Seeds for giant timber bamboo are planted deep in the soil.  After one year of watering, the bamboo has grown…not at all.  After two, and even three years, the bamboo has still yet to break through the soil.

But sometime in the fourth year, after many months of faithful watering, the bamboo shoots up and can grow up to 90 feet in 60 days!

How many things in sport (and in life) are just like this?  We invest our time, our energy, our effort – only to be left wondering if it was all worth it.  What we so often fail to understand is that meaningful success comes from hard work applied long before results are seen.