Gritty on the Gridiron

It is often thought that what makes an athlete great is his or her physical toolkit to adapt to any situation on the field or court. I would argue that a physical toolkit is the baseline to make an athlete decent, but what differentiates an athlete from good and great is their cognitive ability to be aware what is going on in his or her domain, as well as their strategy and planning on how to make their next move after their opponent strikes. This is most prevalent in "country club sports" (I say country club because these are the predominant sports played at a country club) such as golf and tennis or any racquet sport. In golf you have to analyze the entire hole and strategize how you will attack it. Not only that, after you strategize, then you have to make different variations of "golf swings" in order to drive, approach, chip and putt the ball into the hole. This is not even counting if you get into trouble in a bunker or by trees and have to hit a "bunker ...

The idea of high performance in an arena is no novel endeavor. Whether it be in a classroom, athletic field, music studio or at work, there are usually individuals who are high performers and those who may be seen as more average. Being average is not a bad thing and a lot of times average individuals are seen as more average because of other responsibilities they may have in life, pulling their attention away from high performance. High performers on the other hand usually sacrifice other aspects of their life (health, money, family) in order to perform at their highest level. Whether it be a professional athlete, PHD Student, professional musician or just a person in a cognitively demanding career these people may seem to have it all figured out, but more times than not, a lot of these people are still going through identity crises and imposter syndrome. I have gone through many of these shifts as well; when I was in high school, I played three sports and juggled school on top of tha...

 From a young age, most academically inclined students have a goal; get into an Ivy League school. For those not familiar, the Ivy League is a conglomerate of schools in a division 1 athletic conference who are considered the strongest academic colleges in the United States. They are Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, UPenn, Princeton, Columbia and Cornell. From a young age, if you are an excellent student, societal pressure and maybe internal burden tell these kids that if they do not get into one of these schools then they are a failure. This is a very narrow-minded view that a 17–18-year-old may see but there are some great schools in the United States that are not in the Ivy League.  Some of these schools congeal in other NCAA athletic conferences. There is the Division 3 NESCAC Conference that consists of Tufts, Wesleyan, Williams, Trinity, Middlebury, Hamilton, Connecticut College, Bowdoin, Bates and Amherst. There is also Division 3 UAA Conference consisting of Emory, Roc...

 March Madness, Opening Day, The Masters & April Showers The early months of spring are certainly eventful in the athletic landscape, and I am going to outline the five best things athletically about the weather turning. 5) Running and biking outside - Hibernating through the winter, long distance athletes can finally come out of hiding once the calendar turns to March and April. I even see the people who may not be built for long distance sports out doing their best. These athletes better get their workouts in while the weather is still bearable, because once the months turn to June/ July it will be too hot to run outside. 4) Golf and Tennis season - Tennis outside has the same problem running and biking outside has, it gets too hot during the summer.  The best time to play is during the spring and fall. With that, tennis calls for great exercise and a lot of fun when you are competing against someone close to your skill level. Golf is great because you can play with anyo...

 It is very hard to stay in shape between ages 25 and 35. What do the people who stay in shape all have in common? They either diet right, exercise well or both. Exercise and dieting come down to one attribute in a person, discipline. Dieting right calls for you to have balanced eating habits; eating 2-3 meals a day depending how much you weigh, filled with all the proper nutrients. Complex grains for carbohydrates, meat, fish and chicken for protein and fat, fruits for sugar, vegetables for vitamins, water and more carbs, and dairy for more protein and calcium. Will dieting correctly mean you will be skinny? Not necessarily, but it will mean that you will have a healthy body. How skinny a person is or how much one weighs is directly correlated with how many calories one eats during the day. The more calories you eat the larger you will be and the smaller number of calories you eat the smaller you will be. If you would like to be healthy, eat a balanced diet. In terms of grains thi...

 When I got to college, something that stood out to me was the number of athletes majoring in economics or finance. This begs the question, do college athletes work less hard in the classroom because these are easy majors, or do athletes just have the aptitudes necessary to succeed in business. I would theorize it is the latter and not the former. To succeed in business, you must be hard working, confident, analytical and good at dealing with different personalities. I would argue all of these traits are what make an athlete great as well. To be great in a specific sport you must practice all the time and not just practice all the time, do the correct kind of practicing. This would be similar to successful businesspeople who are notoriously known for working long hours and even working evenings and weekends. An athlete must be able to get it done in "crunch time" or when the game is tied, and it comes down to one play, which takes confidence from the athlete to say that he or...