What Separates Champions: The Five Non-Negotiable Attributes

Fatigue doesn't just slow your body down it hijacks your focus, your patience, and your ability to execute the plan.

In this episode, Coach John Williams walks through the attributes that separate elite performers from the rest: physical fitness as the foundation for mental endurance and the real difference between focus and discipline, why planning creates peace instead of pressure, and a leadership principle most coaches get wrong — you can offload the work, but never the responsibility.

Transcript

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If you are physically prepared and psychologically and emotionally you find the joy in doing the thing, that takes a couple of layers off on the difficulty scale. And now that makes it sustainable. It makes it. Welcome back to Undeniable. I am Coach John and thanks for joining. I've had a lot of questions over the last probably three, four years about how I began working with Taylor and kind of what our origin story was. So I figured I'd take a few minutes here and give you guys the whole backstory and the rundown. Alright, so as many of you probably know, if you know anything about me and my professional background, but this may entirely be new to most of you. I spent quite a few years in the performance space. So I had a gym in Atlanta, and uh it's 2017, and I start working with Taylor on the physical side of things, her physical fitness, conditioning, mobility, all the things, you know, body-related that a professional athlete would need. We're making great progress. Uh, we continue working on those things, and you know, time goes on, the calendar ticks. Uh, I believe 2017, she actually had a pretty decent outing in Australia. Uh so that was that was a pretty good start to our working relationship. We did preseason in 2017, and then she went over and played the Australian, and then a couple of events after that. But as we fast forward through time, uh we're now, you know, 2019-2020, and COVID hits, and Indian Wells is canceled. The tour is up in arms, nobody really knows what's going to go on scheduling-wise. Taylor comes back to Atlanta and we begin kind of working because we don't know when she's going to be able to go out and play again. Nobody does, if if and when that's going to happen. So we work all through COVID. She actually ends up playing world team tennis, so that's an opportunity for her. I think there was another event that she ended up playing as well. It was uh, I don't know, maybe some type of money tournament, I I remember. But anyway, so we continue working and and building on the foundation that we had kind of established. And my objective was to improve her movement, improve her strength, improve her durability through some mobility and and flexibility protocols. She'd been making really good progress and it was starting to show in the way that she was playing. She was, you know, playing quite well. Anyway, fast forward through time a little bit more. I am called into a meeting where she shows up at the facility, asks me if I'm going to be there. She says she has something to tell me. And that's when she drops the news that she is now going to be a mom. And we were all super excited for her. And she tells me at that point that, you know, she is a little bit unsure of the journey ahead, but she wants me to help her navigate it. So I graciously accept the challenge and embark on that journey, uh, assisting her in, you know, her transition from player and uh and non-mother to mother and player. But as many of you know, it's a long journey. So first thing I did was, you know, kind of told her to expect that it was going to be harder and more difficult than she probably anticipated. And I did that because I wanted her to manage expectations. It's always better to go into something thinking it's going to be significantly more difficult than it actually turns out to be. That way, when it's not, you're met with a pleasant surprise. Okay. So that was kind of the approach going into pregnancy, and and we did, you know, a bunch of things. Taylor was in the gym up until I think probably four or five days before she actually gave birth. So we had a uh series of protocols that we put her through, and she was, you know, progressing nicely through the pregnancy. It was a great pregnancy, no issues. And uh now she's a mom. Skipping through the timeline again. Now she's a mom. So the goal at this point is to help her recover from birth and kind of get her back into a general state of function where you know she's able to be up and down and move around and kind of work her way back into the gym, obviously paying close attention to, you know, the advice that her medical professionals were giving her, but also operating off of, you know, at the timeline based on uh, you know, how she was actually healing and progressing. So there was a slow transition to getting her, you know, kind of back to the point where she could do things like squats, for example, unweighted body weight, but just the movement pattern, taking our time to work her back there so that we made sure everything was good. And once we got there, we didn't have to then take steps backwards because we rushed the process. Fast forwarding again through the timeline, we start actually doing movement. So now we're we're through that phase and she's starting to train again like an athlete. It's just an athlete at the very beginning stages. And we start working on a lot of footwork and movement. That was one of my athletic goals for her, was to improve her ability to move on court. So as we're doing footwork and movement, I have, you know, her shadowing swings and doing things like that with a racket. And I'm asking her questions why are you doing it this way? Why are you doing it that way? Hey, maybe give it a shot. Try it this way, or do this, or use this footwork pattern instead and see