Examples of Endurance: Lessons Learned from Athletes

Airmen in the U.S. Air Force undergo a range of challenges that require resilience and endurance. For instance, Airmen sustain themselves, allies, and partners in competition and conflict; conduct logistics under attack; adopt innovative ways to use logistics; defend against all-domain effects; and recover quickly after braving difficult tasks and opposition. Airmen must be ready to endure adversity, manage fatigue, and persist under stress.

Endurance—also defined as pushing through hardship—is essential in both sports and military service. Athletes endure exhaustion, stress, competition, and other adverse conditions, pushing their bodies to the limit and exerting physical effort over long periods of time.

Athletes also display endurance in doing the work it takes to achieve feats deemed impossible. For example, Cal Ripken Jr., known as the “Iron Man” of baseball, notably demonstrated endurance by playing 2,632 consecutive games, for which he currently holds the record. On Sept. 6, 1995, Ripken played his 2,131st consecutive game, nearly seventy years after Lou Gehrig attained the then-longstanding Major League Baseball record of 2,130 consecutive games. Ripken’s streak continued until he retired on Sept. 19, 1998. Ripken credits his endurance to play through minor injuries and other personal factors to a strong work ethic, being a team player, and not disappointing his father, who is also a baseball player and coach. As Ripken put it, “As long as I can compete, I won’t quit.”

Similarly, through endurance, swimmer Michael Phelps—known as the “Flying Fish”—has amassed twenty-eight Olympic medals, with twenty-three being gold, becoming the most decorated Olympian in history. Now retired, his rigorous training once included swimming six hours each day, equating to nearly fifty miles per week, and intensive weight training on weekends and special occasions like birthdays. His workout regimen also included taking ice baths, deep stretching, and getting enough sleep. As he put it, “[I]t is never a failure to go after your goals with everything you’ve got.”

Considered the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, Serena Williams holds the record for twenty-three Grand Slam singles titles won by a man or woman in tennis’s Open Era. She is one of the few players to achieve a Surface Slam by winning on all three court surfaces (grass, clay, and hard) in the same year. In addition, Williams has won four Olympic gold medals and is the only tennis player to achieve a career Golden Slam in both singles and doubles. In exhibiting endurance both on and off the field, Williams—the world’s highest-paid female athlete in 2016 and 2017—publicly advocated for female tennis players and equitable prize money. Nonetheless, after all her wins, Williams holds self-belief in high esteem. As she put it, “I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall. You have to believe in yourself when no one else does.”

Michael Jordan’s journey to becoming one of the greatest basketball players in history underscores how endurance can change setbacks into success. After failing to make his high school varsity basketball team as a sophomore, he practiced basketball relentlessly until the next round of tryouts. “Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I’d ought to stop, I’d close my eyes and see that list in the locker room without my name on it. That usually got me going again,” Jordan said. Eventually, Jordan scored more than forty points for the junior varsity team. His ability to recover and improve also kickstarted his storied career in the National Basketball Association (NBA), as he became a Rookie of the Year; a five-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP); a six-time NBA champion; a six-time NBA Finals MVP; a Defensive Player of the Year; a fourteen-time NBA All-Star; and a three-time NBA All-Star MVP, scoring ten titles (an NBA record) and more. As shown, Jordan’s key to enduring is turning rejection into motivation. As he put it, “Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

In both sports and the military, the journey of becoming a champion begins with the decision to strive for greatness and continues through the power of endurance. Athletes like the most decorated gymnast in history, Simone Biles (“We can push ourselves further. We always have more to give.”), tennis legend and once the number-one player in the world, Billie Jean King (“Champions keep playing until they get it right.”), and “the Greatest” heavyweight boxer of all time, Muhammad Ali (“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’”) have shown that victory often results from hard work, perseverance, and self-belief. Airmen mirror this mindset, undergoing rigorous training, exhibiting mental resilience, and exuding a commitment to push beyond their limits to fight and endure.