The Eighty-Percent Rule

Across the sporting landscape, a popular myth prevails. Coaches and athletes repeat it regularly, though it has no real meaning. We've all heard them say, "It's important to give 110% effort." Any sane analysis reveals the silliness inherent to such a statement.

In its simplest form, 100% is an absolute. 100% literally means 100 out of a possible 100. The word possible is neither vague nor open to interpretation. To say a person can exert a physical effort which exceeds 100% indicates a basic miscalculation of the level which constitutes a maximal effort.

Extreme circumstances can add nuance to the discussion, of course. If imminent danger or other factors cause people to feel strong emotions and adrenaline begins pulsing through their veins, they can become temporarily capable of executing unusual feats. We've all heard of cases where a father, seeing his child clinging to life under the wrecked chassis of a car, summons seemingly superhuman strength and lifts the car up briefly to save the child.

Events like this don't prove anything about the absolute value of 100% as a measure of capability, though. Adrenaline can temporarily change the amount of weight a person can lift, how fast they can run, or how far or high they can jump, essentially re-establishing the height of the 100% bar, but adrenaline surges don't last forever, nor can they be summoned regularly, through will power. Coaches and athletes who repeat the mythical 110% mantra miss an important point―athletes need to properly calibrate their 100% exertion level and understand when to try and reach it.

Certainly, a sprinter running a 100m race needs to understand how to get out of the starting blocks and achieve maximum exertion as quickly as possible, then sustain it through the finish line. While doing so, the runner needs to avoid the tendency to press too hard in the process of attaining top speed. Pressing causes muscles to tighten, resulting in slower, not faster times. Sprinters have to learn to remain relaxed while running at full speed, and this is no easy task.

Track stars running longer races face more challenges, with regard to recognizing when and for how long to exert maximal effort. At about 400m or so, even the fittest and strongest humans lose the ability to run at full speed for the duration of a race, so participants in longer races must learn to pace themselves to produce their best results. Many of them recognize the need to push themselves to the limit either at the start or the end of a race, perhaps both, also the need for dialing back their level of effort somewhere along the way.

Similarly, golfers generally recognize a need to limit their physical efforts while executing full shots. Many accomplished players say they normally swing at about 80% of top speed when striking full shots during competitive rounds. Certainly, some circumstances dictate swinging the club as hard and fast as possible, but no great player would attempt to do so on every shot. While track athletes intentionally power down during parts of a long race to conserve energy, golfers do so to increase consistency and improve accuracy. In both cases, athletes recognize the value in NOT attempting to give 100% at all times and in all circumstances.

A golfer participating in a long-drive competition would surely swing as hard as possible, at least some of the time. Long-drive competitions more closely resemble a series of sprints than a mile-long run. But, the need to put a ball in play between the lines causes even golfers trying to win long-drive contests to intentionally pull back on the reins, at times. The realities related to this discussion vary in other sports, according to the details of the games, but the basic truth remains the same―sustaining physical efforts at the 100% threshold for long distances and long periods of time becomes impossible.

This tenet has application in the nebulous realm of the mind and soul too. Attempting to remain 100% focused on an intensely competitive activity proves every bit as difficult as running at full speed throughout a long foot-race; it's impossible, at some point. If the competition takes enough time to play out, a person will simply not be able to keep the mind 100% engaged for the duration of the event.

Many golfers acknowledge the veracity of the last statement by intentionally distracting themselves from the tasks at hand while walking the fairways or standing and waiting between shots. They know their brain, like a gas tank, has finite capacity, and they don't want to drain it prematurely by thinking too intensely about every detail of the game every step of the way. Once their turn to play arrives, they do strive to become fully engaged and committed to executing every shot. So, a golfer attempts to reach 100% mental capacity on each shot, but curtails the physical effort in the interest of achieving more consistent control.

Ideally, anglers should emulate golfers in some, but not all, ways. It's important to fully define the term angler. In the context of this discussion, an angler is someone who fishes for sport, using artificial lures, with some kind of serious purpose in mind. A person competing in a tournament provides the classic example of an angler here.

Fishing for sport resembles other athletic endeavors in many ways, one of which proves most relevant in terms of its influence on this discussion. Fishing for sport involves both physical and mental components. I'd say anglers should do what golfers do in the physical realm, meaning they should consciously resist the temptation to try and execute all casts with dead-full effort. For most people, executing casts at about the 80% level of effort will provide better accuracy and control, as it does for golfers striking full shots. A cast, like a single shot in golf, involves more physical than mental components.

Though both golf and fishing events play out over a span of several hours, the two endeavors differ in a critical way. Golfers attempt to execute the fewest possible shots within a span of four or five hours, making somewhere around 70 100% mental efforts along the way, each of the efforts starting and ending in a matter of seconds. Anglers make more casts than golfers do shots, but the productivity of their efforts rests less on the quality of the casts they make than on the precision of the presentations they execute.

Each presentation takes considerably more time to unfold than is required to strike a single golf-shot. Angling presentations closely resemble putts executed in super slow motion. Additionally, working lures in subtle ways does not require a 100% vigorous physical effort, the same way hitting putts relies much more on feel and finesse than on power and speed. For these reasons, executing presentations involves more mental than physical components.

As a general rule, anglers benefit from consciously toning down the intensity of their focus and concentration to about 80%, when executing presentations. Just as a track star cannot run a marathon at full speed, an angler cannot focus at full capacity on the vagaries of presentations for hours on end. A golfer should attempt to achieve 100% focus while executing each and every shot, but an angler should operate at some lower level of intensity while executing each presentation.

By doing so, an angler saves gas in the aforementioned tank, fuel which can be used sparingly, and in the precisely right moments, meaning when they recognize some sign indicating the presence of a feeding fish within their reach, usually when a fish strikes their lure. An angler deploying a topwater lure will eventually encounter a situation which well illustrates this point. I've described it many times before, with spoken words, and in print, and I'll do so here again. When a fish blows up on a floating plug and misses, an angler's level of intensity should increase from 80 to 100%.

When they see the fish strike and miss, the angler should instantly channel a bird-dog on point. The first reaction should involve pausing, to allow the lure to bob on the waves and to allow the fish to regroup and potentially strike again. After a second or two, the angler should snap the head of the lure vigorously from side to side by sharply twitching the rod tip, without moving the lure forward over much distance. Then, the angler should pause again, and repeat. Once the lure moves more than three or four feet from the site of the original strike, said angler should reel it in as fast as possible, cast it out just beyond the site and work it right into the strike-zone again, pausing it as close as possible to the point where the attack occurred.

While doing all this, the angler should strive to achieve 100% focus and concentration on the task at hand. An angler who succeeds in urging a fish to strike again and who catches the fish should attempt to maintain their focus level as high as possible while making the next few presentations. Eventually, they should reduce their intensity of effort back to around 80%, the perfect cruising speed for any athlete or angler consciously acknowledging the impossibility of maintaining 100% levels of exertion over long spans of space or time.

To be clear, optimal cruising speed is not the same as auto-pilot; anglers in auto-pilot generally fall into the trap of mindlessly repeating insanely unproductive movements, and track stars begin simply jogging, exerting efforts somewhere south of 50%. When in auto-pilot mode, anglers lose their ability to make subtle adjustments to presentations and to react appropriately when something positive happens. But by operating at the 80% level most of the time, anglers can sustain a more mindful state and remain vigilant, ever ready to ramp up their efforts, not to the mythical value of 110%, but to the supremely useful real value of 100%, when the need predictably arises.