Yards After Contact

By: Lily Bageanis

 

I’ve never been a huge Football fan at all, however, I have been getting into it a little more since my husband convinced me to join a fantasy football league. Little by little I’m starting to pick up on the football terminology and one of the things that really caught my attention just recently was a term called YAC.

YAC is a statistic that stands for Yards After Contact which “is the amount of yardage gained from an offensive player after initial contact from a defender in football.” AllSprtz

It’s impressive when a player gets hit hard, and they still don’t get tackled. They keep going, pushing forward, gaining yardage undeterred and even motivated by the fact that they’ve been hit…all while others are determined to knock them off course.

It got me thinking…how many times I have been hit by something at work or in my personal life and how I have allowed that hit to affect me. I’ve come to the realization that I allow the things, even the small things, knock me down rather than taking the hit and still pushing forward to gain those extra yards.

If you check the stats on the top Running Backs, they are not the best because they are the fastest or most elusive (of course that helps), they are the best because they get hit and keep going.

Ask yourself the following questions and evaluate your responses:

• What kind of hits do you take on a regular basis?
• How do you respond? Do you over-dramatize?
• Did you allow it to sidetrack you or take you down?
• How long does it affect you? How soon can you shake it off?
• Did you push forward as soon as possible?
• What will you do next time?

Whether you lose a sale, get passed over for that big promotion, or things just don’t go your way, your response and immediate reaction can turn you into a champion.

It’s not just business…it applies to personal life too.

What’s your best advice to increase someone’s YAC?