Quotes About Athletes

The common belief that coaches must be abusive to be successful is a myth. Research shows that if you find a task fun, you'll perform better. If more coaches took . . . a Golden Rule approach to coaching, treating their players the way they themselves would like to be treated, fewer athletes would drop out of sports in their teens, and more athletes at every level would be happier and more satisfied.

All of us get knocked down, but it's resiliency that really matters. All of us do well when things are going well, but the thing that distinguishes athletes is the ability to do well in times of great stress, urgency and pressure.

Nowadays, we have to deal with so many more factors that weren't there in the past. It's not enough to be a good rider, if you want to finish at the front. The riders have become incredible athletes. In the past, you could manage the race and fight only on the last laps. Now you need to train hard. You cannot allow yourself to go on track without being at 100 percent.

Much in the way Olympic athletes optimize their game by paying an enormous - borderline maniacal - amount of attention to things like diet, exercise, sleep, and of course the essential R&R, we all would do well to pay more attention to those key aspects of our lives that comprise our overall health equation.

My recruiting key - I looked for PEOPLE first, athletes second. I wanted people with a sound value system as you cannot buy values. You're only as good as your values. I learned early on that you do not put greatness into people...but somehow try to pull it out.

We amateur athletes are peculiarly devoted to our fitness, and our obsessions can sometimes be a burden to our loved ones and a mystery to everyone else.

Where men are forbidden to honour a king, they honor millionaires, athletes, or film stars instead; even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.

The decathlon takes so long to learn that people who are good athletes don't want to go back to the beginning again.

I'd like to see the high schools put in a rule that limits recruitable athletes from playing on teams outside a 100-mile radius from their home or school.

First of all, in any sport where you can measure distance, height speed and all of that, you see how athletes have changed their sport and made it better. I believe, with every generation, the sport has improved. Certainly, in the men's game, that has been the case. I think that I played Pete [Sampras] at his best, I played Roger [Federer] at his best.. I believe wholeheartedly that Roger and [Rafael] Nadal have pushed the game much further than myself or Pete ever did. Their options on the tennis court are considerably more than ours.

Back in high school, about two years ago, I was in this silly punk band called Ballet for Athletes. We were all trying to take it seriously, and then I realized that "punk" and "serious" aren't really two words you can put in the same sentence - at least, in my opinion.

I look at athletes in all sports and try to picture what kind of football player they'd be, what position they'd play and so on.

I think there's going to be pressure on all the British athletes. It's a home Olympics at the end of the day. I like adrenaline, that's something I feed off. I'm just going to go out there and do my best.

Unfortunately the world is what it is now. People don't get along for whatever reason. As professional athletes, in a way we're almost ambassadors for peace, because sports brings everyone together.

I'm just kind of really interested in athletes as artists of a pretty serious variety and people who devote themselves to what they do in a really incredible way.

It is essential that we put an end to steroid abuse and set a better example for aspiring young athletes to follow, so that some day, when they make it in the All Star Game, it will be because of their own natural talents, and not because of a performance enhancing product.

MMA is in like the bare-knuckle era as where boxing once was. What it has to do is be given time to grow up. The sport is really just starting right now. Slowly, the public will become educated about and appreciate all the different technical aspects of the sport and athletes will develop without a strict adherence to a distinct art or style.

The ancient Greeks kept women athletes out of their games. They wouldn't even let them on the sidelines. I'm not sure but that they were right.

Experiencing this pain in my muscles and aching and going on and on is my challenge. The last three or four reps is what makes the muscles grow. This area of pain divides a champion from someone who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens. I have no fear of fainting. I do squats until I fall over and pass out. So what? It's not going to kill me. I wake up five minutes later and I'm OK. A lot of other athletes are afraid of this. So they don't pass out. They don't go on.

Some of today's athletes do not have that kind of pride. They left school at 16, have never had a job in their life and are getting Lottery funding, earning money as an athlete.

Looking good is important. We're our own premium brand as professional athletes, so you want to be thoughtful about presentation and represent yourself and your city and sport as best you can.

Some people are guilty when they win. Some people, "Ah, you know, it's so unfortunate, some people had to lose." I mean, even some modern-day competitors, athletes have a guilt complex about winning. They think it isn't fair. That's not how you win. You don't feel guilty when you wine, and you don't feel sorry for anybody about it.

In a country that never wins anything: in Canada, if one of our athletes so much as makes the final in a World Championship, we declare a national holiday.

I think the sport needs the help to continue to motivate athletes.

The reports of racial episodes are disturbing. But the players' protest is exhilarating because it is the most high-profile example to date in a continuing revolution in which the athletes who drive the multibillion-dollar college sports machine have begun to use their visibility to demand change.

Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.

We have got to go out there and deliver, go on the streets and find athletes, improve facilities around the country and find coaches. We have got to go out there and search for a star.

We are like highly trained athletes, who never run a race.

Theres that initial reticence for some athletes to take you seriously.

We know that for the last 300 or 400 years, the size of human bodies is growing. Now what happened is that we suddenly, in history, have the backward process. We have these great Greek athletes, we have ultra-powerful Roman soldiers. You look at the size of the Roman soldier who has to carry all this ammunition. You're talking about 300,000 Arnold Schwartzeneggers.

In the NFL game today, there are a lot of better athletes than I am, and quarterbacks these days are faster than the quarterbacks have always been, they're running like crazy. But I kind of stick to my roots of the disciplined quarterback. You know, I'm doing the same routine every week, studying tapes and working hard, getting ready to play and making good decisions on Sundays.

Champions are not the ones who always win races - champions are the ones who get out there and try. And try harder the next time. And even harder the next time. 'Champion' is a state of mind. They are devoted. They compete to best themselves as much if not more than they compete to best others. Champions are not just athletes.

Cameron was able to get an inside look at professional football from the standpoint of athletes and agents and general managers that few people have ever seen.

Having a home away from the media glare is important to world-class athletes.

I always tell young athletes the same thing, 'Wherever you go, whatever you do, what must your top priority be? Running.'

I want to keep coaching as long as I can. I love teaching and working with student athletes and I love being at the University of Tennessee.

Had I been a great athlete, I'm not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.

Athletes and actors do really crazy things and we do them under weird circumstances because we love what we do and because we take things in an extreme manner.

As athletes, we think we're heroes, but when you witness firsthand what I saw yesterday, you realize who the real heroes are.

I just want you guys to see it also. To see what type of words that are said toward me, and towards us as professional athletes. Everybody thinks it is a bed of roses and it's not.

I definitely don't want to be one of those athletes who turns into a cheesy actress.

The value of the sport and the value of sports in general, with the life lessons, the ups and downs. The depth of the life experience, what athletes are actually offering to us when they come out and play, if you look at a season and go moment by moment.

I don't think some athletes understand how big it is to be an athlete, what they can do with just a simple gesture of shaking a kid's hand. It can make a fan's day. It can make a fan's life.

Ive always been really inspired by watching top athletes putting in peak performances.

In the seventies we had to make it acceptable for people to accept girls and women as athletes. We had to make it okay for them to be active. Those were much scarier times for females in sports.

We need to educate our elite coaches more and have a better approach to teaching the athletes about how to be healthy rather than berate them, humiliate them, use tactics that could scar them for life.