Let me illustrate the Law of the Pyramid with a short story. Theo Riddick is a gifted athlete who made a position switch from running back to wide receiver at Notre dame. As any of you who have changed positions know, it’s difficult. You have to suck it up and look foolish as you learn new skills.

Theo is being mentored by Michael Floyd, an All-American who will most likely play on Sunday’s in the NFL. The following quotes are from a story by Chicago Tribune reporter Brian Hamilton. He asks each player about the other. First Floyd, the All American speaks,

"Him being so athletic, he came into the routine really easy," Floyd said. "It's just about picking up the little things, making sure you get depth and go full speed all the time, making sure you run a precise route."

Then Riddick responds,

"The main thing with (Floyd) is repetition. You kind of get bored, going over the same things. He can be telling me something, and I'm butting in like, 'All right, you already told me that.' But when you really look at it, it is about all the details."

This is the perfect example of the Law of the Pyramid. Spending quality time mastering the details is what separates the good from the great. If Riddick is smart, he will listen to Floyd and put in the hard work and not be tempted by boredom. Then he might join his friend in the NFL.

A reader comment brought up a point that needs clarification. Susan Hall asked,

In college, teams have the same amount of practice time, it’s not like you can practice eight hours a day like a professional.

This is a great point and exposes a flaw in my teaching about the Law of the Pyramid. The volume of practice does matter. Research shows that after 10,000 repetitions of a skill, you have mastered it. There is no shortcut there. Clearly the volume of practice does matter. But all things being equal, what you spend your time practicing matters.

Championship teams spend what seems like way too much time on minor details. What the coach and players know, is that the concentration and extra time spent perfecting skills in practice pay off come championship time. While championship teams do not have more time than other teams, what they spend their time on is very different. It’s the concentration, the seeming obsession with perfection of small details, that makes the difference.

I hope that helps clear up the confusion.

Is this one factor holding you back from winning championships?
Sometimes it seems like winning a league championship, and even more so, a national championship is out of reach. The teams (or individuals) that win always seem to have some advantage that you just can't quite match. Is it talent, luck, God given athletic ability, better coaching? Perhaps that's part of it, but there is a bigger factor that is in your control. There is one factor that all championship athletes and teams posses. This one trait is what separates them from the rest of the merely good teams. It gives them that edge that always seems to kick in when it's crunch time. I call it the Law of the Pyramid.

Introducing the Law of the Pyramid
The one common element champions posses is they know they cannot escape the hard wired way we learn and develop skills, attitudes and abilities. Once you understand how human beings master skills, then you can completely own those skills, not just be good. You will then have the science that champions use to win again and again. It’s simple, but not easy.

Imagine one of the great pyramids in Egypt. That pyramid can only be as tall as the base allows. As the pyramid gets taller and taller the base required becomes huge. Without enough support, it doesn’t matter how many stones you drag to the top. They topple over and crash to the ground. Becoming a champion is like building a pyramid. The effort required to make the leap from good to great is massive and often seems unproductive and a waste of time. That is why so many teams and individuals remain merely good and do not become champions. They fail to put in the work necessary to be the best.

To oversimplify, there are three stages to learning any new skill, the beginner stage, the intermediary stage, and the mastery stage. Let’s take a look at the three stages of becoming a champion and how the Law of the Pyramid determines how high you can go.

Stage #1: The Beginner
In the beginning stage, it’s easy to see results, there is almost a one to one relationship between how much work you put in and the results you achieve. Most athletes go through the beginning stages while still in elementary school. This stage is fun because you rapidly progress getting better from week to week and even day to day.

Stage #2: The Intermediate

The second stage is the intermediary stage. At this stage athletes begin to focus on their sport and learn skills, techniques and strategies specific to that sport. For example, lacrosse players learn to cradle with both hands, swimmers learn to improve their start. Because these skills are more advanced and take longer to learn, the results achieved for the level of effort begin to decrease. It is at this level that the more dedicated athletes begin to separate themselves from their peers. It’s clear who will go on to college and play and who high school is the highest athletic level they are willing to work for. I’m not slamming the choices people make. My daughters peaked at the high school level and then turned their attention to music and theater. They are happy in college working on mastering a different set of skills.

Stage #3: Mastery
The final stage is the mastery stage. Most athletes stop before they complete this stage. They have gone through their entire athletic careers getting better and better, often very quickly, and sometimes seemingly effortlessly. They are good, better than 95% of their competitors. They might lead the league in scoring, or be one of the fastest people on the swim team, but when the end of the season comes and it’s championship time, they always seem to get left behind.

These athletes (and teams) are paying attention to the results of their training and ignoring the Law of the Pyramid. What you’ve already figured out by now is that as you get better and better, the results you achieve for the work you put in diminishes. Most athletes give up, thinking that if they continue to work hard and see little improvement, “Why bother?” I don’t blame them. It’s much easier at this point to put in the minimal work to maintain very good skills, skills that are better than 95% of their competition, than to keep working for seemingly no payoff.

You can clearly see from the illustration above that the last peak of results must be supported by the most amount of training. This is where the merely good athletes and teams fail. They rightly recognize that they have come face to face with the Law of the Pyramid and results are few and far between. So they stop. At this point it takes only a minimal amount of training to maintain what are, by any measurement, very good skills. After all, it’s a heck of a lot more fun to party with friends all night Saturday than to get up Sunday morning and work out.

In team sports, it’s a little more tricky because you need to change the culture of the entire team (and maybe the coach) before your team can break through and win their first championship. But it can be done, it has been done, and in fact, it’s the only way a championship has ever been won.

So what are you waiting for? Share this with your teammates. Enroll them in becoming champions today. And remember, “Think outside the gym.”