E176 - Maro Itoje: The distinction between High Performance and Elite Performance
The High Performance Podcast
High Performance
4.8 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2023
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Maro Itoje is a rugby union player, currently playing for Saracens and the England national team. Having joined Saracens at 16 years old, Maro shares how the kindness, manners and dedication of the senior players has shaped him. He discusses how his parents never pushed him to focus on rugby, so all of his motivation was internal.
Maro claims to not be the most talented player, rather his skillset is based on output and how hard he can work. This allowed him to take ownership of his commitments and efforts. Maro shares how rugby will never be his “true identity”, as it’s crucial for him to have varied interests and hobbies outside of rugby. He is currently studying for his Master of Business Administration at University of Warwick.
In this episode they discuss authenticity, what it means to be a cultural architect and the role trash talk plays in his life.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there, I'm Jake Humphrey and this is High Performance, the podcast that shows you |
| 0:06.4 | it's within your ambitions, your dreams, your purpose. It's all there. We just unlock it |
| 0:12.0 | by taking the lived experiences of the planet's highest performance and turn them into |
| 0:16.6 | your life lessons. So right now, allow myself and Professor Damien Hughes to speak to one |
| 0:21.8 | of the most impressive rugby players in the world. My skill set is pretty much based on output, |
| 0:30.9 | is based on how hard I can work and the effectiveness of those collisions or of those |
| 0:37.8 | involvements in a game and the accumulated amount of those across the 80 minute window. |
| 0:43.9 | If I was going to succeed in this, it had to come from me. It wasn't me relying on anyone else, |
| 0:50.1 | you know, it was me having to wake up to catch the train, to catch the bus to get to training. |
| 0:55.2 | It just gave me that self motivation. The way they viewed me was never based on how good or bad I |
| 1:02.4 | was at rugby. So it wasn't necessarily a part of my self-worth whether I was good at rugby, |
| 1:11.5 | whether I was bad at rugby. So in a way, it gives a certain sense of freedom as well because I think |
| 1:19.0 | when you wholly define your life through what you do, if that is then taken away from you, |
| 1:25.8 | it then becomes difficult. So today we welcome Marrow Etoji to the High Performance Podcast. |
| 1:34.3 | Someone who epitomizes an elite mindset in rugby. In fact, stay where you are because as soon as |
| 1:39.7 | this episode begins, he gives us an amazing definition of high performance. You know that first |
| 1:43.5 | question we always ask, what does high performance mean to you? I know we've pretty much had a |
| 1:48.1 | different answer from every guest, but we've certainly not even had an answer that comes close |
| 1:52.5 | to the kind of approach that Marrow takes. And then he talks about his discipline as a young lad |
| 1:57.6 | growing up and I think where he's really humble is he doesn't say that he's a, you know, a flair |
| 2:02.6 | player. He's not a Lionel Messi. He doesn't see himself as a superstar rugby player that uses |
| 2:07.6 | natural ability to change the game. He sees himself as a grafter, a really hard worker. And I think |
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