Quick answer: Elite athletes and top executives share the same core habits: they train their specific weakness instead of avoiding it, track the one metric tied to the real outcome instead of busywork, and build a performance floor that holds on bad days instead of just chasing a ceiling on good ones.
- Key Takeaways
- Athletes train their specific weakness directly, executives tend to circle around it and work in their strengths instead.
- Athletes track the one number tied to the real outcome, executives often default to tracking activity because it’s easier to measure.
- Athletes build a floor that holds on bad days, executives tend to build an impressive ceiling with nothing underneath it.
- Athletes have a coach diagnosing their blind spot from outside, most executives never build that in.
I’ve coached both. Twenty years with elite athletes at Team All-American, followed by the same diagnostic work with executives through Winsignia. What surprised me early on wasn’t how different those two worlds are. It’s how identical the habits of the ones who actually perform turn out to be, once you strip away the uniform.
Here’s the real comparison, not the surface level one about early mornings and cold showers.
Elite Athletes Train the Specific Weakness. Executives Avoid It.
An athlete who’s slow off the line doesn’t spend more time on the drills they’re already good at. A good coach puts them directly into the uncomfortable rep, over and over, until the weakness closes. There’s no ego protection in that room. The weakness gets named and worked, publicly, immediately.
Even that assumes the training was ever intelligent to begin with, and at the highest level, it often isn’t. I’ve had NBA players reach out to me directly for help, and after looking at their training, almost none of them had ever been trained intelligently before that. Random workouts on random days, nothing built off the previous session, no real customization to the individual. Basketball produces some of the most gifted athletes anywhere, some of the fastest and highest-jumping people in any sport, and I’ve watched players at that level nowhere near tapping into what they’re actually capable of. Talking to some of their coaches and trainers afterward was its own surprise. A few of them were less informed about actual programming than a solid high school coach.
Executives do the opposite by habit, not by character flaw. They spend more time in the parts of the job they’re already strong in, because that’s where the wins feel good and fast. The specific, uncomfortable gap, the hard sales conversation, the underperforming hire, the number that doesn’t add up, gets circled around instead of trained directly. This is the Hard gap in the EFFORT framework, and it’s the single biggest habit difference between the two worlds.
Elite Athletes Measure the Right Number. Executives Measure the Comfortable One.
Athletes at the top level track a small number of metrics that actually predict performance, not the ones that feel good to watch improve. A sprinter isn’t obsessing over total miles run in a week. They’re tracking split times on the specific phase of the race that’s costing them.
Executives, by contrast, often default to tracking activity, hours worked, meetings held, emails sent, because activity is easy to measure and easy to feel proud of. That’s the Smart gap. The habit that separates a performing executive from a busy one is choosing to track the one number tied directly to the actual outcome, even when it’s an uncomfortable number to look at daily.
Endurance athletes are actually the clearest version of this I’ve seen, and also the most stubborn about admitting it. Across the endurance athletes I’ve personally coached, 97% came to me on a generic plan, a cookie-cutter schedule, or no real plan at all, and only 3% were on anything genuinely custom. Almost all of them were training hard. Very few were training smart. Athletes in individual sports especially tend to want to do it their own way, and a lot of them assume hard effort alone is the whole answer. It rarely is, and the ones who finally get a structured, individualized plan usually shift into smart effort within the first week or two, because the missing piece was never the willingness to work.
Elite Athletes Have a Floor. Executives Have a Ceiling.
This is the habit gap that surprises people most. Elite athletes are famous for their peak performances, the record, the highlight, the podium finish. But what actually built that peak is a floor, a minimum standard of training that holds on the days they don’t feel like it, are sore, are dealing with something outside of sport entirely.
Executives tend to build the opposite structure. They have an impressive ceiling, the big presentation, the great quarter, the strong pitch, but no real floor underneath it. When motivation dips, execution drops with it, because there was never a non-negotiable minimum in place to catch the bad week. This is the Consistent pillar, and it’s the habit that compounds the most over a career, for better or worse.
I’ve watched this play out the same way with athlete after athlete. The ones who trained hard but not smart were often the ones who got hurt or burned out, since volume without direction just accumulates wear. It was the athletes who eventually trained hard and smart together who built real confidence, and that confidence is what actually produces consistency, not the other way around. Once the wins started showing up, staying consistent stopped feeling like discipline and started feeling like habit. Hard without Smart rarely lasts long enough to become Consistent at all.
Elite Athletes Get Diagnosed by Someone Else. Executives Diagnose Themselves, Badly.
Every serious athlete has a coach watching from outside, someone whose entire job is to see the gap the athlete can’t see from inside their own effort. That’s not a luxury. It’s a structural habit built into how elite performance actually develops.
Most executives never build that in. They’re the smartest, most self aware person in most rooms they’re in, which paradoxically makes it harder to admit they can’t diagnose their own blind spot the same way an outside eye can. The habit that separates the executives who keep growing from the ones who plateau isn’t intelligence. It’s whether they’ve built in someone whose job is to see what they can’t.
What This Means for How You Build Your Own Habits
The good news buried in this comparison is that none of these habits require an athletic background to build. They require the same honest diagnosis, whether the gap is Hard, Smart, or Consistent, and the discipline to build a floor instead of chasing another ceiling. That diagnostic is the same one I run with every Winsignia client and the same one I bring into a room as a high-performance keynote speaker.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do executives avoid training their actual weakness?
Habit, not character flaw. Working in areas of existing strength produces fast, visible wins, while the specific uncomfortable gap, a hard sales conversation, an underperforming hire, gets circled around instead of trained directly. This is the Hard gap in the EFFORT framework.
What metric should executives actually be tracking?
The single number tied directly to the real outcome, not activity metrics like hours worked or meetings held. Activity is easy to measure and feels productive, but it’s rarely the number that predicts whether the business is actually winning.
How do I build a performance floor instead of just chasing a ceiling?
Set a non-negotiable minimum standard that holds even on the days you don’t feel like it, rather than only showing up strong when motivation is high. Elite athletes are known for their peaks, but what actually built that peak is the floor underneath it, the Consistent pillar of the EFFORT Framework.
Related Reading
The EFFORT Framework: The Complete Guide to Hard, Smart, Consistent
Focus Strategies for Peak Performance
Building High Performance Habits That Actually Stick
Scott H. Fishman is the author of Effort. Scott earned a Bachelor of Education from the University of Miami and later studied Sports Psychology in grad school at the United States Sports Academy. Coach Scott Fishman has earned the top training certifications including CSCS from National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) as well as certification from USA Track and Field (USATF), USA Weightlifting (USAW), USA Basketball (USAB), National Council on Strength and Fitness (NCSF), and more. With 20 years of experience designing high-performance systems for professional athletes, teams and organizations, Scott Fishman is now a keynote speaker. Scott founded Team All-American, AllWorldU, and is the Chairperson of the Board at United Sports Association (U.S.A.). As an athlete, Scott played professional basketball for the Virginia Wolverines (EBA) and North Jersey Pros (EBA). He’s also a marathon runner. Scott is from New York originally and currently resides in the Greater Tampa Bay Area. Scott is the Executive Director of the St. Pete Marathon and the Director of Growth at Winsignia.