In my 20+ years of coaching, I’ve worked with some of the most elite individuals across sport and life—CrossFit Games athletes, military special operations, professional athletes, and high-level business performers. I’ve also worked with everyday people who operate at an extremely high standard, and you start to notice something after a while:

High performers move differently—not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and behaviorally.

It’s not about talent. Not genetics. Not even just work ethic. It’s about character. The traits that are ingrained deep in their DNA—traits that show up when it’s hard, when no one is watching, and when the stakes are high.

Here are the 10 character traits I see time and time again in high performers.

There’s a big difference between working out and training. I say this often, and I’ll say it again: a workout without purpose is just sweat. But a training session—when executed with clear intention and thoughtful design—is a step forward toward your goals.

At Conquer Athlete, we believe the magic of progress doesn’t lie in fancy programming or random intensity. It lives at the intersection of athlete understanding and coach precision.

When your numbers refuse to budge, it isn’t willpower you’re missing—it’s a new stimulus. Strength plateaus happen because your nervous system has milked every drop of adaptation from the straight-set routine you keep repeating. Below are three evidence-backed ways to jolt progress back to life.Walk into any box on a Saturday morning and you’ll see it: a row of athletes who have mortgages, kids’ soccer games, and maybe a little gray at the temples—but they’re still hunting PRs like it’s 2009. I love coaching this crowd because they bring two priceless assets to the floor: life experience and a deep respect for smart preparation. Neither sport—whether it’s the chaos of CrossFit or the predictability of HYROX—makes concessions for age, so our programming can’t rely on shortcuts or nostalgia. We need training that honors physiology and ambition.

When your numbers refuse to budge, it isn’t willpower you’re missing—it’s a new stimulus. Strength plateaus happen because your nervous system has milked every drop of adaptation from the straight-set routine you keep repeating. Below are three evidence-backed ways to jolt progress back to life.

Ask any seasoned strength and conditioning coach what separates athletes who peak once from those who progress for decades and you’ll hear one phrase on repeat: mental resilience. It’s the capacity to absorb pressure, re‑frame setbacks, and stay mission‑focused when training, life, or competition throws an unexpected curveball.

You’re looking to build muscle, you log every lift, and the gym floor knows your sweat pattern by heart—yet the tape measure hasn’t budged. You’ve entered the empty-effort cycle: tons of grind, minimal growth. There’s no magic exercise that fixes this. Instead, you must master three levers physiology flat-out refuses to negotiate on. Miss even one, and hypertrophy stalls—no matter how heroic your work ethic.

In the sport of CrossFit your ability to perform gymnastics, perform gymnastics well, and perform gymnastics for a shit ton of reps is pivotal. I have seen so often athletes jump stages in their training which ultimately leads to a “functional ceiling” created with in their abilities. This “functional ceiling” is referring to how many reps they can essentially perform and sustain within a workout. So, why does this functional ceiling get created? Basically it’s from a lack of proper progression while building their gymnastics skills. So, below I am going to outline three ways to not only improve your CrossFit gymnastics capacity, but also continually work to improve your functional ceiling.

What is the secret sauce in training? Well, for many of us it’s strength. Yes, for the sport of CrossFit, you will find the age-old debate around what is the “price of admission” - strength or endurance. The correct answer is “yes”.

What is an elite mindset? As told to me by Brian Cain in his Mental Performance Mastery Certification: your mindset is how you see yourself, your situation, and the world - basically your perspective. So, if we break this down even more, a strong mindset comes down to the person having a strong/positive perspective around themselves, their situation, and the world around them…

This is Part 2 of our strength-building principles. If you recall from the first strength-building blog, I discussed the principles of specificity, overload, fatigue management, and individual differences. In this piece, I want to introduce you to three more principles that are needed to build strength within yourself or your athletes…

In this day and age, it is not hard to find various methods around gaining strength. However, a method applied without the proper principles behind it is liking putting heels on a bull; sure, it might look nice at first, but what good does it do for you in the long run? The biggest approach to coaching that I teach revolves around principles…