THE BIG FIVE

The title of THE BIG FIVE may surprise you, but just read on. Sporting achievement and fitness has texts upon texts written on it. As with most things these days there are experts everywhere. Some I am certain very genuine, others not so and likely self acclaimed masters.

Personally I have spent the past two decades of my life treating and physically rehabilitating the injured back to full fitness. Much of it working in professional and international soccer and athletics. Many have been household names and amongst the best in their arena. What I have learnt during this time is what it takes to be your very best in a physical fitness and performance capacity.

In my opinion there are FIVE KEY ELEMENTS to excellent sporting performance and fitness. These are not some 'magic' ingredients. However through all the noise of opinion they still shine through as essential, must have components to fitness and sporting excellence.

So what are they? Well 'THE BIG FIVE' as I call them are as follows:

SPEED

STRENGTH

STAMINA

BALANCE

TECHNIQUE

There are many that will argue that the list is incomplete or incorrect. Well opinions are fine but what you will find is that any other attributes (power and co-ordination for example) are sub categories or combinations of
'The Big 5'.

To illustrate let's use the attribute of power. Power is work done in a period of time. It may have components of technique, speed, strength, balance and stamina. It is not a 'stand alone element'. The better at any one of the components a performer is, the more powerful they will be.

The more you think about it the clearer it becomes that the facets making up 'THE BIG FIVE' are inextricably linked. An improvement in one will lead to an overall improvement in activity performance. More interestingly though, it will stimulate further improvement in the other areas, so improving overall capacity or potential even further. So two plus two does not always equal four. Or, if you prefer, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Breaking performance down like this allows us to work on one aspect independantly of the others. We can do this knowing full well that as well as an improvement in the overall performance of an the activity there will be an opening up of the gates of possibility for improvement in each of the other individual components and further improvement again in overall performance.

So what exactly do we mean when we talk about the components of
'THE BIG FIVE'? There follows a definition of their meanings with apologies for the already knowledgeable:

Speed : a measurement of how long it takes to perform a given task.

Strength : a measurement of how much resistance can be overcome.

Stamina : a measuement of how long a given activity can be performed for.

Balance : an indicator of how stable a body is.

Technique : the performance of given activities. Strongly related to the other four as well as the co-ordination of multiple tasks.


So how useful is this? Well let's just pick an idea out of the air and say you decide to work on one aspect of the five for a period of eight weeks of the year. After working on all five components individually for this period of time together with the relevant amount of regular rest weeks at the end of each period you would have completed a ten month progaram at the end of which believe me you would be a remarkably different athlete.

Imagine the enjoyment of working on different aspects of your sport rather than just the same old routine week in week out and then experiencing the exhileration of sporting performance like you have never known before.

They say it takes five years to become a master at anything. Imagine repeating this five times, making the tasks more demanding each year and working on a different sub aspect of each of 'THE BIG FIVE' components each year. Yes there it is your five year plan to self coaching performance mastery.

There are of course some details of how to exactly achieve each objective. I will be covering these in more detail in some tutorials on my website but for now I am sure you have some basics to be putting into practice. Good luck and see you at the top.

To find out more information on how you can use 'The Big Five' to impact your fitness and sporting performance in your specific sport please click here