic approach to championing your overall health and performance. Training with the same strategies that athletes use can help you become more athletic. The first step to training like an athlete is to understand what it means to adopt an athlete’s mindset in order to become a champion of your health and performance.

Building Athleticism

Athleticism is a combination of strength, power, speed, and agility. The balance between these physical traits is what boosts your overall athleticism, and helps you remain athletic. A primary foundation of athleticism is strength—your ability to exert force. The gym or weightroom can be used to develop strength in a variety of ways.

Mimic High-Level Athletes for High-Level Results

High-level athletes treat preparation for their sport as a job because it is their job. This won’t be the case for everyone. Training to become more athletic doesn’t have to be treated this way. Nevertheless, what should resonate with everyone is how dedicated high-level athletes are to their training. This is evident to viewers on game day when we see how dialled in an athlete is. The secret is that this level of focus and attention to detail doesn’t just show up on game day. It starts with preparation—anything the athlete does to prep for game day. A large portion of this comes down to their training, which is primarily based on the physical qualities we’ve already discussed.

What we can all take from how high-level athletes train is their level of focus and attention to detail. These little things truly have an impact on your level of athleticism when they’re combined. If your goal is to improve your overall athleticism, this approach will put you on the fast track to success in your training and improvement in key areas.

Train All Aspects of Athleticism

Strength has a carryover effect in many other physical qualities, such as power, sprinting, mobility, and flexibility. If you have time to do only one thing in your training, focusing all your efforts on strength isn’t the worst idea. But as with many things in life, there is a limit to how strong you can get based on genetics, anatomy, physiology, chronological age, and even training age. Most people will find big success early in the process of building strength. However, there is often a plateau when the athlete reaches their unique maximal or near-maximal levels of strength. After that, most people continue trying to build more strength, only to realize that it becomes more challenging the stronger you are. 

Remember that while it’s a great idea to build strength throughout the body, the strength you build must also transfer into the other important areas of athleticism: power, speed, change of direction, and agility. If your strength doesn’t transfer well into these areas, dial down the strength and dial up in the other areas. 

The Train Like a Pro Training Program

The 12-week training program in this book has three phases (four-week training blocks) that build off each other. In phase 1, the primary emphasis is on general physical preparedness and hypertrophy, with a splash of isometric exercises to help you master key positions and movements. 

In phase 2, we will be emphasizing strength with a primary goal of helping you become a stronger overall athlete, and we’ll include eccentric-based exercises to master body control. 

Lastly, in phase 3, you’ll notice an emphasis on overall power and explosive capabilities, in addition to full-range-of-motion exercises. This is the final phase, where you put everything together for elite athleticism.

If your goal is to tap into your inner athlete and become the strongest, fastest, most powerful version of yourself while staying healthy, this is the book for you.

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