Mindfulness Training In Sports By Vision Pursue

Here is a really cool article on the Mindfulness Movement that is starting to spread into sports.  Financial businessman Russ Rausch was looking for more meaning in life, despite his business and financial success, and discovered the power of mindfulness through reading and studying The Master Key System by Charles F. Hannel.

He then went on to create Vision Pursue, a company focused on improving the way that people experience life by improving their mindset.

He worked with now Dartmouth assistant athletic director Ian Cannole and former NFL player Jon McGraw to create the business and an app to help athletes improve their mindset through mindfulness and meditation.

One of the pillars of this training gets at the reason Rausch started Vision Pursue in the first place. Most people, Rausch explains, don’t abide by an “expanding A” view of the world, meaning they derive their sense of self-worth from their accomplishments, leading to an existence in which they can never truly be satisfied. According to this rationale, any person driven by the rewards that come with moving from Point A to Point B is bound to be unhappy because Point B is always changing, whereas the focus should be on getting all that’s possible from an expanding Point A.

Another pillar of this program is attempting to understand the idea of the “automatic brain,” or the notion that people are wired to react to stimuli in different ways as a means of self-preservation. The key is to understand why a particular reaction occurs, rather than succumbing to the emotion brought on by any given situation. 

As stated in the article, athletes are always working on their game, but there is so much more to success in sports than talent.  Much of success is what is going on in your mind and how you handle pressure, how you deal with success, and how you move on from failure.  Mindfulness and programs like Vision Pursue help athletes with the mental part of their games and lives.

Care. Care. Care.

Care. Care. Care.

The number 1 character trait necessary for an athlete to add value to his or her team is to care. To care about doing your best. To care about helping your teammates be their best. To care about helping your team be its best.

The worst thing a player can do in a team sport is to not care. To not care enough to be their best. To not care enough to help their teammates be their best. To not care enough to help the team be its best.

When you care, you grow, improve and you get better. When you don’t care, you don’t grow and you bring down the team as well.

If you don’t care, don’t play. Don’t waste your time, don’t waste your teammate’s time, and don’t waste your coach’s time. Find another team, another coach, or something that you do care about and invest your time and energy into that.

If you do care, work hard everyday to be a better player and a better teammate.

Failure and Riding Out the Storm

The article below comes from Mike Greenberg's podcast, I'm Interested, in which he interviews Shake Shack founder and restaurateur Danny Meyer.

Failure is a part of success.  There is no better way to learn and grow than by trial and error.  Don’t be afraid to try.  Don’t be afraid to fail.  Don’t be afraid to strikeout, or miss the shot, or get knocked off the ball.  Each time you fail is another opportunity for you learn how to do better.

When you fail, be humbled – not stubborn – and be willing to listen and learn.  Failing, listening and learning is how you grow and get better.  Sticking with it and being persistent and having grit is how you become the best.

Learn how to ride out the storms and you will get there, as an athlete, as a coach, as a parent, and as a person.  

This goes for the coaches you play for or the employees that you hire, or the players that you coach.  Patience and loyalty is important.  They will mess up.  They will fail.  But, if you feel like you have the right people in place - people who have the ability, the mindset, the work ethic, the grit, and the potential to listen, learn and grow - then ride the storms out with them because at the end of it will be learned lessons and sustainable success.

51% vs 49%

The article below comes from Mike Greenberg's podcast, I'm Interested, in which he interviews Shake Shack founder and restaurateur Danny Meyer.

When you talk about what you look for in a great teammate, coach, teacher or employee, 51% is based on who you are as a person, and 49% is based how good you are at what you do.

If you do everything right as a coach - great Xs and Os, timely timeouts, good scouting reports and sub rotations, etc, then you can only get a 49 on the test.

If you are a great player, can shoot, pass dribble and defend, then you can only get a 49 on the test.

Who you are when you aren’t on the field is just as important as your ability and make up the other 51%.  We can easily see and measure stats, but who are you in the dugout?  What are you doing to raise the performance of everyone else on the team?  What are you doing to make this team the type of team that the best players would want to work at?  That is just as important, more important, than your stats.

