What It Takes To Become An Olympian

Did you hear the one about the guy who got into the Olympic spirit so much that he tried to swim the Atlantic Ocean?

True story.

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The unnamed man attempted to swim 3,600 miles from France to New York. He made it one or two miles before lifeguards picked him up. One or two miles is still quite an effort, but a two-mile swim is only .0006% of the required distance to swim the Atlantic.

Nice try, big guy.

While that swimmer went to a ridiculous extreme, many people watch the Games then set out to achieve athletic and individual goals as a result.

And that’s awesome. Setting goals and improving yourself is a big part of what Dave teaches. But, as you start to become a better swimmer, lose weight, get out of debt, or actually train for the Olympics, the key thing to remember is this: Gold medals don’t just happen.

You won’t wake up a week after you start training and suddenly run a sub-10-second 100 meters. Your fifth 200-meter swim isn’t going to make Michael Phelps shake to his core with fear.

That takes years, even decades of practice, with hours and hours of time in the gym, the pool, or the court. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell famously created the “10,000 hour rule”—the belief that becoming a success in any field requires practicing a specific task for 10,000 hours.

And that’s what a lot of Olympic athletes have done. They’ve made sacrifices, both incredible and not so smart (like going thousands and thousands of dollars in debt) to achieve something that few people on earth can call themselves: Olympians.