how that works. She quickly realized that there was a a bit of a knowledge gap. What she had been taught the way she had been coached previously did not encompass these things. And she knew because I showed it to her uh using, you know, video and visual demonstrations. This is how the top players are doing things. This is how you're doing things. And there's a reason that the top players are moving this way, there's a reason that the top players, you know, approach this shot like this. That I think kind of sparked a little bit of an idea in her head that maybe I could do a little bit more for her than just make sure her body was appropriately or exceedingly prepared. And that began kind of our coaching relationship on the tennis side. Now she's back on court in earnest, and we're actually hitting balls, and it was a long way to go because essentially I looked at every stroke that she had and her tactical mindset, how she approached the game. And my objective there was to make it as easy as possible for her to play the way that she wanted to play, meaning she's an aggressive player, she likes to punish her opponent and then take advantage of, you know, short balls or weak balls so she can move in and finish points at the net. That was what she wanted to be able to do more. Well, there were several areas of her game that just simply would not allow her to do that. There were several areas of the way that she moved that created limitations and made her job much more difficult than it needed to be. After addressing those things, she started to see results. And I'm again fast-forwarding through the timeline, but now we're, you know, in match play, she's hitting with a hitting partner, those types of things. So we're doing a lot more live ball stuff. And she's able to see through the application of these things and reminders that this is a much more effective and easier way through efficiency, easier way to play tennis. And she was really happy with the progress that she was making. Her level of understanding was improving, and she was starting to fall in love with the game again instead of this is this is what I do, it's my job. And that was really important to me because as we know, sustainability, one of the key ingredients to sustainability is how much joy you find in doing the thing. I love coaching, so it doesn't matter whether I'm coaching ants how to uh how to build an ant house, or I'm coaching, you know, Olympic or professional athletes how to play their sport, or whether I'm just talking to an executive and trying to understand why they have these self-imposed limitations. Coaching is coaching to me. I love all of it. So I I derive a significant amount of joy from that. I wanted her to have that same experience where every time she stepped out on the tennis court, she fell in love with some part, some aspect of the game of the sport again. And I'm not trying to romanticize this concept because tennis is one of the most difficult professional sports to play in the world. So it's never going to be easy on a physical side. However, psychologically and emotionally, if you are physically prepared and psychologically and emotionally you find the joy in doing the thing, that takes a couple of layers off on the difficulty scale. And now that makes it sustainable. It makes it environmentally environmentally equal to kind of a thrill-seeking environment. Similar to uh a stage actor or performer. When they have this full house and they've been grinding and grinding away, practicing, practicing, practicing, memorizing lines, and you know, playing the instrument, whatever the the thing is, and they finally get on stage, but they land the big role in the Broadway show, or they have the big concert tour, but now they have to play, you know, five, six times a week. They're doing two shows a night, and that's gonna run for 14 weeks. That is when the work changes. Hard work was to get you there, and now the work with the reward kind of balances it out. And that's that's what I wanted her to experience. Okay. I think I've belabored that point just a little bit, but I wanted to make sure that I gave you enough color so that you understood what my objectives were going in. All of the physical things, all of the technical things, all of the tactical things were designed, engineered, and applied so that she could express herself creatively as a player, as an individual, in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Effective because you can be full of self-expression, but if it doesn't work against your opponent in the competitive environment, you are not going to be successful in terms of outcomes. Efficient in that if we're building durability and we're trying to emphasize sustainability, efficiency is a really good tool to use to make sure that those things start to happen on a consistent basis and you're able to carry them forward into the future. So that's where my mind was in structuring the player that I was trying to help Taylor become. So we're back on court and we are playing matches now, and things are going well from a progress standpoint. And as they continue to evolve, we continue to evolve in terms of the direction of her game, the particulars in terms of stroke mechanics and things like that. Of course, the psychology and the mindset of a champion, I began to expose her on a consistent basis, challenge her to develop, cultivate, and apply the attributes of champions. And that is where I began formulating the structure and the template for my book, The Champion's Code, but every attribute in there was applied to my working with Taylor throughout the entire process. And it was a it was an amazing journey. There's no words that I could that I could use to express the amount of gratitude that I have, but also the amount of things that I learned. And in that vein, I will say that probably one of the largest things that I knew existed, but didn't really quite