Numbers can't measure what's the most important - the value that people bring by being good people.

Know and Master Your Role

Know, accept and master your role.  That is the mark of a good teammate in any sport and in any field.  We all have been given certain gifts, and when we use those gifts, no matter how big or small, popular or unseen, we make the team better.

-  If you are a shooter - shoot with confidence.
-  If you are a defender - defend with heart and toughness.
-  If you bring energy off the bench, cheer loud and proud for your teammates.

The best teams have the best teammates - teammates who know, believe in, accept, and master their roles.

"Being a teammate means you only have one agenda: the team.  There can be no personal agendas on a championship team.  A teammate is someone who is over themself and into the team.  Being a teammate is immersing ourselves into doing everything we can to help the team and our teammates succeed.

"Know and understand your role.  In order for the team to win, it has to use the strengths that it has in each of its members."

- Kevin Eastman, Why the Best are the Best

The Dream Has To Belong to The Kid

College scholarships – and success in general in sports – can’t be the parent’s dream.  It HAS to be the kid’s dream.

And the level of success or the level of college or professional that they are working for has to be the kid’s dream too.

You can’t give a kid D1 dreams if they don’t have D1 talent, or D1 size, or D1 athleticism, or D1 work ethic or desire.

They have to grind their own grind and dream their own dreams.

Now, what we can do is instill in them the kind of character and the character traits that lead to success in any and all ventures in life.  The characteristics or hard work, persistence, grit, being humble, being a great teammate, toughness, finding their passion, putting in extra work to achieve goals, goal setting, etc, work for sports and they work for life.

Instead of dreaming for your kid through sports, teach them through sports.  Teach them how to be a better person by teaching them the characteristics that it takes to have success.  Those characteristics will last much longer than their athletic career.

Make Sure Players Know You Believe In Them

While they often get a bad 'rep,' and rightfully so, good trainers do a good job of pushing kids to work harder - often times more so than their school coach.  In talking with one trainer, he told me that us coaches just have to make sure that the kids know how much we believe in them and then they will give us all that they have.

Kids have enough anxiety and pressure when it comes to performing in sports, and we coaches can sometimes add to that because we criticize - or coach - our kids, which includes correcting their mistakes.  If we spend more time on correcting than we do praising, it can be easy to see how kids might start to doubt themselves and our belief in their abilities.

While corrective criticism, direction and honestly is absolutely necessary for growth in anything, and especially in sports, we have to make sure to couple that criticism with positive affirmation.  We have to make sure that our kids KNOW that we believe in their ability to succeed in the tasks and roles that we give them.

In the teaching and education world, we often say to give 2 put ups for each put down to counteract negative interactions.  One study, as reported by the Harvard business review, found that the most productive organizations give 5 positive comments to every 1 negative comment.

Coach tough, but love tougher and make sure that those you are leading KNOW and FEEL how much you care about them and believe in them.

Trey Burke on Creating and Routine and Working Daily for Your Dreams

I think most people want to be good and try to work hard to accomplish their goals, and often when things don’t work out how we want, instead of blaming others or making excuses, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and really decide if we are working as hard as we think – or as hard as we need to – to achieve our goals.

Trey Burke, a point guard for the New York Knicks, recently had to look himself in the mirror and figure out what type of player he was going to be and how hard he was going to have to work to become that.

Trey Burke was a star at the University of Michigan, helping lead them to the National Championship game.  He was then a lottery pick of the Minnesota Timberwolves and traded to the Utah Jazz.  After 3 years with the Jazz and 1 season with the Washington Wizards, Burke found himself out of the NBA and in the G-League.  

It was there where Trey Burke said that he had to look himself in the mirror and he realized that he wasn't working as hard as he thought he was or as hard as he needed, so he created a routine for every morning and every night, stuck to it, and it became brighter and brighter each day.  He went from on top of the world to out of the league very quickly, and he could have given up or made excuses, or even stayed where he was at in the G-League.  But, Burke knew what he wanted to do and who he wanted to be and he made a plan and worked his way back to where he wanted to be.

