Egoist (selfish) must be on top of the list.

LOuis :-)

To be fair I know thread title sounds negative. Feel free to post some positive traits we may have.

I meant that as the best quality to achieve excellence in sports. In other fields it may sound negative, but to become a top athlete it's not.

LOuis :-)

Yeah, I tend to think the positives are bigger drivers of the outcome; focus, ability to delay gratification, mental and physical resilience to name a few.

And selfishness - you need that too.

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"They know f_ck-all over at Slowtwitch"
- Lionel Sanders

I actually read a really good book about this at one point. It was written by a psychologist I think it was titled winners are different. Basically covered all the unhealthy traits that your major athletes have.

OCD - Great for making sure they got every structured workout by any means necessary.

ADHD - One element is hyperfocus on a task. Being hyperfocused means you are actively aware of your workout and not zoned out in thought or Netflix.

Heard it from a friend...

It is going to take a variety of personal characteristics to do well over the long-term and have a long and successful career. There are personality types that do better over the short term, but won't have a long-career outside of just being plain old lucky. It also depends on the sport you are talking about. Triathlon is going to differ than say a team sport.

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Real personality disorders are generally debilitating and not good for much of anything. The vast majority of people who say they have OCD do not. They're detail oriented and have no idea what real OCD is.

I think I know what you're getting at though. What traits perceived as negative might be useful to endurance athletes?

Maybe not useful, but narcissism seems to be super common.

 
I think it's dependant on the style and distance of racing. My wife had a fear of getting beat, it served her well at anything up to Half Ironman but crushed her IM's.

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http://www.sweat7.com
Facebook Page: Sweat7
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Apparently Phelps had ADHD at least as a kid. His 4th grade teacher told him he would never amount to anything b/c he couldn't sit still. In 2008, she was really eating her words. :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpJOxbaC8YU

:0)

The title sounds ignorant.

I think you are confusing mental disorders with personality disorders.

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https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

ADHD is a mental disorder in the DSM V, but isn't a personality disorder. It is a neurodevelopmental disorder.


http://file:/...onality-Disorder.pdf

"Personality disorders are associated with ways of thinking and feeling about oneself and others that significantly and adversely affect how an individual functions in many aspects of life. They fall within 10 distinct types: paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality, narcissistic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder."

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https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

Is that necessarily a disorder?

The real disorder would be narcissistic.

Louis :-)

I asked my therapist about this once, and she said "If you don't have an anxiety attack whenever something is out place, then you don't really have OCD"

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

OCD is when you get in your car and then think the door might not be locked and the gas could be on on the stove. You go and check and then you get in your car and then you go back and check again to make sure.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

len wrote:

OCD is when you get in your car and then think the door might not be locked and the gas could be on on the stove. You go and check and then you get in your car and then you go back and check again to make sure.

Joey Ramone had crippling OCD; he'd do just that - leave and come back, locking & unlocking the doors 10-15 times. He once made the band's driver take them ALL back to a hotel because he didn't touch all the steps when they left [or something like that]

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Somebody mentioned above the difference between personality disorder and a menthal disorder.
OCD is a menthal disorder, obsesive compulsive personality, could be a personality disorder, such as schizoid personality, paranoid p., Hyper-dependent personality, etc...
I would say that this threat is a bit stupid. I have worked with some people suffering from disorders (mental ones and personality ones) and it is not a joke at all. I dont think any disorder makes an athlete better, in fact, it is a problem. OCD people tend to overtrain, or feel guilty if they dont do it.... We may talk about personality...I think there is a good bunch of athletes full of ego and are really selfish. But I see that in amateur people,....when you have nothing to win but enjoying doing the sport. When I see amateurs pissed off because they did not make her PB, or did not qualify for this or that...or they are in a bad mood because they push on training and they are stressed and have no time, I think...does it make sense? Sometimes, we all get a bit obsessed about getting better, running faster, swimming like proffesionals, ...and you know what? we lose a lot of time. I tend to think: I am healthy, I can run, I can swim...I will not win anything, but let´s enjoy the way.....and yes, one day you can race a marathon or whatever....but I see some lack of judgement. Nobody is Frodeno, Brownlee, Gomez....95% of us are regular people and all I say aloud is MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO. Healthy minds get the best of us.
Stop the bullshit with the disorders....

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

some stray thoughts:

-i think a guy like lance didn't so much like winning as he absolutely hated losing. loathed and probably feared it.

-i think a baseline of selfishness helps. racing an obscure sport like triathlon isn't exactly feeding the hungry or curing cancer - you need to truly believe that it's important to the exclusion of other (more objectively important) things in order to stay on it.

-i've trained with people over the years who were 'gifted' in tri terms with tunnel vision. during workouts they could exclude all external stimuli to just focus on the training session. i often got frustrated training with them because they ignored the social signals in training or even, sometimes, traffic lights and stuff. but that kind of narrow focus can be useful.

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____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

There some athletes that would be described as a disorder. Somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Many others use or develop an eating disorder for success.
It may "help" in sports but makes outside life very limited.
I was shocked when an Olympic gold medalist told me that to win gold an eating disorder was necessary. I don't think it's true (getting popped for steroids also was part of the secret and also a symptom)

Addictive personality...
Lionel Sanders, Andreas Niedrig...

Replace drugs and booze with countless hours swim/bike/run

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If you really want to do something, you'll find a way.
If you don't, you'll find an excuse.

Could it be Aspergers?

Kleptomania.