Pursuing Excellence

@Josh Chambers

Troy Polamalu says every year of his NFL career he watched every snap from 5 different safeties and built both highlight and lowlight tapes on them because you're never going to be original in pursuit of greatness.

"Every year I watched five safeties. And I would literally watch every single one of their plays. I would make a highlight tape… And a lowlight tape of all of them."

"That's what I did throughout my whole career. Ed was somebody I watched every single one of his plays. Obviously Ed is somebody who I admired. But there's a bunch of guys. Donovin Darius. Bob Sanders."

"A lot of guys that don't get a lot of credit that were Hall of Fame-caliber players. And to be very frank, I was in the most beautiful situation in Pittsburgh. I had a Hall of Fame defensive coordinator. Hall of Fame head coach."

"You could put any of these players in my position and they would have been just as successful as I am. I studied. I was obsessed with the game. I broke down safeties this way and even cornerbacks this way. I studied everything about them. I studied the greats."

"If anybody saw how much Ed Reed talked about how important film was and you didn't listen to that… What are you doing? All of these things became habits for me. You hear what Tom Brady is doing… Health, wellness, longevity… You hear Gilbert Arenas talking about watching Kobe Bryant."

"Honestly… You've got to have a student mindset. You're not going to be original in anything. There are a lot of great players that have done a lot of great things. It's no secret. It's sacrifice. It's grit. It's hard work. It's no special talent that anybody else has."

Kudos to Josh Chambers for doing this interview and posting this.

I remember Troy telling someone that his first year in the NFL wasn't particularly noteworthy. But his career became noteworthy once he realized what he needed to do to become better - and did those things.

Whether or not you are enthusiastic about football, or the NFL, when you see excellence - to deny it is robbing from yourself. Embrace the effort, even if you don't embrace the sport.

K. Anders Ericsson sent me his research on the pursuit of excellence that he devoted so much of his career studying. Some people want to jealously hoard what they know. Anders wanted everyone to benefit from what he'd learned.

Some folks fixate on one thing or another from that body of work, but, for me, it was something no one published that I ever saw.

Mr. Ericsson wrote that you don't have to have talent, desire, or aptitude to attain excellence. The one thing you have to do is do the actual work it takes to achieve the highest level of performance possible.

That's the crossover from Troy's efforts, to shooting - or anything else. Nowhere does Troy say he liked, or didn't like, watching game film. But he did say he did it with purpose. Apparently it was effective in helping him become the best at his position.

We can take lessons from people at the top of their game, from our mentors, from collecting data on stages by watching, asking, recording. Incorporate it into your game and the game changes.

Everything is data.