• Sport-specific skills and technique
• Muscle strength, power and flexibility
• Agility, speed and balance
• Cardio and endurance
• Good nutrition and healthy lifestyle

Without a good head on their shoulders, however, well-trained bodies are at the mercy of their ill-trained control centers.

To the above five areas must surely be added the most important and most neglected "head training." And, head training itself can be further divided into four distinct areas: visual skills, brain skills, sports IQ and sports psychology.

Pillar III: Sport I.Q.  Sport I.Q. is one of the four pillars that make up an athlete's so-called set of "intangible" skills.

Sport IQ refers to an athlete's knowledge of his or her sport, including its rules, strategies, tactics, customs, etiquette, records, and history. The greater an athlete's sport intelligence, the greater the athlete's ability to improve creativity, anticipation, and decision-making skills.

The table below summarizes the sport IQ skills which are critical to elite athletic performance and which can be improved with purposeful exercises and training.

Trainable Sport IQ Skills	Description
GAZE CONTROL	Gaze control is the ability of an athlete to concentrate on the single most important visual cue just before performing their skill. In golf, for example, scientific research shows that unskilled putters tend to scatter their visual attention around the golf ball, while skilled golfers settle their gaze on one small area (the back of the ball) just prior to the putt.
VISUAL SEARCH STRATEGIES	The sporting environment for an athlete is full of distractions and "noise".  Visual search strategies refer to an athlete's ability to separate the noise from the most important visual cues and information. Athlete's with greater knowledge of their sport will be able to employ more efficient visual search strategies.