The goal is always to be the best, the fastest, the strongest, the highest paid, the SuperBowl Champ….

That's what every athlete wants. And making it to the most competitive sports league in the world proves you are the best. Professional athletes are truly in a league of your own. But it's not enough to just BE in the League, the goal is now to be the best OF THE BEST!

But how can you make sure you're the best player at your position, and that you'll have a long and successful career? You might think your team and organization is willing to take care of you to make that happen, but that may not be the whole truth. 

The team you play for wants championships, and money. That's the bottom line. It doesn't matter which players make that happen, or at what cost.

The cost, of course, is the well-being of each athlete on the team. 

A professional  athlete’s goals may also include a championship, and to sign a big contract. But none of that is possible if you aren't performing at your best, and at your highest potential all of the time.

So the question is, how can I be the best? How can I be better then the rest? How can I be better than the best ever?

In our previous video we described the Greek legend of Icarus.  The young man who was given the gift of wings. The young man who didn't listen to the warnings, flew too close to the sun and plunged to his demise. Icarus was able to fly because of the wings he was given.  Getting a taste of the magic of flying and the objective of becoming free of his imprisonment and limitations, made Icarus think he was untouchable and unstoppable. He recklessly ignored the advice and warnings he was given.

As the legend goes, he got too cocky, flew too close to the sun... and the heat from the sun melted the wax holding his wings together. Icarus perished into the sea.

He tried to beat the system, exceed the limits of his gifts and do what he wanted. He paid the ultimate price. He ignored the warnings of the gift of wings and the magic of flight. He ignored the limitations of his gift!

Is there an Icarus Phenomenon in modern day professional athletes, football players and Olympic athletes? Once an athlete gets a taste of victory and success at the highest level, it's hard to want anything else. And such a desire to be the best, win the most, and make lots of money, can drive someone to take short cuts. The temptation to cheat the system and to push their body beyond what it is capable will be irresistible.

High performance athletes are always looking for ways, actually anything and everything that will and can improve their performance.

Too many incredible athletes have gotten caught up using performance enhancing training methods, techniques and drugs, because they clearly wanted to enhance their performance! It can be sports specific. It can be to exceed one’s normal physiological limits like:

·  increasing lung capacity

·   increasing muscle mass

·   increasing strength

·   increasing endurance

·   decreasing body fat

·   increasing myoglobin levels

·   lengthening lactate threshold

·   increasing strength

Just look at a career in the NFL.  The average length of an NFL player's career is only 3.3 years? There is a lot of money at stake that can create generational family wealth. Heck if it was me I would do anything and everything to have a career longer than 3.3 years! Wouldn't you like to play in the league for longer than that??

According to "Statista" the career length of each position... is not much longer!

  Average career length in years

 
   Kickers               4.87

   Quarterbacks     4.44

   League average   3.3

   Cornerbacks        2.94

   Wide receivers    2.81

   Running backs     2.57

Imagine working your whole life, for the goal of making it to the NFL, only to spend just a couple of years on the field.

If you want to be the best, that would likely include a career that lasts for a decade plus! But how can you turn that goal into a reality?

The reason the average NFL career is so short, is no doubt based on how brutal the game is. It's quite hard to take vicious beatings every week in practice and in games! THE brutal reality is that it will impact an athlete’s well being short term and long term.

There are real life *NFL* examples of Icarus-like behavior. Take Lyle Alzado for example. He played 15 years in the league, winning the Super bowl with the Raiders. He attributed his entire successful career to taking anabolic steroids. But at 43, he died of brain lymphoma. An aggressive and unforgiving cancer. In an interview shortly before his death, Alzado said he took steroids in college and never stopped. He said taking steroids for 25 years is what gave him cancer, and ultimately killed him. In his final days, a once 6 foot 3 stud athlete could not even walk a straight line, or speak without issue, just 7 years after his last game.

A more recent example is JJ Watt, he had legendary workouts in his climb to success. Just ask any rookie in the NFL they all know about his workouts. The drum will start beating for him to be a first ballet Hall of Fame choice.  He was one of the most dominant players to ever play the sport. Equally he may have been drug tested more than any other player of his generation. He has publicly stated, “I think I’ve been ‘randomly selected’ for drug and doping tests after every 3 sack game of my career,” 

However, you can exceed  and push your gifts beyond their limits without drugs.

Here is the brief summary of JJ Watt’s career and the benefits of his legendary workouts:

Drafted No. 11 pick in the 2011 NFL Draft, and he spent 10 years with the Texans before joining the Cardinals in 2021.

Career stats: Individual Sacks - 114.5,    Assisted Sacks – 187, Total Sacks – 586.

Here is the price he paid.

2012: he tore elbow ligaments, which is why he would wear that giant brace on his arm. 

2013: he broke his nose. 

2015, he suffered from a broken hand and a sports hernia.

2016: spine surgery before the 2016 season but only lasted 3 games  before aggravating his back injury and spending the rest of the season on IR. Then he had a second spinal surgery!

2017, he suffered a tibial plateau fracture, finishing the season on the IR.

2019, after eight games a torn pectoral muscle forced him back to the IR.

2021, Watt separated his shoulder, which resulted in a torn labrum, torn biceps, and torn rotator cuff. Guess where he finished the season? The injured reserve seat!

And yes he had shoulder surgery.

2022 his final season, he announced that he had gone into atrial fibrillation... and had to get his heart electrically shocked to get his heart rate back to normal.

Since starting every game from 2011-15, Watt missed 42 games over the next six seasons. In an 11 year career he missed 2 and 2/3 seasons. He only played a little more than 8 years!

At  just 33 years old, one of the greatest players in the league said his body had had enough.

Which of these injuries will now follow him off into the sunset? He may be faced with a lifetime of heart challenges. He may have recurrent spinal problems. He may have recurrent shoulder problems and face shoulder replacement surgery. He may have chronic bone and muscles pains just to name a few.

Athletes are willing to put their health at risk for championships, world records, huge contracts and financial endorsements.  This has been repeatedly confirmed by a number of sports such as boxing, cycling, track and field, American football and downhill skiing, just to name a few.

Sports is a place where athletes at all levels risk their health to try and get huge dividends in return.

It is worth noting that most drugs used for performance enhancement are drugs invented to help sick people get healthy. Not the opposite.

‘In a survey conducted by Dr. Gabe Mirkin, over a hundred top American athletes were asked if they were given the option of taking a drug which would make them an Olympic champion but which could kill them within a year, would they take it? Almost 55 per cent of the sample said they would take the drug (Donohoe & Johnson, 1986, p. 125)
 

Early in my career an NFL player became a patient for the express purpose of helping him play as long as possible. He pointedly stated that he was a special teams player, his salary fit in the salary cap model, he would be sent in as a linebacker when someone else was injured. He frankly stated that “DrM if you can help me play five more years, I can create generational wealth for my family! Tell me what to do!”

As a practitioner this dramatically impacted how I would take care of professional athletes from that time forward. My focus changed to how will anything and everything I do for this athlete impact his immediate recovery, the length of his playing career AND minimize long term problems. I started developing what I called the Performance Matrix. There are 3 levels of performance recovery.

In order for an athlete to improve he must abuse himself. The more and different ways he abuses his boy to do unreal things the better he gets! UNDER 1 CONDITION.

The athlete must recover from yesterday’s abuse so that he may abuse himself more today!