{"id":11719,"date":"2016-03-28T07:42:49","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T14:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/?p=11719"},"modified":"2016-03-28T07:42:49","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T14:42:49","slug":"11719-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/11719-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesson #4 from Prime Ski Racing e-book: Peak Performance is Not the Goal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/GAP-alpine-world-champs-men-DH-TRG-10-02-2011-019-1.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11707\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-11707\" src=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/GAP-alpine-world-champs-men-DH-TRG-10-02-2011-019-1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a>One of the most popular phrases in sport is &#8220;peak performance.&#8221; Athletes in all sports typically think of peak performance as performing their best, as being at the top of their game. That sounds good, doesn\u2019t it? Who wouldn\u2019t want to achieve peak performance? \u00a0And when I came out of graduate school, peak performance was what I wanted my athletes to achieve.<\/p>\n<p>But as I became more experienced as a consultant and a writer, I began to appreciate the power of words and how important it is that the words I use are highly descriptive of what I want to communicate. I decided that peak performance was not descriptive. I saw several problems with peak performance:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A peak is very small, so you can\u2019t stay there long. Would you be satisfied if you had one good race and several poor ones?<\/li>\n<li>Once the peak is reached, there\u2019s only one way to go\u2014down!\u2014and, and as with most peaks, the drop is usually precipitous. Have you experienced those big swings in race performance where one week you\u2019re totally \u201c in the zone\u201d and the next you\u2019re completely out of it?<\/li>\n<li>You may arrive at the peak too early or too late, missing a chance for success. Have you felt the frustration of lost opportunity because you weren\u2019t mentally &#8220;on&#8221; for your big race?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So I needed a phrase that accurately described what I wanted athletes to achieve. I struggled for several years unable to find such a phrase until one day I had one of those rare meetings of readiness and luck. Walking through the meat section of a supermarket I saw a piece of beef with a sticker that read Prime Cut. I had an \u201caha\u201d experience; I knew I was on to something. I returned to my office and looked up \u201cprime\u201d in the dictionary. It was defined as \u201cof the highest quality or value.\u201d\u00a0 I had finally found the phrase, \u201cPrime Performance,\u201d which I believed was highly descriptive of what I wanted ski racers to achieve.<\/p>\n<p>I define Prime Performance as \u201cskiing at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions.\u201d\u00a0 There are two essential words in this definition. First, \u201cconsistently.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m not interested if you can have only one or two great runs and then some poor ones; that is not enough to be truly successful. I want you to be able to train and race at a high level day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, all season long. This means training and racing with minimal ups and downs instead of the large swings in performance that are so common among racers. Second, \u201cchallenging.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m not impressed if you can ski well under ideal race conditions against an easy field in an unimportant race. What makes the great racers great is their ability to ski their best under the worst possible race conditions against the toughest field imaginable in the biggest race of their lives.<\/p>\n<p>Want to learn more?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/PSR-3D-book-cover-2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11586\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11586 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/PSR-3D-book-cover-2.jpg\" alt=\"PSR-3D book cover-2\" width=\"158\" height=\"244\" \/><\/a>Download my new\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.taylorprimeperformance.com\/free-prime-ski-racing-e-book-4-2\/\"><strong><em>Prime Ski Racing: Psychology of Championship Skiing<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0e-book.\u00a0It\u00a0introduces you to a new way of looking at the mental side of our sport. This e-book is filled with powerful lessons that racers and coaches can benefit from.<\/p>\n<p>Be sure to check out my previous lessons from my Prime Ski Racing e-book.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/lesson-1-from-prime-ski-racing-e-book-focus-on-fast-not-results\/\"><strong>Lesson #1: Focus on Fast, Not Results<\/strong><\/a><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/lesson-2-prime-ski-racing-e-book-five-steps-ski-your-fastest\/\"><strong>Lesson #2: Five Steps to Skiing Fast<\/strong><\/a><strong><u><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/lesson-3-prime-ski-racing-e-book-success-begins-ends-mind\/\">Lesson #3: Success Begins and Ends in Your Mind<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Also, get a sneak peak at my not-yet-announced\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.taylorprimeperformance.com\/prime-ski-racing-12-week-mental-coaching-program\/\">Prime Ski Racing 12-week Group Mental Training Program<\/a>\u00a0designed just for ski racers.<\/p>\n<p>Please email or call me if you have any questions or I can help in any way.<\/p>\n<p>Photo credit: Mitchell Gun with permission<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most popular phrases in sport is &#8220;peak performance.&#8221; Athletes in all sports typically think of peak performance as performing their best, as being at the top of their game. That sounds good, doesn\u2019t it? Who wouldn\u2019t want to achieve peak performance? \u00a0And when I came out of graduate school, peak performance was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1516],"tags":[394,970,1118,153,155],"class_list":["post-11719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ski-racing","tag-mental-training","tag-peak-performance","tag-prime-ski-racing","tag-ski-racing-2","tag-sport-psychology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}