How to become better than anyone is at anything

Clickbait-y title got your attention? 😉 Do please read on thought, we can all learn from the greats.

So, the title comes from an article from the Washington Post from June 2016, prior to the Rio Olympics that summer, titled: “How Katie Ledecky became better at swimming than anyone is at anything“. I hadn’t seen it before until last week Shane Parrish mentioned the article in the “explore your curiosity section of his weekly Farnam Street newsletter.

Before I talk about Katie Ledecky, know that I believe we all have within us a potential we can realise and that we can unwittingly place limits on ourselves by comparing ourselves to others.

As a recent example, I believe strongly that the Cayman public education system is and has been letting our children down for decades, but as it uses Caribbean area examination systems, regular justifications of performance are of the nature of “we are doing well compared to others”. I’m sorry, not good enough. I love my Caribbean people across the region, but a) there are only a few million of us compared to several billion globally, so a regional benchmark is not enough, then b) Cayman, uniquely in some ways to other Caribbean countries, truly competes globally for business and for talent (so we MUST educate our children to global standards at all levels, not only the few percent who rise to the top), and finally c) Cayman has, by far, the highest ability to fund public education of any Caribbean country.

Sorry, a passionate and specific sidebar there, but the point is that let us not compare ourselves to others if we are to reach our full potential. I have written around this theme several times, including: “Raise your expectations, there is no bar!“.

So, to Katie Ledecky, who I wrote about back in 2017 with: “Elite lessons: Katie Ledecky (aka The GOAT)“. For the younger readers / sports fans out there, to call anyone the “GOAT” is a bold statement.

However, I go bravely beyond bold, I believe Katie Ledecky to be the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) across any and all sports and eras.

Please here me out, thought, there are lessons for us all here from the WaPo article around Katie, then a closing punchline I feel you will appreciate.

Katie Ledecky – The Goat – across all sports

There are many articles written about Katie Ledecky to seek to understand what has made her so special, but this quote from her coach, Bruce Gemmell, from Angela Duckworth’s book “Grit” (see my article around it here) captures the essence for me:

“Her strength is not in any physical attribute. It’s not even in any particular technique. It’s her overwhelming desire to do what she needs to do to get better.”

So, from the opening of the WaPo article :

In many of her biggest races, Katie Ledecky is leading before she even touches the water.

In the 800-meter freestyle finals at the 2012 London Olympics, which produced her first Olympic gold medal; in six of her nine individual swims at the 2015 world championships, where she pulled off an unprecedented sweep of the 200 through 1,500 freestyles; in the 800 free finals at the 2014 Pan Pacific championships, a world record; and the finals of both the 400 and 800 free at 2012 U.S. Olympic trials — in all of those races, and in many others, Ledecky was the first swimmer off the blocks, her “reaction time” (the interval between the starter’s gun and the instant her feet leave the blocks) fastest in the field, at anywhere from .66 to .73 of a second.

It is not a skill Ledecky, a 19-year-old from Bethesda, needs or even particularly cares about. There isn’t much benefit in beating opponents off the blocks by a couple hundredths of a second when you typically win your core events by several seconds, or even tens of seconds. And while fast starts are a part of her practice routine, it is only in the larger context of the first 15 meters — dive, entry, underwater kicks, breakout — as a whole.

But as a symbol of Ledecky’s sheer athletic brilliance, her dominance of the nearly meaningless first movement of a distance race is illustrative. Getting off the blocks fast requires some combination of hard work, athleticism, intense focus and perfectionism. And try as people might to find some simple explanation for Ledecky’s historic dominance of swimming — whether physiological, mystical or chemical — the truth is more complex, and it lies somewhere in that recipe.

“This is a one-in-a-billion human being,” said Washington Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis, a longtime friend and associate of Ledecky’s family. “She has a very special family, and she’s an incredibly gifted person — with a high, high self-actualization and self-awareness, otherworldly good instincts and intelligence, a gifted physiognomy, plus an incredible drive to be the best. And it’s all natural.

“How did this happen? It’s hard work, obviously. But there’s something that drives this young woman to be the best.”

