The Tribune

By DR KENT L BAZARD

Sports Medicine Physician

“JUST do your best.” It is probably one of the most common things we say to our children before they compete. We say it before the race, before the game, before the swimming final and sometimes even before an examination. Usually, it comes from a good place.

We want to remove some of the pressure. We want our children to understand that winning is not everything and that their value as a person does not depend upon where they finish. But there is another side to that conversation that we sometimes seem increasingly uncomfortable having: what happens when you actually do your best and your best is simply not good enough?

Sport has a rather unforgiving way of answering that question. The stopwatch does not care how hard you trained.

The measuring tape does not know how badly you wanted to win. The scoreboard does not give additional points because you sacrificed your summer vacation to practice. If the qualifying standard is 10.80 seconds and you run 11.10, you did not qualify. You may have run the best race of your life. You may have produced a personal best, and that achievement absolutely deserves recognition, but you still did not qualify.

That is not cruelty. That is competition, and learning how to deal with that reality may be one of the most valuable lessons sport can teach us.

This brings us inevitably to the sometimes controversial subject of participation medals. I do not believe participation medals are inherently good or bad. Context matters. For a six-year-old entering their first swimming meet or playing in their first football tournament, recognition for participation can reinforce enjoyment, belonging and the courage to try something new.

At that age, our greatest objective should be developing a positive relationship with physical activity and sport. We want children to come back next week. We want them to learn teamwork, movement, discipline and confidence. There is little benefit in treating an eight-year-old recreational competition like an Olympic final.

As children mature, however, participation, effort, improvement and achievement must gradually become distinguishable concepts. All four deserve recognition, but they do not represent the same accomplishment.

Eventually there are teams with limited roster positions, starting spots that must be earned, qualifying standards that must be met, scholarships for which several athletes are competing, and championship finals in which only one athlete finishes first.

At some point, sport teaches a lesson that adulthood will reinforce repeatedly: wanting something badly, working extremely hard for it and deserving respect for your effort do not guarantee that you will get it.

That lesson can hurt, but disappointment is not necessarily damaging. Properly handled, it can be extraordinarily useful. Sports psychology distinguishes between outcome goals and process goals. Winning the championship, making CARIFTA or earning the scholarship are outcome goals.

Executing your race properly, maintaining technique under fatigue, attending training consistently, improving strength and following your nutrition and recovery plan are process goals. Athletes need both.

The outcome tells us where we want to go; the process tells us what we must repeatedly do to have a chance of getting there.

I sometimes think we make a mistake when we try to convince athletes that outcomes do not matter. Imagine an athlete who has spent an entire year attempting to qualify for CARIFTA and misses the standard.

Immediately telling that athlete, “It doesn’t matter; you did your best,” may make us feel better as adults, but it can unintentionally dismiss something that mattered tremendously to that young person.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to win. There is nothing unhealthy about being disappointed when you lose.

Competitive ambition is not a character flaw. Perhaps a better conversation is, “You gave everything you had today, and you should be proud of that. We didn’t achieve what we came here to achieve. When you’re ready, let’s figure out why.”

That last question is where disappointment becomes useful. Failure becomes information.

If a sprinter needs to run 10.80 and consistently runs 11.10, simply telling him to work harder is not particularly helpful. Why is he three-tenths of a second away? Is acceleration the problem? Maximum velocity? Strength? Power? Sprint mechanics? Body composition?

Recovery? Nutrition? Perhaps the athlete is already working extremely hard but is directing that effort toward the wrong things. A swimmer who repeatedly misses a qualifying time may have adequate cardiovascular conditioning but lose technical efficiency under fatigue.A basketball player may spend hours practicing but still lack the lower-body strength and explosive power required to compete at the next level. Sometimes an athlete does not need more effort. The athlete needs better information.

This is also where the phrase “your best” deserves closer examination. Your best is not necessarily a permanent number. The best performance you can produce today is not automatically the best performance you will ever be capable of producing. That is essentially why we train. Muscle fibers adapt and become stronger. Tendons become more capable of tolerating load. The nervous system becomes more efficient at recruiting muscle and producing force. Aerobic capacity can improve.

Technique becomes more economical. Nutrition and recovery can improve. Experience changes decision-making and confidence. With appropriate training, today’s ceiling can eventually become tomorrow’s baseline.

