What Makes Someone an Athlete?
Passion for Sports makes someone a great athlete. If you have an extreme interest in a specific sport like golf, cricket, football, sprint, or any other type of sport, this strong feeling of love that is natural can make you a Successful Athlete. People subconsciously or consciously follow for their passion because we can hardly control it as it is mostly inborn and intrinsic. For example, what makes Tiger Woods the winningest athlete? First of all, his passion for Golf, then, an excellent combination of a few potential things like self-confidence, competitiveness, skills, discipline, performance made him the athlete. Let us make sense of What Makes Someone an Athlete.
6 Things What Makes Someone an Athlete
Becoming an athlete is not an overnight fact rather it is a lifelong process that starts from an early age. Things might be slightly different from person to person as these factors are not constant to all individuals. Although the issues may vary from person to person, there are some commonalities that work effectively more or less for everyone to make a successful athlete eventually. For example, discipline. Every athlete has to lead a disciplined life not only to succeed in competition but also to enjoy personal life in a peaceful way. Now we go through the most essential things that make someone a great athlete in reality.
1. Passion for Sports
Your passion for sports refers to a strong intrinsic inclination toward a self-defining sports activity that one you find most important in you and in which you invest time and energy mostly. In fact, passionate sports activities become a part of your identity because they are so crucial and valued. The process through which the sports activity comes to define someone is called the internalization process of sports.
This passion originates from an autonomous internalization which occurs when individuals freely accept the activity as important for them and choose to engage in their passionate activity without any contingencies attached to it. With harmonious passion, there is smooth integration between the passionate activity and our identity. Thus the activity occupies a significant but not overpowering space in the person’s identity and remains in harmony with other aspects of the person’s life. Consequently, people with a harmonious passion are able to fully focus on the task at hand and experience positive outcomes both during and after task engagement.
2. Self Confidence
Then the most important thing that makes someone an athlete is Self-confidence, an attitude about your skills and abilities. Self-confidence means you accept and trust yourself and have a good sense of control in your athletic life. Most probably, you know your strengths and weaknesses well and have a positive view of yourself to reach your goal. You can set realistic expectations and goals, and communicate assertively with them, and able to face criticism in a positive way.
If you have a lack of self-confidence this might make you feel full of self-doubt, be passive or submissive, or have difficulty trusting yourself. You may feel inferior, unloved, or be sensitive to criticism.
Athletes win great competitions by the dint of their strong self-confidence. So, self-confidence is a determining factor what makes someone an athlete for sure.
3. Competitiveness
There is no way to be an athlete without winning the competition. We know all the athletes who dive for every moment in competition and competes to the last second and always seem to lead or help lead his or her team to final victory. There are some athletes who have a reputation for not needing to try or who make it look easy. Although skills are great, the athlete who can provide and display consistency and longevity is the one we call great and generally are the most beloved by the people.
We see that the audience wants to feel two things when watching sports, for example (1) empathy, and (2) awe. Empathy in terms of remembering and comparing to common circumstances of trying and succeeding in our own lives and then being in awe of the greatness of the athlete’s performance.
4. Skills
All champion athletes have great athletic skills and abilities.
So, if you want to become a better athlete in your sport just like the fact to be excellent in business requires excellent business skills, and to be great at academics requires great academic skills, to be the best athlete you can possibly be you will need to acquire the right athletic skills.
In a profession where statistical performance on the court is everything skills and the hard work refining and attempting to perfect those skills through practice and in-game experience results in performance, whether bad, good, or great. Skills are what the coach, commentator, scout, fan, and spectator notice first.
Strength, power, endurance, speed, coordination, flexibility, agility, balance are the most essential skills an athlete must acquire.
5. Discipline
Discipline will determine whether you will be an athlete or not. So discipline is a determining thing that makes someone an athlete. It teaches the value of hard work. All athletes regardless of their level have to work hard to improve and reach their full potential.
Most often discipline means remain to refrain from some things like taking alcohol, unhealthy food, and drugs that get in the way of fully concentrating on the sport they love. It might be difficult at first for a young athlete to cope but with the right guidance, they can see that these sacrifices are necessary and expected of them to become great athletes.
Most of the successful athletes know how to set both short-term and long-term goals. Discipline teaches an athlete how to set goals and focus their efforts in accomplishing these.
Self-discipline makes it easier for an athlete to recognize the importance of practice and preparation in gaining goals.
6. Performance
Athletic success is measured by your performance. In other words, if you will not be able to win a tournament, no one will recognize you as a good athlete. Therefore, performance is the final thing what makes someone an athlete.
The way to have an outstanding performance is no longer limited to the physiological level but has reached a psychological level. Sports performance of sports that include an objective measurement can be easily defined. For instance, how high a jump. The performance is quantifiable. Nevertheless, the performance of an athlete cannot be entirely shown by objective measurements in certain sports.
Scoring no goals in a football match looks not good for a football player. Mental control, discipline, and alertness are the contributing factors that could alter one’s performance. The key to enhance sportsmen’s performance is therefore complex and diversified.
This is the reason why psychologists are playing a salient role in sports. The enhancement of sports performance has always been an indispensable topic in sports science. Sportsmen and coaches strive to maximize their performance by any means.