First, as I often write about story-telling and communication, the opening line of the article is powerful: “In many of her biggest races, Katie Ledecky is leading before she even touches the water.”

I closed that extract with the line: “there’s something that drives this young woman to be the best.”

To the first thought about leading before she even touches the water, this sparks a memory. In my 20s and 30s I played squash competitively for the Cayman Islands. I was fit, I had ability, but I was never the fittest or most athletic. All year long our peer group would play against each other as well as training, but only seek to peak a few times per year in national and international competition. As I got up into my early to mid 30s, I had younger, fitter players improving fast and nipping at my heels to take my place and overtake me on the team. I vividly remember one competitor who was improving fast, so I committed to playing at 100% against him in every match, no matter whether a routine “friendly” or not. The whole context was that when we came up against each other on court in a major event, he would know that he had never before beaten me, so I would therefore be “leading before I touched the water”. The same occurred when I would drop down from league one in the squash club ladders to league two. For years I made sure to never even drop a game in any league two match as I bounced back up to promotion to league one. Again, this meant I was “leading before I hit the water” as those league two opponents had that memory of never so much as taking a game off me.

That reflection is a personal story around the mental game. It goes without saying that to stay ahead of the field it takes “grit”, which I distilled into an emotional equation as Grit = Passion x Perseverance

I won’t talk about specifics of skills or training for myself, Katie Ledecky or anyone else, but if you have sufficient passion, if you see “there is no bar”, then ally that to commitment to persevere, you will constantly improve through that Grit and through realising that we can be our greatest ally in realising our potential, or our worst enemy (aiming too low, setting a bar we know we can clear, being ok with being just ok… all themes I write and speak about !)

Two more thoughts. First, from WaPo on just how great Katie Ledecky already was prior to Rio, then I’ll tell you what happened in Rio:

When she set the most recent of her 11 world records, in the 800 free at a meet in Austin in January {2016}, her margin of victory was 17.81 seconds.

Usain Bolt is occasionally beaten. Serena Williams doesn’t win every Grand Slam title. Stephen Curry goes 5 for 20 now and again. But Ledecky has swum in 12 individual finals at major international meets, and has never lost.

“She’s the greatest athlete in the world today by far,” said Michael J. Joyner, an anesthesiologist and researcher for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., specializing in human performance and physiology. “She’s dominating by the widest margin in international sport, winning by 1 or 2 percent. If [a runner] won the 10,000 meters by that wide a margin, they’d win by 100 meters. One or 2 percent in the Tour de France, over about 80 hours of racing, would be 30 or 40 minutes. It’s just absolutely remarkable.”

Finally, so what happened in Rio and beyond? As I noted in my article about Katie from 2017 :

As Katie swims long distance events, it is sometimes difficult to fathom quite how dominant she is, but in 2017 she lots a world championship final in her least strong event, and it was the first time she had ever lost an international race since she burst onto the scene in the London Olympics in 2012 at aged 15.

At Rio 2016, she won gold medals in the 200, 400 and 800 freestyle, and in her main event, the 800 free, she not only smashed the world record, but she also won by 11 seconds. In short, she is like nothing we have ever seen in the sport of swimming. She has completely redefined long distance swimming.

Katie Ledecky is still the current world record holder in the 400,800 and 1500m.

Simply imagine someone being able to dominate in a sport in distances from 200 through 1500m, that’s from a race of under two minutes to one that is over fifteen minutes long. In Rio she won the 200 Freestyle against one of the greatest sprinters in history, Sarah Sjostrom, who at the time had obliterated the 50m Butterfly world record by swimming it in 24.43 seconds without taking a breath. For Ledecky to win that 200m gold was a little like Mo Farah coming off winning the 5000m then beating Usain Bolt, she has that much range. Hey, I exagerrate, but not by much, she is that remarkable.

Oh, and that 800m in Rio (her main event). She smashed her own world record by over two seconds and, once again, led from start to finish, leaving the rest of the field behind her, once again leading before she hit the water.

To see that range, sharing links to both teh 200m final (a sprint finish!) and the 800m