The Winning Edge Way: An Athlete and Coach's Guide To Becoming A 3-Dimensional Competitor

By Eric Smith

The reason the triangle is the strongest of the polygonal shapes is because, when force is added to a triangle, that force is spread evenly throughout all three sides.

This is the same logic Eric Smith applies to The Winning Edge Way: An Athlete and Coach's Guide to Becoming a 3-Dimensional Competitor.

As complex and nuanced as team sports are, there are three main components at their core: the player, the team, the game - each reliant on the other. In this guide, Smith meticulously breaks down and examines each of these three components through the lens of his own personal experience as both athlete and coach.

One should devote oneself to a purpose not for the purpose but for that which can be learned and gained along the way, to then be passed along to the next generation. And when you devote yourself to a sport (or purpose), as Smith has, you learn a thing or two - or in this case, three!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781732860315

Eric Smith

Eric Smith is a literary agent and young adult author from Elizabeth, New Jersey. His recent books include Don’t Read the Comments, You Can Go Your Own Way, and Jagged Little Pill: The Novel, written in collaboration with Alanis Morissette, Diablo Cody, and Glenn Ballard. Together with award-winning author Lauren Gibaldi, he’s coedited the anthologies Battle of the Bands and First-Year Orientation. He enjoys pop-punk, video games, and crying over every movie. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and son.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION:

THE GAME PLAN

♦

Imagine, for a moment, if there were a personal growth and leadership development organization that existed in every city across the nation. One that kids had a passion for and were highly motivated to participate in. And imagine if parents were also highly motivated to get their kids involved, they were willing to drive their kids to and from the meetings on a regular basis, and they were even willing to pay for their kids to participate.

Imagine if kids viewed their participation in this organization as being fun and cool. Through participation, they would develop a better image of themselves, learn life lessons, and build skills that would allow them to achieve their dreams in life at a much higher level than they would have had they not participated.

Imagine if this development organization was so popular and successful that schools, cities, and municipalities were willing to build the infrastructure for this program with tax dollars. In addition, imagine if television and media organizations got behind it because there was so much interest they could sell their products through broadcasting it and reporting on it.

Wouldn’t this type of developmental program be amazing, where there was so much entailed from so many different segments of our society? Wow! What a concept!

Now, imagine if I told you that it already exists, that there was no need to create it! The infrastructure was already in place—the teachers the facilities everything. What if I told you the name of this developmental program is called organized sports?

Isn’t this amazing? That this organization, which has buy-in from participants and organizations who want to support it, already exists! All we have to do to make it work for us is to reframe how we view it and how we approach it.

Because of the emphasis on wins and losses, which professional and major college sports create in our culture today, we lose site of the real value organized sports offer us!

Did you know only one in 6,000 high school varsity football players will make it to the NFL, where they can earn a living playing the sport? Did you know only one in 10,000 high school varsity basketball players will make it to the NBA?

Based on these statistics, isn’t it more important to focus more on what the sport can do for you, the athlete, in terms of transforming your life by teaching you life lessons and equipping you with life skills, rather than simply defining your success by the number of wins you achieve or some arbitrary batting average that no one cares about or will remember after you’re gone?

Through participation in organized sports, you have a rare opportunity to learn how to develop skills that will allow you to reach your fullest potential as an athlete, and as a leader, by learning how to elevate others around you. In addition, because it will have done so much for you, you have a tremendous opportunity to leave your sport in a better position than where it was when you found it, to improve the game that will have done so much for you!

The skills required to do so are the very same skills that will allow you to grow personally and professionally beyond sports, to impact those you interact with both personally and professionally. To be a winner in life!

The skills I will lay out for you in this book are built around the concept of becoming a 3-Dimensional Competitor—one who possesses the tools to 1.) make yourself better 2.) make your teammates better 3.) make your sport better by leaving it in a better place than where it was when you began.

Again, these are the very same skills that will allow you to become a better person—better in your personal and professional life, now, and in the future—skills that will enable you to become a person of influence, a person who has learned to win in life, through sports, and who has developed the skills necessary to build other winners along the way. This is the legacy you can leave behind, long after the wins and losses fade.

Be careful not to misunderstand my message. This is not simply a book which emphasizes how to use sports to develop yourself into a leader and winner in life; it’s also about how to first teach you how to be a winner in your sport—a winner both personally and as a team. After all, you won’t be able to apply these skills in life until you’ve developed them in the arena!

