The hustle habit: building the grinder mindset through small actions

I grew up playing multiple sports from the age of four, and by the time I was in high school, I had a reputation for stamina. My parents, both former athletes and military police officers, had instilled effort into my every day life. For most of my life, I thought that was the primary driver for my own habit to move with intention, never give up on a play, and keep doing so until the last whistle. I still think it is a key component, but when I first starting coaching my own kids in our backyard, I got a little bit of a wakeup call.

I too, had tried to instill in my kids an attitude of effort. I practiced and discussed a growth mindset from the time they could listen. I worked in a gym and worked out beside them, providing an example. I gave them opportunities to practice attacking problems. So imagine my surprise when I watched my kids walk after every single ball they had to chase while working some shooting drills or lazily run for ground balls when they weren’t explicitly asked to sprint.

Coming from the world of movement coaching, I had to laugh out loud. Hustle is a mindset, sure, but it’s also a physical habit. The difference between athletes who run to chase their ball when it flies off the field—those who sprint for every ground ball—and those who don’t is often that the former simply have muscles who have been conditioned to do so through small, seemingly meaningless choices that have become instinct. The good news? You can train that.

What seemed like a problem, in our family, became an opportunity. I explained to my kids the way hustle is a physical habit (this is important) and, for a few months, the rules were simple.

Rule one: If a ball goes flying, you chase it—quickly.

Rule two: As soon as you step on the field for practice, you run—everywhere.

These aren’t pointless rules, you are training your body to lean towards “go.”

It worked. After a season with these rules, all five of my kids built the hustle habit and only need an occasional reminder from coach to keep the effort high. A lesson for myself was that habits can and should be attacked from multiple directions. Keep the mindset, but if you notice a lack of consistent effort in yourself or others, try adding in physical practices to reinforce them.