When you aren’t getting what you want out of sports, out of school or out of life, you have to take a different approach.  You have to determine what type of person you want to be.  You have to reflect on where you are and where you want to go, create a vision for yourself, establish a routine on how you plan to improve – EVERYDAY – and stick with it.  When you do see improvement, let it drive you to get more.  Don’t stop.  Keep going.

What is one area where you want more or think you can do better?

What is one thing that you can do every day to become the person that you want to become?

Choices - Why The Best Are The Best

Where you are and where you are going are based mostly off of the choices that you make.

The rest is based off how you react to those choices. Every choice that you make matters: Do I get to the gym early, or do I rest? Do I put up extra shots, or do I hang out with my teammates? Do I read this extra chapter today? Do I stay late in the office tonight? Do I spend extra time with my family this weekend?

Everyday we are faced with hundreds of choices that we can make. Each choice has its consequence. Be intentional in how you make the choices that you make.

The 3 Things You Need To Make It

If you want to make it - become the best you can be, get a scholarship, play professionally, become a doctor, own your own business, become a millionaire - you must do these three things:

1 - Work Hard
2 - Work Smart
3 - Work consistently

Some of us do one of these things, and fewer do two of these things, but very few do all three of these things.  

Working hard means taking yourself out of your comfort zone.  If you want to be your best, you have to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable.  Working hard is a choice.  Make the choice to go to the gym.  When you get their, you have the choice to either work hard or to not work hard.  It's easy to make excuses to not go to the gym, or to study, but if you want to be great, you have to make a conscious decision that you are going to work, that you are going to work hard, that you are going to work smart, and they you are going to do it consistently.

Create a Habit of Trying

The habit of TRYING is the first step to success.  Try.  You will be amazed at what you can accomplish if you just try.

Use ‘try’ as a mini-challenge that keeps you growing and progressing into becoming the person that you want to become.  Accomplishing anything requires a start, and starting requires a willingness to try.  Try to do better, try to do the right thing, try to give your best as consistently as possible, and try to get out of your comfort zone.

To do so, your try must be great. 

-        -  Your try must be greater than your fear.

-        -  Your try must be greater than your doubt.

-         -  Your try must be greater than any embarrassment that you may suffer from failing or from not accomplishing what you set out to do.

Success does not come from being a spectator.  Success comes from jumping in and being participant.

Create a habit of trying.

It’s not about where you’ve been and what you’ve done, but about where you’re capable of going and who you are capable of becoming.

The habit of TRYING is the first step to success.  Try.  You will be amazed at what you can accomplish if you just try.

- For more on this topic, I highly suggest you look into the book Why The Best Are the Best by Kevin Eastman.  It's a great book about the keywords that all successful people live out every day.

Take Action and Don't Quit

Success is smart – it will test you at many turns.  Its biggest test is failure.  Success wants to know if you will quit.  Remember that failure is a part of all successful team and individual journeys.  

Don’t fear failure because it happens to the best of the best.  If you fear the consequence of failure, put equal fear to the consequence of never trying.  What would happen if you tried and it actually worked out?  At some point, it will!  Imagine if you knew you would succeed but you didn’t try.  How would you feel then?

Try, and don’t quit.  Act, and don’t quit.

Don’t define success by wins and losses.  Define success by starting, trying, acting and giving your best effort.  If you do those and ‘win,’ then great.  If you do those and ‘lose,’ its still great as long as you learned from your mistakes, got better, and didn’t quit.  Eventually you will win, and with the right attitude, you will probably win sooner than later. 

We usually know what we are supposed to do, but we fail to do what we know.  When we don’t act, the act doesn’t disappear – it stays and haunts us – even more than it would if we had tried and failed.  Lack of action sticks with us and it stacks with each lack of action.

Take action.  Start.  Try.  Fail.  Don’t quit.  You can’t lose as long as you are learning.  Make action a core ingredient of who you are.

- For more on this topic, I highly suggest you look into the book Why The Best Are the Best by Kevin Eastman.  It's a great book about the keywords that all successful people live out every day.

Teach Decision Making and Taking Advantage of the Advantage

We as coaches have to teach skills.  We have to teach how to shoot, pass, dribble and proper footwork, among other things.

