So you're still with me? That's great! You are already displaying one special trait that you will need to be a winner. Dedication. No matter what your sport, or your chosen path in life, to become successful you must apply yourself to the task in hand. So stick with it.

The dictionary definition says that dedication is about devoting yourself wholly or chiefly to a cause or belief. It's something that you must add to the enthusiasm that we talked about earlier. In every context, dedication is essential if you truly intend to be a winner.

You might already be a talented footballer, a rugby player or a hockey player. You might already be playing at a high level for your age group.  Well done, but that's only the start.

Terry Butcher, the former Rangers and England player, was giving out prizes to young professional footballers at a ceremony at Hampden Park a few seasons ago. He congratulated the lads on their achievements but he said to them: "You're only just starting out on your journey to become professional footballers. You've still got a long way to go and much to learn and you have to be committed and dedicated to improving all the time."

In Scotland, we haven't been too good at the dedication part of the winning. We should be ashamed that we've had good sports people, who have made a comfortable living out of professional sport, who haven't fulfilled their true potential.

Why? Because they lacked the dedication to stick at something. Some of these players - some hailed and lauded by their fans -had an attitude problem. If they didn't get picked one week, they ended up in the pub, smoking cigarettes or going to the bookies, undoing all the work on the training ground. You'll still find one of two people like this in Scotland today. Thankfully, this generation is changing. People such as Chris Hoy and Andy Murray display the kind of characteristics that are required to succeed today.

John Collins, the Hibernian football manager and one of Scotland's finest footballers, says that talent is not enough. He's absolutely right. Talent only takes you so far. But then it has to be built on by hard work and practice.

"You can see those who give it their all and those who cruise along. I say to young players 'You've all got talent - but now you need to make the sacrifices. You're professionals. This is your chosen lifestyle so you should try to do your best at every training session and in every match'."

It's a point well-made by John Collins. If you're lucky enough to be a professional sportsperson, aren't you cheating yourself if you don't train as hard and as smart as you can? It's no coincidence that some of the greatest sports people today go back after training to practice again and again on an extra skill. Think of Chris Paterson, Scotland's rugby captain and inspirational penalty kicker, or Shunsuke Nakamura, the Japanese player who has been so successful with Celtic.

And even if you've not quite made the grade and end up on the substitutes bench or as a reserve then you've got to re-double your efforts to try even harder, so that you're ready when you get your chance to compete. We've been too busy in Scotland indulging the culture of the whinger who doesn't get a game. The great UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden, said that he could only pick five guys at any one time for a game, but it meant the other players had to work harder to make the most of their chance when they got one.

But a potential winner needs help. A dedicated athlete or sportsperson cannot make the next level without a coach who can take them to a higher plain. As Olympic gold medallist Allan Wells told In The Winning Zone: "It's important that if somebody is going to start out with real potential, I'd say, 'Go out and search for a coach who is getting results' - and I mean world class results - in the event that you want to do. And see if they will take you on.

"It is important to develop the potential that you have. At least you have a chance of becoming what you want to become by doing that. It gives you a chance to develop that potential, and that potential might be good enough to be a world champion - or an Olympic gold medallist," he says.

It's not always easy catching the eye of the best coaches. It might mean travelling some way to find them - and pleading with them to assess your talent. Even over a short period, the great coach should be able to examine closely what you are doing, so that you can improve your techniques. They must be able to inspire you.

On a flipchart at one Scottish Premier League football club there are four words written on the board: explanation, demonstration, correction and repetition. These are nice sign-posts on the way to becoming a winner.

On explanation:

Your coach should be able to explain what you should be doing. He or she should be able to tell you clearly and simply how you can improve as an athlete. Your coach needs to work out how you learn too. Is it more visual? Is it through demonstration? Or do you like the theory? We all learn in different ways, and a good coach should be able to help instinctively.

On demonstration:

Your coach should then be able to show you how you might be able to do it. A golfer, who once had a handicap of six, approached me on the practice range of an Edinburgh golf course recently.  He'd obviously watched me slicing a few balls and wanted to offer some advice.

He told me he was now recently retired from business life and he said: "I've wasted all those years on the golf practice range. For years and years, I've been hitting and hitting. I've read hundreds of books on golf. But it wasn't until I went to the golf professional that he explained that the golf swing is one fluid stroke with a certain rhythm to it. He showed me. It's been a wake-up call."

I think he was suggesting that I did the same. But it shows that you're never too old to learn the proper way of doing something. Although our veteran golfer said: "Now it's tough to undo a lot of bad habits, but I'mdedicated to changing the way I play. I've had to go backwards before I start improving again, but I'm getting there."

So in this one example we've had demonstration - from the golf pro - and now the correction - by the golfer.

On correction:

This is a fundamental part of being a winner. There's no point in repeating something that's wrong. This eventually becomes an instinctive bad habit. A good coach can point this out and correct it. Then it's back to dedication once again. It's back in your court.

And here it is important to make use of your mistakes. Mistakes are not to be dreaded - they are an important part of the improvement process. "You can't learn new skills or behaviours that have any degrees of complexity without making mistakes along the ways," says Jim Thompson, Founder of the Positive Coaching Alliance, writing in The Double-Goal Coach.

"Learning is an active process. It's not a passive reaction. Learning happens when people are engaged and actively seeking. And the thing that most makes for passivity is fear of making mistakes."

Thomson talks about ELM or Effort, Learning and Mistakes. He says acting like a winner involved three things. 1. Giving your best effort every time. 2. Continuing to learn to improve. 3. Not letting mistakes (or fear of making a mistake) stop you.

On repetition:

Once you've corrected the mistakes then you have to start doing things properly. And practising this. To learn this new, 'good' habit you have to repeat it, repeat it and repeat it again and again. Do I have to repeat myself? Repetition is essential to becoming a winner.

Scotland has lagged behind because some of its sports people haven't worked on their core skills. Take football. Other European nations have surged ahead in technical terms because Scots haven't worked on their basic skills. Yes, we have the passion and the fire to win - but this ain't enough any longer. Young players should be spending more time touching the ball in single sessions, in one-to-one sessions and in one-to-two sessions. Repetition and working on the core skills.

John Collins again: "In France, the young players have thousands and thousands of touches on the ball when they are youngsters. At the ages of nine and ten they are working on the touch skills that become an essential part of their development."

This breeds a more relaxed feeling about their ability when they are on the ball. John Collins tells his players to "relax on the ball," but work like crazy to get it.

So dedication is vital if you're to get into the Winning Zone. The late Roy Castle was an inspirational character. He was an actor and entertainer who played dozens of musical instruments. He was once the host of a television programme called Recordbreakers, which highlighted people who were in the Guinness Book of Records. His song went:

Dedication, dedication
Dedication, that's what you need
If you wanna be the best
If you wanna beat the rest
Oh-oh dedication's what you need;
If you wanna be a record break-er

It's a bit cheesy now. But Roy Castle's ditty was absolutely right.

KK

© Copyright In The Winning Zone, MMVII, All Rights Reserved