Psychologist Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset is relevant here. The basic principle is that many abilities should not automatically be viewed as fixed; they can develop through appropriate effort, learning, strategy and persistence. Unfortunately, the concept is sometimes simplified into “just keep trying.” Trying matters, but effort alone is not enough.

An athlete can train extremely hard using a poorly designed program and become exceptionally good at doing the wrong things. Growth requires effort combined with feedback, appropriate coaching, good strategy and the willingness to change when something is not working.

Parents and coaches have an enormous influence on how athletes learn these lessons.

There are two extremes that concern me. At one end is the adult for whom nothing is ever enough. Second place is treated like failure. A personal best is ignored because somebody else ran faster. The drive home becomes an interrogation about everything the child did wrong. Eventually the athlete may begin associating competition not with enjoyment or personal ambition, but with the fear of disappointing the adults around them. That is not how we create healthy high performers.

At the other extreme is the adult who refuses to allow the athlete to experience disappointment at all. Every defeat requires an excuse. The referee cheated us. The coach has favourites. The conditions were unfair. The other athlete had an advantage.

Sometimes those things may genuinely be true, and poor officiating, bias and unfair circumstances certainly exist in sport. But if every disappointing result is immediately explained away, we can rob young athletes of the opportunity to ask one of the most useful questions in performance: what could I have done better?

Parents do not have to rescue children from every uncomfortable emotion. Losing hurts.

Being cut from a team hurts. Missing a qualifying standard by one hundredth of a second hurts. Watching someone you have beaten before stand on the podium while you do not hurts. Those feelings are real, but learning to process them is part of development.

Sometimes the best thing a parent can say immediately after a difficult competition is very little. Give the athlete time. Acknowledge the disappointment. Let the emotion settle. The analysis can come later.

Coaches should similarly learn to praise athletes specifically rather than indiscriminately.

“Good job” certainly has its place, but telling an athlete, “Your start was significantly better today,” “You maintained your technique when you became tired,” or “I liked the way you stayed composed after falling behind” identifies the behaviour that should be repeated. We should praise genuine effort, but we should also praise preparation, consistency, discipline, good decision-making, technical improvement and resilience. Those are qualities the athlete can control.

There is another uncomfortable truth that sport eventually teaches us: sometimes you can prepare properly, perform exceptionally well and still lose because someone else was better that day.

Modern motivational culture occasionally sells the idea that hard work guarantees success. It does not. Genetics matter. Talent matters. Coaching, resources, opportunity, training history, health and sometimes simple luck all matter.

Two athletes can work extraordinarily hard and still finish first and second. Learning to shake the winner’s hand, respect their performance and then return to work without allowing the loss to diminish your own self-worth is an important form of maturity.

This is one of the reasons we emphasize objective assessment at Empire Sports Medicine & Performance. When an athlete tells me they want to become faster, stronger, jump higher or reach the next competitive level, simply prescribing more training is not enough. We need to understand what is limiting that athlete.

Strength, power, flexibility, range ofmotion, body composition, movement quality, previous injury, recovery and sport-specific performance can all be evaluated. Once the limiting factors are identified, training can become purposeful rather than simply harder. Sometimes discovering that your current best is not good enough is not the end of the conversation. It is the beginning of a better plan.

So where does this leave the participation medal? There is nothing wrong with recognising participation, particularly among young children.

We should celebrate the courage to enter the race before becoming obsessed with who crosses the line first. But achievement should also retain meaning.

A championship medal should represent championship achievement. A personal best can recognise improvement.

Coaches can recognise sportsmanship, leadership, consistency and exceptional effort. We do not have to choose between encouraging children and maintaining standards. We are capable of doing both.

Perhaps the mistake is believing that every child must leave every competition feeling like a winner. Sometimes they should leave disappointed. Sometimes they should leave hungry.

Sometimes they should leave realising that another athlete was simply better and asking themselves what they need to do to close the gap.

Our responsibility as parents, coaches and sports professionals is not to remove those experiences but to teach athletes how to process them without allowing a result to determine their value as a person.

Doing your best should always be respected, but your best is not a permanent number.

Sport should teach us to be proud of genuine effort without becoming satisfied with every outcome. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes you discover that what you currently have simply is not enough for where you want to go. Then you have a choice - make excuses, lower the standard, or learn, adjust, train and come back better.

Maybe the greatest gift sport gives our children isn’t teaching them that everyone wins. Maybe it’s teaching them what to do when they don’t.