The Problem With Sports.
The Problem With Sports.
Out of 351 Division 1 NCAA colleges, only about 3% are truly competitive. That means 10 schools would boat-race the other 340 without breaking a sweat. That’s a massive problem.
It proves that the majority of college athletes aren’t close to where they should be. The talent gap is too wide. So why are so many athletes lagging? A few reasons:
1. Training Without Development.
Before Triangular Training Theory (T3), there was no real method or curriculum for developing elite athletes. Coaches leaned on raw talent. Trainers leaned on fitness-driven gimmicks (SIFT: Sports Inspired Fitness Training).
Naturally gifted athletes made these methods look effective. But anyone without those gifts proved—again and again—that those concepts aren’t enough.
2. The Willingness Factor.
Some athletes grind day after day, only to hit a wall—they never seem to catch up to the more naturally gifted athletes. The frustration eats at them. They start questioning the point of all their effort. This is the silent battle in sports: doing the work, but never seeing the same results.
On the flip side, there are athletes who convince themselves that the easy stuff—the flashy drills, the conditioning circuits, the “feel-good” work—is the work. They tune out the uncomfortable, unglamorous, real work that would actually move the needle. In their minds, they’re grinding. In reality, they’re just spinning their wheels.
Then there are those who, no matter how good the training, simply won’t do the work. They’ll always look for shortcuts, excuses, or ways to mask effort with appearance.
But for the ones who are willing to face the truth—for the ones who will embrace the grind, strip away the illusions, and lock in on the work that actually matters—they can become the future of sports.
3. Confusing Practice With Training.
A major problem in sports is that too many people confuse sports training with team practice. They are not the same.
- Sports Training is where athletes develop MTR-F (neuromuscular adaptations) and METLEs (sport-specific skills)—the work that raises their Combat Rating™, or their actual ability to play the game.
- Team Practice is where those skills get plugged into a coach’s system to execute game plans and win.
But when athletes show up to practice without a high enough Combat Rating™, the system can’t run. Instead of sharpening team execution, coaches are stuck backtracking, patching fundamentals, and trying to cover for athletes who were never properly developed in the first place.
This is why so many teams spin their wheels—and why the gap between real development and surface-level training keeps widening.team can’t run system work. Everyone’s stuck trying to catch up on fundamentals instead of building the game-changing skills, needed to win.
4. Youth Sports: Winning > Development.
One of the biggest problems in sports today is that youth sports stopped being about development and turned into a trophy chase. Winning tournaments at 8 years old has somehow become more important than preparing athletes for the long game.
Recruiting—something that should begin at the high school level—now starts as early as age six. Kids blessed with natural ability get scooped up fast, while everyone else is quietly left behind.
The cruel twist? Even the so-called “top kids” aren’t being developed. They’re only taught surface-level skills—just enough to dominate weaker competition. But once strength, size, and testosterone enter the equation, reality hits: those early “stars” were never being trained to truly play the game.
That’s when they discover one of the hardest truths in sports: athlete development isn’t checkers.
5. SIFT vs. Real Training.
Another major problem in sports is that most trainers can’t tell the difference between real athlete development and Sports Inspired Fitness Training (SIFT). On the surface, they look the same. In reality, the results couldn’t be further apart.
Some trainers genuinely mean well. They love sports, want to help kids, and simply don’t know better. But the truth is, the money grab is real. For every trainer trying to develop athletes, there are countless others selling watered-down fitness routines, flashy drills, and false promises—programs that look good in clips but never translate to actual performance.
And that gap between looking trained and being developed is one of the biggest problems holding athletes back.
6. The Scams (Talent Washing & Hype Traps).
One of the ugliest problems in sports is how full the training industry is of scammers. The formula is always the same:
- Recruit naturally gifted athletes and let them train for free.
- Showcase those athletes as “proof” that the program works.
- Sell the illusion to parents desperate to give their kid an edge.
It’s a hustle. And SIFT drills make it even easier—flashy, simple routines that look great on camera, give athletes a false sense of progress, and convince parents that development is happening. But behind the highlight reels, nothing actually translates to game performance.
This is the problem with sports: too many are selling illusions, while too few are actually building athletes.e to master, and trick parents into believing training is effective—even when it never translates to actual games.
Bottom line: Most athletes aren’t behind because they’re lazy or untalented. They’re behind because the system has failed them. But with real training—grounded in T3™ and Combat Logic™—athletes can finally close the gap.
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