Throughout this post, I will be leaning heavily on the work of James Clear that is laid out in his book Atomic Habits. I highly suggest you grab yourself a copy - it was life-changing for me.
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The majority of successful people are successful not because of natural talent, luck, or privilege - but from a long list of successful habits.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.
- Will Durant
The Role of Habits:
Habits are an unavoidable fact of life. We often only think of habits in the biggest of senses: smoking, drugs, gambling. But to our core, we are habitual creatures - hell the way we tie our shoes is a habit. Our habits can be good or bad, or even a mixture of the two.
Forming good habits and breaking bad ones is essential to reaching our goals. This is also why, as counterintuitive as it may sound, we should spend less time focusing on our goals and instead focus more on our systems.
"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
- James Clear
Our systems are comprised of our daily habits - those little things we do both consciously and unconsciously that ultimately decide whether we reach that ever elusive goal we set.
Goals are great at charting a direction (ie. the person we want to become), but habits are what make real progress - the type of incremental - hell microscopic - progress that is unnoticeable until we seemingly become an overnight success.
We all have habits, but before we discuss how to form good ones lets first talk about the nature of them.
The Habit Loop
One of the first things Clear explains in Atomic Habits is that anytime we perform a habit we go through a 4-step pattern that forms a loop. The 4-steps are cue, craving, response, reward.
A Cue is a piece of information that suggests there is a reward to be had. A cue normally comes from our environment and our senses, think about fresh baked cookies in your kitchen and the smell - that is a cue telling you to have a cookie!
The next step is then Craving. A craving is a desire to change what we are doing to get the reward. Sticking with the cookie example, as the cue (smell) drags you into the cookie, seeing it up close starts the craving process.
Response is the next step. This is the thought or action we take to get the reward, ie. picking up the cookie.
Reward is the last step that leaves us with a feeling of satisfaction - accompanied with the reward is also the lesson of whether to do it again or not.
These steps form a Habit Loop, a type of feedback loop that keeps repeating itself - this is why it can be so challenging to alter our bad habits. Think about it like this: it may not be a big deal to have one cookie, but because of that last step, the Reward, your brain will be wired to crave it again. Your mind then becomes hyper-vigilant for all the cues that may suggest the same reward. Before long, you can't help yourself but have a cookie every time you smell or see one.
How to Form Good Habits with Examples
Now that we understand the process we take each time we perform a habit lets look at a few examples of good habits athletes have. The strategies and techniques discussed in this section do not just relate to that individual habit - they can be applied to any habit you are trying to create.
Habit 1: Sleeping 8-10 Hours a Night
This is by far the hardest habit to stay consistent with as a student-athlete. Late night games in-season or early morning practices/lifts can make this seem almost impossible. But, let's talk about strategies you can use to get as close to this as possible.
It is unrealistic to completely overhaul your sleep schedule in a day or two to adhere to this habit. Instead, Clear suggests that with any habit like sleeping 8+ hours, we should use a technique called Habit Shaping. This technique breaks down our habit into phases, the number of phases is entirely personal preference and will relate to how challenging your habit is for to become consistent with.
Each phase of Habit Shaping builds upon the previous in incremental doses - culminating in the end habit you have in mind. Clear explains that the first phase should follow what he calls the Two-Minute Rule, which states: "When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do."
From there you can build out the rest of the phases as you see fit.
The table below showcases the Habit Shaping process for sleeping 8+ hours a week.
Once you have that first phase in mind, ie. something that you can do in two minutes, it is time to slowly build that up into a nightly routine. One of the best ways to do this is to use the Habit Stacking technique.
Habit Stacking is when you take the new habit you are trying to form and tack it on either before or after a pre-existing habit. This works best for habits that you already do automatically such as brushing your teeth.
To build your nightly routine you could use brushing your teeth as a habit to stack around. For example, before brushing your teeth you could shut off your phone (to make sure you don't continue browsing social media while in bed). Then after, read a page in a book or do a quick two-minute journal of your day.
One of the big inhibitors to a quality nice of sleep is leaving yourself little to no time unwind before bed. To prepare our brain for sleep research suggests turning off electronics up to an hour before going to bed; however, 30 minutes is probably more realistic.
This is where brushing your teeth becomes a less than ideal cue for bedtime since it usually coincides with only a few minutes before actually hopping into bed.
We, therefore, need to create a new cue.
To create any good habit, we need to put fewer steps between the behaviors we want and more steps between our bad behaviors. Simply, that means we need to make the environmental cues for our good habits obvious, and the cues for our bad habits invisible - or at the very least add additional steps to performing that bad behavior, Clear calls this adding friction. This process is described as Environment Design, which is apart of his first law of Behavior Change, Make it Obvious.
