Proactive Skill Development for The Healthcare Athlete
The earlier we can develop the skills of high performance, the more we can benefit from them.
How do we promote the greatest degree of health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance for the largest number of people?
Development of the skills of sustainable high performance is the core component in The Practices of the Healthcare Athlete. These skills include mindset training, meditation, sleep, nutrition, hydration, exercise, and recovery. In order to maximally benefit from development of these habits, a Polyvagal Theory informed perspective is utilized. Though any individual may have elements of untrained skill in one or more of these areas, it is more likely the case that we all can benefit from further training and development of these skills. Such training can be reactive or proactive. It is reactive when we begin the work of training these skills in response to a significant stressor that may have occurred. It is proactive when we begin this work in advance of any stressor.
Though reactive development of these skills is better than not developing the skills at all, a proactive approach has many advantages. The habits we are developing are complimentary in nature and serve to promote wellness and facilitate high performance in any, and all, areas of life. As such, having access to these skills as early as possible allows us to benefit sooner in the pursuit of our life goals. Moreover, by their very nature we would like to have developed strong skills so that they are ready to be of use at times of greatest need. Since such times frequently become apparent on short notice or are entirely unpredictable, it is beneficial to begin developing these skills as early as possible so that they are available to us when needed.
It is also worth considering the time and hard work that is required to develop each of these skills. This includes the development of new, positive habits which takes time and can be challenging. This work only becomes more difficult if it is attempted to be done under times of increased stress. In order for new habits to become established, many repetitions are needed which also requires time, making the proactive approach to development of these skills ideal.
The proactive development of these skills provides us with two important benefits: we can experience the results of these abilities sooner and we can strengthen our habits and skills so that when the inevitable challenges of life arise, we are better prepared and able to work with them.
The analogy between development of these skills with physical training can be helpful as each skill requires practice in order to become proficient. In the context of physical training, when exercise becomes sporadic or is discontinued, muscle atrophy and loss of the benefits of prior training occurs. This is also the case with development of the high performance skills. While we strengthen our capacity for these skills through regular practice and application of the skills, we also tend to lose our ability to access these skills if we don’t continue their development.
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