understand because in my circles I never really had to deal with that. And that was this the incredible importance that people have or need to place you in a box so that they can understand and relate to you. Here's what I mean by that. When I start to show up on these tours at first, they don't really know who I am. Am I a boyfriend? Am I a family member? Am I a coach? Nobody really knows. And nobody really cares, to be honest, because you know, Taylor's playing 50s and 75s and trying to make it into hundreds. And everybody there is grinding. That's that's what you have to do when you're when you're at that level and you're trying to work your way back or work your way to. It's par for the course. Everyone's a journeyman, and you just show up, you do your work, you play your best. And if you're able to do that consistently, then you start accumulating points, your ranking moves, so on and so forth. So nobody really cared. Once Taylor started to have a bit more success, a bit more mainstream success, going a little bit deeper in tournaments and singles, making it to you know finals of a slam and doubles, things of that nature, then the spotlight starts shining on okay, who is this player and who else is or is around them? And that's when I started getting the questions. And one of the biggest questions was, how do you like being a tennis coach? My response was and still is the same. I am not a tennis coach. I am a coach who coaches a tennis player. There is a difference, and here's the difference. The difference is a tennis coach spends the majority of their life and the majority of their professional development learning about tennis. I am not saying that this is better or worse than my situation, but I do want to highlight some very key differences. The first is that it's important to understand that when you look at people and you don't really understand their journey, but you happen to be shoulder to shoulder with them or eye to eye with them, it's important to understand that nobody is inherently better than anyone else. So if I am not better than you, then by the same token, I cannot be any worse than you. Okay. That's also super important to understand. Why do I bring that up? I bring that up to say that the differences don't necessarily make people better, and they don't necessarily make them worse. But if those differences are significant enough to elicit change in a manner that you've not seen before, you should probably pay attention to that. I say that to say that when I gave those interviews, when I talked about the fact that I'm not a career, you know, aspirational tennis coach, that in fact the majority of my coaching took place long before I stepped on a court in a coaching capacity. But that coaching took me to, you know, tracks and stadiums all around the world, coaching track and field athletes at the highest level. Took me to earn accolades from Olympians and world champions that I've worked with, took me to, you know, a a pretty respectable reputation in terms of training professional athletes in multiple sports, basketball, football, baseball, ice hockey, etc., while the tennis coaches were simply studying tennis. I was developing my skill set in a variety of ways. So I say that to say that when you don't know a person's journey, it's smart not to assume that they are like you. Because I am in the same space that you're in, but we are not the same. You haven't gone through what I've gone through. You didn't experience what I've experienced. I would I would say that you probably don't know what I know about the things that I know about. And if those things are true from me to you, then they're also true from you to me. That should elicit an air of curiosity and a desire to understand and maybe seek to identify some fundamental commonalities and some, let's just say, convergence points that could be a foundation for a good relationship. But to simply assume just because you see me on a tennis court with a tennis racket and I'm talking to a tennis player that I happen to be working with, that I am a tennis coach, does the previous 20 years of experience for me a complete and utter disservice. So I'm very cognizant of that, and I employ each and every one of you to be cognizant of that as well. But that is how I began working with Taylor. And two, well, as of this recording, she's won three Grand Sl in doubles. Under my tutelage, we won two as a team. Wimbledon in 24 and Australian Open in 25. And a world number one ranking in doubles, and her highest singles ranking of her career to date, occurred under my tutelage as well. Those things are super, super impressive in the world of professional sports, especially in a game like tennis. And I'm very proud of her and those accomplishments and what we were able to accomplish as a team. But I think the largest takeaway for me, and the thing I am most proud of, is the way that I was able to positively influence her development as a competitor, restructuring how she views failure and success, restructuring how she's able to apply her incredible work ethic and seek to work smart and hard, not just hard. And I think the biggest of the list would be her ability to find joy in the journey and in the process and not simply be outcome focused. Because in the sport of tennis, as in many other professional sports, it's super easy to simply lock into the outcome and only be focused on that. And that's a recipe for disaster and disappointment. So I'm I'm super thrilled that we were able to accomplish those milestones together, both from a ranking perspective and from a trophy perspective. But I'm most proud of the things that most people up until now would have never known or understood took place. So I hope you enjoyed the little walk down History Lane and the full and unadulterated explanation of how Taylor and I began working together and what my work entailed with her. So until next time, keep elevating.