We can make the cue for bedtime obvious by setting a reoccurring alarm for 30-60 minutes before bedtime. The next step would be selecting a consistent activity that symbolizes it is time for sleep. This could be listening to a playlist of songs that relax you, or watching a TV show (preferably one that you have already seen and can start zoning out to), reading, taking a shower, foam rolling & stretching, etc. Point is to pick something out that will only be done be done before sleep so that your brain can connect the dots and prepare to shut down.
More importantly, though, we need to add friction to our bad behaviors, such as staying up late playing Fornite.
One way you can ensure to get your ass off the game is to add a Commitment Device. This is a technique where you make a decision in the present that will control your behavior in the future.
In this case, if you cannot get enough sleep each night and find yourself staying up on Fornite or another game, the parental controls found on game consoles can inhibit you from playing past a certain time. With a simple Google search, you can learn how to set this up and ultimately cut off your bad behavior at the source.
The next strategy to improve sleep, or really any habit, would be utilizing what Clear describes as a One-Time Choice. A one-time choice requires some effort/money up front but will have value over a long period of time.
For sleeping, one of the best one-time choices you can make is purchasing a sleep mask or blackout curtains. A few months back I was tired of poor sleep and waking up with the influx of sunlight in my room each morning, I decided to purchase a sleep-mask and it has been a game-changer for me ever since. Not only do I sleep through the night better but I fall asleep way quicker than I used to. Other examples could be buying a better pillow, mattress, or even a fan.
Habit 2: Eating Every 2-3 Hours
This is a guideline that Eric Cressey outlines in Maximum Strength. This habit works for both those that want to gain weight and lose weight. By spreading out your calories throughout the day it makes it easier to consume enough calories to go into a surplus (necessary for gaining weight) - or can help you limit portion size to lose weight but keep you energized throughout the day.
Considering you are at school most of the day and rushing off to practice, games or the weight room this can be hard to stick with. But don't be fooled, you don't need to eat full meals every 2-3 hours, you should just make a habit of consuming some type of food every 2-3 hours - even if it is just a cliff bar or banana.
The best way to stick with this habit is by employing two of Clear's Laws of Behavior Change. Law 1, Make it Obvious, and Law 3, Make it Easy.
As mentioned before, Law 1 is based on the first step in the Habit Loop, cues. By making the cues in your environment more obvious you are more likely to start the process of the habit you are trying to build. But, just starting the process is not enough, we also have to make our response (step 3 in Habit Loop) easier - this is where Law 3 comes into play. By following both of these laws, you can start automating your good habits.
Let's look at an example of how you can apply these two laws in tandem to increase your caloric intake per day following the daily habit of eating every 2-3 hours.
You might struggle to consume enough calories per meal and rarely have the time to prepare meals to stick with the habit of eating every 2-3 hours. To make your habit easier, you can incorporate high calorie shakes once or twice a day, this is an example of Law 3. Sure, that sounds simple enough, but how do you start and stick with making the shakes? To make the act of starting this mini habit obvious (Law 1), every night before bed you can set out the blender on the countertop so that in the morning it is one of the first things you see in the kitchen. This will remind you to make a shake for breakfast.
If you struggle with finding time to eat or prepare your food and notice yourself constantly missing meals, try using the previously discussed Habit Stacking technique to schedule meal times before/after daily occurrences like after School, the car ride home from practice, breaks in between classes, etc.
The other concept Clear brings up that can be helpful is a Habit Contract, where you write down your commitment to a new habit you want to form and a punishment if fail to perform it. To reinforce the Habit Contract you can ask friends or family to be an Accountability Partner - someone that will oversee the punishment.
In this case of eating every 2-3 hours, for every missed meal you could owe your Accountability Partner $5, or you could be creative by coming up with something besides a finical punishment.
The idea behind this Habit Contract is to add a bit of immediate pain to our bad behaviors. Clear describes this in his fourth law of behavior change, Make It Satisfying. He explains that we are more likely to repeat behaviors that reward us with a small dose of instant satisfaction and avoid those that come with a dose of instant pain.
The problem is most of our good habits don't come with any satisfaction until a much later date. In this example, the habit of eating every 2-3 hours is a means of either bulking up or slimming down - both of which will provide us with satisfaction at some future date.
