In sport, there are no short­cuts. You have to put the work in if you want to make it. It’s that straight­for­ward. Or is it?

Over two decades I’ve had the priv­i­lege of in­ter­view­ing or sim­ply hav­ing full-on con­ver­sa­tions with many great sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties from around the globe. And I could maybe count on one hand the amount of them who didn’t men­tion dis­ci­pline be­ing a key el­e­ment in their life as an ath­lete or dur­ing their jour­ney to some lev­el of suc­cess.

Dis­ci­pline is an es­sen­tial foun­da­tion for any sport. It builds an ath­lete's char­ac­ter to help them set their mind to achieve great things. Be­yond sports, it is al­so in­stru­men­tal to suc­ceed in oth­er ar­eas of life. But this doesn’t just ap­ply to ath­letes. Coach­es and of­fi­cials play an im­por­tant role in in­still­ing dis­ci­pline in young ath­letes. Coach­es are like­ly to be al­ways aware of this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and show their ath­letes the ben­e­fits they can get from be­ing dis­ci­plined.

Suc­cess­ful ath­letes know how to set both short-term and long-term goals. Dis­ci­pline teach­es an ath­lete how to set goals and fo­cus their ef­forts in ac­com­plish­ing these. And hav­ing self-dis­ci­pline makes it eas­i­er for an ath­lete to recog­nise the im­por­tance of prac­tice and prepa­ra­tion in reach­ing goals as an in­di­vid­ual or a team. There's al­so the kind of dis­ci­pline that deals with fol­low­ing the rules and guide­lines. It's all ap­pears straight­for­ward - Fol­low the Covid pro­to­cols, don't break camp or cur­few, don't be late for prac­tise or don't keep the rest of the team wait­ing at break­fast.

Dis­ci­pline helps you stay ac­tive, or­ga­nized, have more self-con­trol and stay fo­cused. But we all strug­gle at some point to stay dis­ci­plined. The skills that come with be­ing dis­ci­pline don't on­ly ap­ply in your sport. They can al­so come in handy at school, the of­fice, be­hind the wheel or even at home. Once some­one knows how to be dis­ci­plined they gain re­spect from oth­ers be­cause be­ing strict with your­self is very dif­fi­cult. If you want to reach your goals, be­ing dis­ci­plined with your­self is the way to do it.

Ac­cord­ing to the UK’s PE Blog puts it, “On­go­ing re­search in­di­cates that schools are grap­pling with ris­ing dis­ci­pli­nary is­sues, while at the same time so­ci­ety is strug­gling to un­der­stand the com­plex fac­tors that are cre­at­ing fresh gen­er­a­tions of dis­af­fect­ed youth. We have been see­ing this in Trinidad and To­ba­go over the past few years.

Ag­gres­sive be­hav­iour is ris­ing and ris­ing un­abat­ed – in the face of which both stu­dents and adults need an out­let for their frus­tra­tions and a fo­cus that makes them feel good in the process.

Once a sport has been em­braced, an in­di­vid­ual learns to keep their com­mit­ments to prac­tice ses­sions, games, and train­ing, and they will face sit­u­a­tions where they choose their goal – pro­gress­ing at sport – over things that be­come less im­por­tant. This is why it is crit­i­cal for there to be a re­turn ac­tive and com­pet­i­tive sport here af­ter al­most a year of lim­it­ed ac­tiv­i­ty. Stud­ies have shown how sports coach­es can be pos­i­tive, pow­er­ful in­flu­ences on a per­son’s life, even more so in some in­stances as com­pared to teach­ers and par­ents. These coach­es must con­tin­ue to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play their part.

For­mer US pro­fes­sion­al bas­ket­ball Mal­colm Lem­mons said, "The thought of do­ing some­thing every day is easy. How­ev­er, when you think about ac­tu­al­ly do­ing it, that’s when it gets hard. Ex­treme­ly hard. Even if you are in­nate­ly pas­sion­ate about your craft — you’ll still have those days when it be­comes a chal­lenge to do. If you’re a writer, some­times you’ll have days when you get writer’s block. If you’re a chef, some days the in­gre­di­ents might feel off. If you’re an ath­lete, al­most all of the time you’re sore and phys­i­cal­ly ex­haust­ed."

But de­spite all of that, he found a way to get things done and we all need to work this out. That's what true will pow­er is about. We all know this line - "If you can do what oth­ers aren’t will­ing to do, you’ll have what oth­ers won’t have." Guess what? It takes dis­ci­pline to even re­mem­ber that piece of ad­vice and use it in some way that will bring you what you want.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com