Schemes vs. Dreams

In 2017, I had the honor of speaking at a football coaching convention in Reno, Nevada. As a football coach, I could have devoted my entire time to teaching football skills and concepts, but I chose not to. Instead, I devoted about 25% of my time to teaching leadership skills and personal growth concepts—skills that often get overlooked and brushed aside as coaches get tunnel vision around the scheme: the X’s and O’s. Yet, it’s these skills that are even more critical to the success of a team than any scheme is.

To fully appreciate what I was doing and the risk I was taking, you have to understand football coaches. Football coaches are always trying to instill toughness in their players. They see topics like developing leadership, culture, and behavior as being soft.

The reality, however, is that these topics are every bit as relevant to success in football as they are in other sports or in the boardroom of corporate America.

The positive feedback I received from so many coaches was gratifying. And it proved to me that coaches get enough of the X’s and O’s but not enough on how to develop the people they’re coaching—the Lisa’s and Joe’s.

When developing X’s and O’s, coaches are developing schemes, but when developing Lisa’s and Joe’s, they’re developing dreams. They’re developing the dreams of their organization, as well as the dreams of the athletes’ families and their community.

This book is designed to be a how-to guide for athletes and coaches, to make themselves better, their teammates better, and the game better!

Dedicating yourself to learning and applying these strategies today will enable you to become a 3-Dimensional Competitor—one who has developed themselves in three critical dimensions: Self, Team, and Sport.

We all understand what 3 dimensions represents, but let’s examine the word competitor for a moment.

The Latin root of the word compete means, "to strive, to come together." As a competitor, you’re coming together with someone to strive. By striving, you’re trying to get better

Getting better at anything worthwhile requires effort. In life, if things are not challenging, then they typically are not meaningful. Struggling or working hard for something is a requirement if the result is to be valued. Therefore, when it comes to sports, a worthy competitor is a gift! It’s the only way to get better. To be your best, you should embrace competition as an opportunity to evaluate your skill set and reach your full potential.

When thinking of a challenging competitor, don’t look at them as the enemy. Rather, see them as a partner in helping you become your best because, without them, you wouldn’t prepare and train as hard as you do when you’re preparing to compete with them. Think of them as a gift from the sports gods and treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve for their contributions in allowing you to be your best. Honor them!

Pete Carroll, head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, in his book, Win Forever, describes competition in an alternative and much deeper way:

Competition is typically defined as a contest between individuals, groups, teams, or nations; it is a test of skills. In my world, however, competition is much more than that. It is a mentality, an outlook, and a way of approaching every day. The traditional definition of competition requires having an opponent. For players, the real opposition is not necessarily the team they are matched up against in a given week—far from it. The real opposition is the challenge to remain focused on maximizing their abilities in preparation for the game."

Carroll goes on to say:

I have worked for plenty of teams where coaches spend the week or even the month leading up to a big game talking down the opposition. They fuel traditional rivalries and do whatever they can to build up other teams as the enemy. Of course, this approach wins games for many teams, but I don’t agree. The essence of my message about competing has nothing to do with the opponent. My competitive approach is that it’s all about us. If we’ve really done the preparation to elevate ourselves to our full potential, it shouldn’t matter whom we’re playing Once I understood that we were competing with ourselves, it changed my view of future opponents. Many people confuse opponent with enemy, but in my experience, that is extremely unproductive. My opponents are not my enemies. My opponents are the people who offer me the opportunity to succeed. The tougher my opponents, the more they present me with an opportunity to live up to my full potential and play my best. From an extreme perspective, that’s a reason to love them, not to hate them. At the end of the day, that opponent is the person who makes you into the best competitor you can be.

3-D Competitors are always struggling with themselves and their opponents to improve in the dimensions of Self, Team, and Sport. Their focus is always on developing the skill set required to do so. The goal of this book is to act as the playbook for building those skills.

Before delving in, I believe it’s important to set proper expectations. Whether you’re an athlete hoping to develop these skills or a coach hoping to teach them, the process of developing the skills of a 3-D Competitor requires personal growth. It requires that you’re intentional and purposeful in developing the skills required to have such a significant, meaningful, and broad impact on yourself and others.

Growth comes from within. It’s inside out. To make yourself better on the outside, you’ve got to become a better person on the inside. You must first focus on Self. And you must be willing to grow. You have to learn to lead yourself in ways you haven’t done before, and that means experiencing pain.

Simply put—before you can have something you haven’t had before, you must first become someone whom you’ve never been before. Even simpler—before you can have, you must first become.

As you grow and achieve, personally, then you can help others get better, as well. Helping your Team get better by elevating others is the second dimension of being a 3-Dimensional Competitor.

Just as athletes are equipped on