Vince Lombardi’s Power Sweep is famous in football.
John Madden said when he watched Lombardi teach the sweep, he spent four hours straight covering this one play before breaking for lunch.
Then, after lunch, he came back and spent another four hours on it.
By the time he was done Madden realized that before learning from Lombardi he knew nothing about the sweep.
That’s not because it was complicated.
As Lombardi put it, “You think there’s anything special about this sweep? Well, there isn’t. It’s as basic a play as there can be in football.”
What made Lombardi’s sweep special was that he played to a higher standard.
As he said, “We simply do it over and over and over. There can never be enough emphasis on repetition. I want my players to be able to run this sweep in their sleep. If we call the sweep twenty times, I’ll expect it to work twenty times…not eighteen, not nineteen.”
That mentality made Lombardi legendary at winning and it will do the same for you.
Often when I’m ranting about what it takes to get what you want, people say to me, “I already know that.”
I respond, “Of course you do, but are you doing it?”
We all know Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, but how many of us are following it?
It doesn’t matter what you know. It doesn’t matter if you are certain of what it takes to keep winning.
All that matters is, are you practicing over and over and over until you can do it in your sleep?