Great Britain's Jack Green broke his personal record AND qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics back in July. What's noteworthy about that is seen in the photos of him at the starting blocks with a message boldly scrawled in green on his forearm: CHIN DOWN, FLAT BACK.
Click here to view Jack's cribnote.
I'm certain that somebody performing well enough to even get to trials for the Olympics knows the basics. So what he wrote down isn't so much to remind him something he didn't know. But still it's the basics. Jack knew that all the extra fans, and cameras, and high stakes might distract his focus from what he knew he had to do.
We all know the basics. But sometimes we think they are for beginners. Sometimes we think that we perform them seamlessly unconsciously. Sometimes we do. But most often, we are busy, we are multi-tasking, we are unconsciously doing our thing.
It's SO okay to use prompts. It's SO okay to remind yourself. You are running a race everyday and in order to win consistently you've got to do your basics. You can do them brilliantly when you attend to them.
Now I have to figure out how to pare down my basics to something that will fit on my forearm.
