Every Coach Needs A Coach

When the guru sat down to worship each evening, the ashram cat we get in the way and would distract the worshipers. So he ordered the cat be tied during evening worship. After the guru died, the cat continued to be tied during evening worship. And when the cat expired, another cat was brought to the ashram so that it could be duly tied during the evening worship. Centuries later learned treatises...

We can only handle  1 piece of information at a time. We can only truly focus on 1 task at a time. Doug Lemov's biggest takeaway from literally writing books on 'getting better at getting better' was that we must work within the confines our our working memory to perform optimally. 

"When we set children against one another in contests from spelling bees to awards assemblies to science fairs, that are really contests, from dodgeball to honor rolls to prizes for the best painting or the most books read - we teach them to confuse excellence with winning, as if the only way to do something well is to outdo others. We encourage them to measure their own value in terms of how many...

"I saw a monkey reach into the river, take out a fish and put it in a tree. 'What are you doing? I asked the monkey. 'I'm saving him from drowning' he replied.  Remember that our athletes are like the fish and the monkey. Each is going to thrive and excel in certain environments, and those environments might change on a daily basis. Learn about your athletes and how they feel appreciated, lov...

Coach Todd Wolfson is the varsity boy's basketball coach at St. Francis High School in La Cañada, California. Today we took some time to talk about why he coaches, the importance of trusting everyone in your program, doing things differently from others around you, and the importance of patience and understanding that we don't need to win the championship in the first 2-3 days of the season. Coach...

My dad likes to day 'you can't be anyone other than who you are'. Often we hear people asking us or our athletes "oh are you going to be the next Michael Jordan?" and while that's fine to have role models and people to look up to, I think it's important to encourage our athletes (and ourselves) to be the best version of YOU. Not the second best version of Michael Jordan.  LeBron James embodie...

In the Apple TV series Ted Lasso, there’s a great line about how every disadvantage has its own advantage. My challenge to you is to pretend like you’re a novice at coaching your support and attack it with the enthusiasm that you would if you were just starting out

Will you pull a kid out of the game for making a mistake or two or three? I’ve started to change my philosophy on taking kids out of games for mistakes. I pay more attention to what happens immediately after the mistake and the mistake itself, because I believe that that has a greater impact on our team than the mistake itself does. I try to practice mistake recovery in practice like I would any o...

Once upon a time a prince was cursed by a witch. He was given a frog to eat, and he wouldn’t live to see the next day unless he ate the frog. Every morning after, a frog appeared on his doorstep, and he would have to eat it before the end of the day if he wanted to live to see tomorrow. At first he waited until the last possible minute to eat the frog, and he dreaded his entire day knowing that he...

In the book “transformational leadership” by Joshua Medcalf and Jamie Gilbert, chapter 29 is titled “start equipping. Stop enabling”. Josh tells a story of training a soccer player and using a tool to increase his effort very specifically and very effectively.

In his book tha coach’s guide to teaching, Doug Lemov references giving feedback towards actions, not towards people. This plays in important role in how our athletes perceive us giving them feedback, and also building up our culture and how we want our organization to behave.

On an episode of the hardwood hustle podcast, Tony Bennett released some advice that his dad gave to him when recruiting his athletes and coaching staff. His advice is to find the people that you can lose with, and in our jobs as developing athletes and people, it’s important that our kids know how important losing is and what it can do for us in the long run.

“The willingness to experiment with change may be the single most essential ingredient to success at anything” - Pat Summit. John Gordon’s book “the coffee bean” gives the notion that challenging situations can change us, or we can use the challenging situation to change our situation and ourselves. I challenge everyone to get in front of the changes happening in your life, embrace it, and use it...

“Well done is better than well said “ -Benjamin Franklin

I want to provide environment for my teams, where they know that I’ll take the good parts, and the bad parts, the wins and the losses, the parts they’re proud of and the parts they’re not so proud of. I want our cultures and environments to be accepting, loving, and understanding, so that I can challenge them when I need to.

An old donkey fell down a well on the farm. The farmer could choose to spend a lot of money and get the donkey out of the well, or bury him, and close off the well at the same time. He decided on the latter. When the donkey got hit with piles of dirt, he shook them off and stepped up onto them. He used his adversity to propel him forward and get himself out of a tough situation.

When you pause a drill in practice, how long do you talk for? Time yourself next time and see if you can keep it under 30 seconds.  Doug lemon talks about 'aligned feedback' in his book the Coaches' Guide to Teaching, and it means that 'our words matter'. and you're going to hold your players accountable to the thing you paused the drill for. And ONLY that thing! This is hard to do, because w...

A coaching colleague of mine from Key 5 told us that his most effective halftime speeches are the ones where he says nothing. His team could be playing better, so he walks in the locker room, stands by the board, and says nothing for three, four, five minutes. When he does decide to say something he has everyone's full attention, and his words hit.

Once upon a time there was a guy who wanted to a paratrooper. So he got up in the military plane on his first day of training, and when it was his turn to jump, he froze. He told his instructor 'I'm too scared to jump' , and the instructor said to him, 'do you really want to be a paratrooper?' he replied 'more than anything in the world', and the instructor said back to him, "Do it scared". Confus...

Today I want to share the story of my college hoops days in some successes we had and some failures that propelled us into history 

https://www.hubgets.com/blog/5-incredible-olympic-stories-that-will-inspire-you-to-never-give-up/ watch that video about Wilma Rudolph, who was diagnosed with Polio as a child in the 1950s. The Olympics are a great time to understand the stories behind our athletes and heroes. Remember that we all have the potential to be great, but the discipline, training, and commitment to get us there is what...

New Zeland All Blacks Coach Dave Hadfield said "if you chase 5 rabbits, you catch none". which rabbits are you and/or your players chasing? Would you catch one of them if you just focused on it?

Source - James Clear’s newsletter A parable from priest and therapist Anthony de Mello on the stories we tell ourselves: "A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chickens and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He...

“Great coaches are learners who are obsessed with giving you the tools and support to make you a little bit better every day.” -Daniel Coyle

When the caterpillar emerges from a cocoon as a butterfly, it needs to struggle in order for its wings to build strength. Our athletes are the same way. They need to go through the struggle in order to gain confidence and get stronger.