{"id":62334,"date":"2022-03-08T16:18:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-08T20:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=62334"},"modified":"2025-09-08T11:34:50","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T15:34:50","slug":"athletic-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/athletic-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Waitzkin: The Key to Athletic Success Is Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is the key to athletic success? What do the world’s greatest athletes do differently?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to American tai chi champion Josh Waitzkin, when it comes to competing in the top league, it’s not skill or technical mastery that makes an athlete stand out\u2014it is creativity. Your creativity is a unique asset\u2014just like every musician makes their own music, you\u2019ll express your skill in a way unique to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s how to find your creative style as an athlete. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note: This article is part of\u00a0Shortform\u2019s guide to creativity<\/a>. If you like what you read here, there\u2019s plenty more to check out in the guide!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Develop Your Creative Style<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Everyone near the top of an athletic discipline has achieved technical mastery. Because of this, Waitzkin says, athletic success is not a matter of skill, but creativity. Think of great Olympians, like the American skier Lindsey Vonn or the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt\u2014they each compete like nobody else does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make optimal use of your personal style, Waitzkin argues that you can systematize it, harnessing one-off creative moments to develop a repertoire of skills that are unique to you. Experimenting in practice can lead to such insights\u2014for example, you might come up with a new basketball dribbling rhythm that better enables you to dodge past defenders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Waitzkin\u2019s perspective makes sense of why some musicians succeed and others don\u2019t. In hip-hop, those at the top have distinct, one-of-a-kind styles. Kanye West, for example, composes and produces music that\u2019s in a class of its own; Kendrick Lamar brings an intensity and lyricism that no one can imitate; and so on. Yet hip-hop has no formal training centers. We can wonder, then, if Waitzkin\u2019s personal way of systematizing excellence would be useful in other disciplines, or if it might encroach on individuals\u2019 unique approaches to learning.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you develop your personal techniques, you render yourself ever more competitive<\/strong>. Opponents won\u2019t have any experience with your repertoire, giving you an edge in the critical moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: In Black Box Thinking<\/em><\/a>, Matthew Syed discusses how the Mercedes F1 racing team developed a unique set of tactics and techniques that no other team had. They did so by incrementally developing their process, finding points of weakness, and figuring out how to improve them. For example, they optimized their pit stop routine until they could complete it in less than two seconds. F1 racing is far from Waitzkin\u2019s single player, one-versus-one skills, demonstrating that his principles apply even more broadly than he explains.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turn Creative Insights Into New Techniques<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Waitzkin explains that when neither you nor your opponent can win with technique alone, victory depends on flashes of creative action<\/strong>. In other words, you intuitively sense an opportunity and act on it in a new way. You might, for example, intuit a new tennis strike that gives you a fractional advantage, off-balancing your opponent just enough to eke out the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To systematize<\/strong> these insights into your unique creative style<\/strong>, Waitzkin suggests building off the top of your \u201cpyramid\u201d of understanding<\/strong>. Here\u2019s how his method works:<\/p>\n\n\n\n