Description
This may come as a surprise for many athletes. Ace athletes not only train for competition; but more importantly, they live a life fit for being ace athletes. Their lives are run by certain philosophies, rules, regimens, and motivations aimed at remaining as ace players.
In ancient Greece, during its peak as a world civilization, there were sports competitions held in the city of Olympia in honor of their gods. Participants from various city-states of Greece joined the event, and the Spartans were noteworthy for their strict adherence to rigid discipline. They were both dedicated sportsmen and fierce warriors. They started training for war in their childhood and started with strict training in sports. Sports then took the forms of running, jumping, boxing, wrestling, weight lifting, and all other activities that may be helpful to a warrior.
Soon, the whole of Sparta (then the city of Laconia) became practically a training camp. Citizens were professional warriors. According to Greek History, children were taken from their families at the age of 7 and were put in strict training under state control. They were raised in barracks in both the hardest and simplest way possible.
There was even an oval for the racecourse, the Dromos, which was converted into a kind of gym where Spartans took part in strenuous foot races and other athletic competitions.
Thus, the earliest record of ace athletes is traced back to the ancient Greek civilization when it was a federation of city-states. The Spartan ace athletes made life a sports training, and sports training a life. They started out in childhood and ended up, not just winning honors in contests, but as battle-hardened warriors. This kind of life became state law and employed the “father” and “son” system of tutoring ace athletes to perfection. They were so serious that children who fell short of the needed physical capabilities were said to be brought to the woods and left there to die.
Today, ace athletes need not train for war, nor leave incapable children in the woods to die, but they can draw out some positive traits from the Spartans—they lived a life aimed at being champions for life.
