A Competitive Advantage
Was Michael Jordan born great? Ask the high school basketball coach that cut him from the team.
Does the most decorated gymnast in U.S. history, Shannon Miller, have the perfect gymnast DNA? Ask her mom, a Vice President at a bank, or her dad, a teacher.
Did Michael Phelps win 18 gold medals by just working harder than everyone else? Ask his Serbian rival, Milorad Cavic, current 100-meter butterfly world-record holder.
How did the greats become great? I’ll tell you… but first, a little history.
1960’s and 1970’s — Strength training
Believe it or not, before the 1960’s weight lifting was considered too dangerous for athletes. Most teams simply would not allow strength training. In 1963 Alvin Roy, considered the godfather of weight-training, became the NFL’s first strength and conditioning coach for the San Diego Chargers.
Alvin had success teaching collegiate football players at LSU how to lift weights which helped them win the national championship in 1958. His success followed him into the NFL, where he helped multiple teams win Super Bowls.
Around the same time, Arthur Jones created the Nautilus machine, then called the Blue Monster, a total body weight lifting machine which started finding its way into team gyms. Teams from all sports started taking notice that the winningest teams were also the strongest, so before long everyone was, and still is, strength training.
1980’s — More money = more wins
During the 1970’s and 1980’s the winningest teams often had the highest payroll. The teams that spent more on their players won more games, so a team’s ability to sell tickets correlated with its ability to win games. For franchises is smaller cities, this created a competitive disadvantage.
“The rich teams won a lot of games. The poor teams lost a lot of games. It was a simpler time.” — Providence Journal
To level the playing field, between 1984 and 1994 the NBA, NFL, and MLB instituted salary caps, restricting the amount of money franchises can spend on player salaries without being taxed.
Competitive advantages often end up being recognized and widely adopted, but in this case, the advantage was taxed to retain a more even competitive landscape in each major U.S. league. According to ESPN, spending more money no longer equals more wins.
1990’s — Advanced Statistics
Today, both franchises and fans obsess over sports statistics, but this hasn’t always been the case. Advanced statistics to understand and predict athletic performance originated in the mid 1960’s when Earnshaw Cook set out to prove that Ty Cobb was a better hitter than Babe Ruth. On the basis of his research, Cook asserted that understanding advanced statistics provided a clear competitive advantage and for MLB, Cook claimed that a team could gain up to 250 runs a season by utilizing his strategies.
Despite the data backing Cook’s assertions, advanced statistics were unanimously dismissed by major sports organizations for most of the twentieth century.
In the 1990’s, however, the study of advanced statistics re-emerged as a credible competitive advantage in baseball due, in large part, to Billie Bean’s work transforming the Oakland Athletics into one of the most cost-effective teams in baseball. In 2006 the Athletics ranked 24th of 30 major league teams in player salaries but had the 5th-best regular-season record.
The NBA and the NFL followed suit in the late 90’s. New models for understanding and predicting success in each league emerged and continue to gain popularity. Today, investing in advanced statistics is the norm for a franchise to compete at the professional level.
2000’s — High tech advantage
In the midst of the Digital Age, the competitive advantage that technology provides is evident. The pervasive impact of technology on sports is creating better athletes. As equipment gets lighter and stronger, players move faster. As wearable technology provides more data, players can better understand how to play and how to train more effectively.
Technology that provides a clear competitive advantage is usually either banned, regulated, or more often, widely adopted.
For example, the The LZR Elite swimsuit launched in February 2008 and was marketed as “the world’s fastest swimsuit.” The technology in the suit’s material increased buoyancy, provided better oxygen flow to muscles, and repelled water while increasing flexibility.
In the week after the suit was launched, three world records were broken by swimmers wearing the LZR suit and 98% of all medals won at the Beijing Olympics were won by swimmers wearing the suit.
Whether it’s smarter and safer football helmets, new materials to fabricate baseball bats from, or wearable technology that helps NBA players understand the effects of their training, every major US sport has adopted new technology and regulates its use to keep the playing field as level as possible.
Today
Athletes are continually seeking competitive advantages to help them succeed in their sport. Some will go as far as risking everything for a slight edge, like Alex Rodriguez or Lance Armstrong, but many are starting to understand the safe and legal advantage that can be gained by training your mind.
Elite professional athletes such as Michael Jordan, Shannon Miller, and Michael Phelps have been training their mind for years, but only recently have neuroscientist started validating that mental training can indeed change your brain, affect your hormone levels, and provide an incredibly effective advantage on the court or field.
Like training your body, training your mind requires commitment, repetition, and a good coach who understands the cost and the value of the training. For the most part, this kind of training has only been available to elite professional athletes… until now.
Lucid packages the best mental workouts, from the best professional mental coaches, and delivers them to you on your phone in less than five minutes each day. Lucid is a competitive advantage that professional and youth athletes are using everyday to elevate their mind and up their game.
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