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Johnson cooks up successful recipe

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Matthew Crawcour 09 November 2004

One of the world's all-time great sprinters last night opened UK Sport's World Class Coaching Conference and revealed his recipe for success. Michael Johnson outlined his five steps to Olympic glory - the five time gold medallist never knew what it was like to win silver or bronze.

Johnson revealed no magic recipe or secret, other than a desire to make the most of his talent by creating a solid platform and working very hard. The basis for his success was the consistency he was able to produce, which meant that for nine of his ten years as a professional athlete, saw him ranked as world no1.

"Consistency is what defines the great athletes - they're not the ones who had one or two great years, they're the ones you saw deliver time and time and time again. Give me consistency any day over one great performance", Johnson told the 200 coaches gathered at the Belfry, considering their plans for the next four-year summer Olympiad.

Athletes, according to Johnson, also needed to ensure that they had set themselves realistic goals that they would be willing to commit to and capable of achieving:

"Every year I sat down with my coach, figured out what I wanted to achieve for the year, wrote it down and it was my promise to myself. I kept it where I could see it, so that on those days when I wasn't motivated, it reminded me why I wanted to do it. You've got to believe in that goal - it's very difficult to go out there and train for a goal you don't believe in."

Whilst the statistics showed that Michael Johnson was one of the most talented athletes the track and field world has known, being blessed with talent didn't ultimately mean that he was able to sidestep the work required to deliver results race after race. Johnson's recipe was for two to three hours of tough training a day, which he committed to 100% every time.

Alongside athletic ability, Johnson rates mental understanding and toughness as one of the keys to success. He cited the ability to dissect both the good races and the bad races, the wins and the losses in helping to understand how to produce successful outcomes when it most mattered.

"You can't worry about the things you can't control, but concentrate on the things you can like your race strategy. Dealing with pressure is a massive part of sport - you can't shy away from it, you can't get around it. You have to hate to lose, but don't be afraid to lose - you just have to do everything you can do to prevent it from happening.

"I would regularly go out and put undue pressure on myself, because I knew that I would respond well to that."

But it was often the simple things like keeping a training diary that formed the bedrock of Johnson's career. Being able to examine what he had done from year-to-year, gave him clues as to his form and ideas of where he could begin to deliver improvement.

UK Sport's World Class Coaching Conference runs until Thursday. The theme for this year's event - which is attended by leading coaching figures from Olympic, Paralympic and professional sport - is 'First Things First' - which reflects the need to take a fresh approach at the outset of the four year road to Beijing.

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