To add a dose of instant satisfaction to our boring daily habits that pursue long term goals of ours, Clear suggests utilizing Habit Tracking. This is where you simply track your progress each day. This fits in perfectly with the example, as you could start writing down what and when you ate in a food log to keep yourself accountable and chart progress by weighing yourself every day. Many athletes also use this technique with their workouts. By tracking the weight and reps of each exercise.
By choosing to track your habit you create a cue that reminds you to act (your food log, or the print-off sheet for your workouts, motivates you because of the progress you see and feels satisfying each time you track another entry.
Habit 3: An Effective Pre-Game/Practice Warmup
Having a proper warmup is vital to optimizing your on-field performance; however, through observing amateur teams over the years it is clear that not enough emphasis is placed on warmups. Most of this is not the coaches fault. Many coaches give players autonomy to direct their own warmups - yet players slack off and have poor warmup habits.
Throwing for 10 minutes at 90 feet is not the type of habit you want to have if you are looking to maximize your on-field performance.
To improve your warmup one of the first things you should consider is making a One-Time Choice and investing tools and products to incorporate into your warmup routine. There a few great tools on the market right now that you can utilize - one of the most popular being Jaeger Bands. These bands can be seen in every bullpen across the MLB. By following a simple 5-minute band routine that Jaeger outlines prior to throwing, you are already probably miles ahead of what most of your teammates do.
Other One-Time Choice purchases might be foam rollers, lacrosse balls, plyocare balls, shoulder tube, wrist weights, etc. All of these tools are utilized in Driveline's Hacking the Kinetic Chain warmup procedure.
Now trust me I know it can be intimidating to be the ONLY guy going above and beyond your other teammates and that's where utilizing an Accountability Partner can help you feel more comfortable and stick with these habits despite peer pressure to not take warmups seriously.
Your accountability partner can also help when it is time to play catch and you are looking to throw further than your typical teammate does pre-game/practice.
As you may have picked up by now a pre-game warmup routine is actually just one big Habit Stack, so remembering things will be quite easy - the challenge; however, is choosing the right items to include and sticking with them even when the environment changes.
Something every ballplayer is familiar with is going on the road to a new park and the setup being entirely different. Maybe at your home diamond, there is a concrete wall conveniently placed close to the dugout that can be used to throw plyos into - on the road that won't always be the case.
This is where Environment Design will come into play. In this case, though, you won't be reorganizing your environment as much as you will be preparing ahead of time for the unfamiliar environment you are sure to encounter. This will ensure you don't skip a step because of the new environment you're in that might not have all the amenities you are used to. Going back to the plyocare balls example, ensuring every time you go on the road to bring a Rubber Mat to throw into is important. You could obviously skip the plyos and complain that there was no space to throw, or you could prepare ahead of time by going to your local hardware store and buying the $40 worth of materials to never need to skip them again.
Xan Barksdale provides a tutorial on how to build these mats here.
You might also be the type of player that get's easily distracted at the diamond, for this using a Commitment Device is a great idea. We know that the advantage of a commitment device is that they enable you to make a decision in the present that will impact your behavior in the future. For example, if you are the starting pitcher that day and need to zone into the job at hand, put on some headphones and go to work. In college, I used to see our starting pitcher's do this all the time - and you will tend to see MLB pitcher's do this as well. In fact, Trevor Bauer can be seen wearing headphones before every start.
Now maybe you can't put headphones on for whatever reason - no problem you can simulate the same concept with a little more effort. You could make the decision to put your bag a little further away from your teammates then you typically would on a start day - or when you are lining up for warmups and catch-play separate yourself from the rest of the team. Again, this is another technique professionals use frequently. When you show up to an MLB game early and get the opportunity to watch the starting pitchers warm up you will notice that the rest of their team is not even on the field at the same time they are.
Final Thoughts
With any of these habits, it is important to remember you are ONLY human, you WILL make mistakes, and you WILL miss days. This is where the Two-Day Rule comes into play. Say you got home late from a game and need to get up for school the next day at 7 a.m - it is ok to miss your habit of 8+ hours of sleep that day - but the next day make no excuses, complete your habit.
This is where most people's good habits start to derail. Intuitively, we understand that it is ok to miss a day of something important to us, maybe we got sick, got hurt, etc. But, what separates successful people from the average Joe is being able to get right back into their routine and never miss two days in a row. The average Joe is content with missing a day and does not make it a burning priority to get back to his routine and quickly that one day turns into three, four, and sooner than later, his good habit has completely evaporated.
This blog serves as a gateway post for me to start crossing realms and writing about personal growth and mental game strategies along with the usual topics I write about. I hope you found it useful - if you liked this post be sure to let me know!