Observation #6: Athlete vs. Athletic

I always say to my wife, “I’m pretty athletic.” She agrees. Then I say, “I guess I’m an athlete then.” She shrugs.

You always know that you are getting fatter. Your pants are tighter. The sweat marks on your T-shirt in the sub-boob area are ever present. It doesn’t really hit you until you get to that “What the hell happened to me?” stage. The reason for the slow realization for some is what I call the “Athlete vs. Athletic” ratio. The more athletic you are; the slower the realization of plumpness is.

There is a huge difference between being an athlete and being athletic.  An athlete is someone who is committed to consistent, long term performance to feats of strength, speed and/or endurance. Being athletic is being in possession of skills of co-ordination, gamemanship and flashes of brilliance. Can I curl a soccer ball into the top corner of a goal? Yeah. Can I do it after playing a game for 90 minutes? Hmmmm. This is the difference. If you are athletic, your mind tricks you. If I can hit a fade away jumper then I must be OK.

The other difference is that you can be born athletic but you are not born an athlete. You can surely practice and refine your skills but takes a different type of dedication to use those athletic skills at a high level on a regular basis. The key I guess is to trying to be consistency moving towards “athlete”.