This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.

Ja’Juan Seider is the associate head coach and running backs coach at Notre Dame. He coached Jeremiyah Love, a projected first-round pick in this year’s NFL Draft, for one season.

We always say at Notre Dame: “The running backs here have to play through the end of the defense or the echo of the whistle.” But we don’t get a lot of long runs in practice.

Coach Marcus Freeman usually blows the whistle before because he wants the running backs to come back and run the next play. Sometimes I’d tell a running back: “Even if they blow you down, get up and finish the run.”

But Jeremiyah Love was already wired that way. He was notorious for that, in a good way.

If it were his last play in practice, he would finish a run and go 80 yards, without me telling him. That was just his mindset. It was so fascinating as a coach. I sometimes took it for granted because I saw it every day, but not everybody does, because they don’t want to be tired for the next rep.

Jeremiyah didn’t take shortcuts. He made practice like a game. And he did it to the highest level.

There was a time last year when I caught him in practice working on jumping off the opposite foot. It’s easy to jump with your dominant foot; when you’re right-handed, you jump with your left leg. One day in practice, he was working on jumping off his right leg so that if he was stuck in an uncomfortable position, he could still elevate over a defender.

He was always thinking: How can I get better?

You want your best players to be your hardest workers. We talk about having a walk-on mentality, because they’re underappreciated, but they go to work and don’t look for pats on the back.

Jeremiyah was our best player and our most talented player, but he also had that same mentality. It set a precedent for everyone else: If our best player can work this way, it entices me, as a young guy, to mimic what I see.

His thing became: “Coach, push me.”

We always said a cheetah never stretches when it gets up to chase prey. And Jeremiyah is kind of like a cheetah. He got in the habit of finishing long runs, which showed up in games. Your habits become what you do. And what you do in the dark comes to light.

The great example: He had a 94-yard run against Boston College last year. I can see the play vividly in my head.

We had a timeout, and I challenged him, just joking around: “Hey, I bet you can’t score on this play.”

He said, “Coach, I bet I can. I went 98 yards a year ago.”

I said, “Yeah, that was a whole year ago.”

So we talked about the play — it was a run play — and I told him to be patient. I walked through what would happen with the defense.

Next thing you know, he broke through the hole and was off. He was around the 50-yard line and started looking toward the sideline. He was looking for me. Everybody thought he was taunting the team, but he was looking for me like: Coach, don’t ever tell me what I can’t do. I told you I was going to do this.

Touchdown.

That play right there sums it up. The habit of finishing long runs in practice showed up in that game. It had become second nature to him because he had done it so many times. That mindset and approach are what make him special.

— As told to Jayson Jenks