When is the last time you got better? Most likely it wasn’t by accident.
All too often people think just because they’ve been doing something for a long time, it automatically makes them good at it. Child Please. As Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
The best way to get better at a sport is to play the sport to implement deliberate and focused practice of the sport. This holds true for anything that you want to become better at in life. Just doing it won’t make you better.
If your conditioning for the sport is just playing the sport you’re asking for overuse injuries. There are ways to help condition yourself for a sport that will help your body become more in balance, more resilient and create less wear and tear on your body. Yes, part of conditioning for your sport should be playing the sport itself, however, if you lack development in certain areas, then focusing on improving those not as strong strengths will really help your performance.
“I can’t do blank anymore.”
Forget about what you used to be/used to do and focus on what you can be now/can do now and how you can get there. So many people watch their performance drop off and choose to just chalk it up as aging, not the fact that they haven’t stretched in decades or tried to increase their strength since they were teens or do anything differently.
Skill development is how you get better, combined with improving your conditioning and strength. If you aren’t working to get better, you are probably getting worse.
Playing a sport over and over and never having someone mention your faults or address your shortcomings or cue you to do something better is not how anyone gets better at a sport.
If it was as simple as running around playing your sport and you would get better, why isn’t everyone Andre Agassi?