‘You Have to Be Very Selfish and Work on Yourself’
By Alex Mack
The best advice that Alex Mack ever received about making it as a pro athlete was to simply “focus on your job.” Except it isn’t always so simple. It means identifying everything that isn’t essential, understanding how they can be distractions, and then blocking them out as needed. “Football is very difficult and it’s a lot of mental strain,” says the San Francisco 49ers’ center.
For Mack, that personal work began early in life as a multi-sport athlete, which taught him how to adapt his body to different movement patterns. It also created a foundation for a pro career that he admits happened sort of by accident—and seven trips to the Pro Bowl that were no accident at all.
The Value of Being a Multi-Sport Athlete
I wrestled in high school. And it is such a hard sport. When you first start, you’re out of your depth while people are beating you up. But as you go through it, you learn how to do it and having that one-of-a-kind barometer of how you are doing is really powerful. Like on a football field, if you win or lose a game, there’s a lot going on and you don’t always know whether it was you who won or lost the game. In wrestling, you get very instant feedback on whether you won the match or lost the match. So, the more work you put into it instantly refers to more success in wrestling. So that was a very quick feedback loop for me, and I didn’t like losing.
Wrestling pushed me really hard, practices were just brutal. And it was all about: Can you keep going past the point of exhaustion? How do you fight for that limited amount of time as hard as you can? And that really taught me a lot and gave me a lot of confidence. The more sports you can play, the more active you can be. Finding ways to be multi-sport helps you as a professional and later in life. I still play beach volleyball every off-season. I’ve talked to a lot of college coaches who recruit all the time. And they really value it when kids are multi-sport athletes.
How You Do Something Is How You Do Everything
How did I learn to be professional? It’s not a switch you flip. It’s how you go about everything, even before you’re a professional athlete. I never thought playing in the NFL was possible. I played in college because it helped pay for my education, and I just worked my hardest every day to get better every day. If I’m going to do something, I want to do it well.
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The quality of your work says a lot about who you are, and work ethic is something I’ve always taken very seriously. Effort is something that doesn’t require any talent. I’ve been lucky to have a lot of talent and I’ve been even luckier to have stayed away from injuries, but it comes down to work ethic and working hard to do what you want in life.
Where You Spend Your Energy Is Where It Pays Off
When it comes to playing in the NFL, the best advice I ever got was to focus on your job. A lot of guys in NFL locker rooms are going to be the next wheeler and dealer with this idea or that idea, this investment or that business. And that’s fine, you can do that. But football is very difficult and it’s a lot of mental strain. You have to be very selfish and work on yourself.
The advice I got was that instead of worrying about other businesses, just take all that energy and focus on playing one more season, and one more season, and one more season. If you can play just one more NFL season, you’re most likely going to make more money in the NFL than you would doing anything else that year. And I took that to heart.
I obviously have hobbies and things I’m interested in beyond football—and guys should have an idea of what they want to do after football—but I haven’t spread myself out so much. Just focus on football and do what’s best for yourself and your body, and make that priority No. 1, because the NFL is a really great opportunity with a very short lifespan.
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