One of the most important things that we must teach is decision making.  Basketball is a reactionary sport.  We have to teach them how to read, react, and make great decisions.  You have to be able to play and make choices – all of the time.

17:00 – We run plays to create even a small advantage – a late closeout, and out of position defender, an opening on a back cut or back screen, the defense in a scramble rotation.  What we have to practice every day is how to take advantage of that small advantage and score.  We have to teach them to play in those situations, what to do and how to attack.  How can we turn our small advantage into a big advantage?

A Humble Mind

A Humble Mind

You cannot grow without a humble mind.  You can’t receive advice or constructive criticism or instruction (that can really help you) from your coaches, teachers and parents if you don’t approach it with a humble mind.  You have to approach every class and practice like, ‘Man, I could really use this this. I NEED this.’ 

A humble mind is a mind that knows that it can learn from anybody at any time.  A humble mind knows that it needs to be a lifelong learner if it wants to be the best that it can be.  A humble mind knows that it has to keep working hard, consistently and every day, to become the best that they can be.

If you think that you already know everything a coach or teacher is trying to teach you, or that you don’t need to hear this lesson because you already know it, or you think this drill is for somebody else because you can already do it, then you will miss out on something that could have really helped you; as a student, a player, and as a person.  If you think that you already know everything, you will miss something that could have changed your life.

We all need it all.  We need everything.  We need as much teaching and constructive criticism and practice as possible to become the best that we can become.  We need to be reminded of this every time that we have a chance to be reminded.  We benefit from being told, even the simple things, over and over and over again. 

Only a humble mind can be taught anything.

Only a person with a humble mind can receive correction.  We have to want to grow.  We have to want to learn.

Don’t think more highly of yourself than you should.   Don’t have an exaggerated opinion of your own importance.  When you do, you stop growing because you stop learning and improving.

When you don’t have a humble mind and you start to think more highly of yourself than you should, you start to look down on other people.  You start looking down on your teammates, your classmates and even your coaches and teachers.  When you start looking down on others, you start to have critical and judgmental thoughts about others.  You start to slow down, or shut down, your ability to learn, grow and get better.

A humble mind doesn’t think lowly of itself.  You should always value yourself and see all of your gifts, your talents, and your abilities.   You should love yourself in a balanced way, but you should never think that you are better than anybody else. 

You could be more talented than somebody, but that doesn’t mean that you are better than them.  You might score more points, run faster, and/or make better grades than somebody, but that doesn’t make you better than them. 

A humble mind allows you to trust the process of doing what it takes, over time, to get the results that you want.  Of course, we all want to start on varsity as freshmen and get D1 offers immediately.  Many of us want all of the glory, the trophies, and the love and attention immediately.  But, having a humble mind will allow you to grow the right way by learning a much as you can, working as hard as you can for what you want, and over time, you will achieve what you want.  Having a humble mind will allow you to build and stand on a foundation that won’t break under pressure.

A humble mind is a mind that wants to learn as much as you can and wants to work as hard as you can so that you can become the best that you can.

Character Drives The Process Which Drives The Result

Character drives The Process which drives The Result

Results > What you want to accomplish
The Process > The work you put in, over time, for the results you want
Character > Who you are as a person

Focusing on building character will help your athletes embrace the process more which will lead to better results.

Who you are as a person will tell how hard you are willing to work (the process) for the results that you want.  Build, grow, and developing character will help you work harder, better and smarter through the process of achieving the results that you want.

Of course every team wants to go undefeated and win their championship, but above that, every team should want to strive to maximize their ability.  Everyone will experience loss, and while nobody wants to lose, losing isn’t the worst thing in the world.  Worse than losing is wasted talent.

John Wooden once defined success as, “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”

Becoming the best coach, player or team that you can become is more important that just winning.   Becoming the best parent, the best teacher, or the best leader that you can become is more important than winning or test scores.  “Do your best” isn’t just some mantra we tell our kids before they go play their u9 soccer game; it should be our mantra for life.  Win or lose, if you prepared the best you can and did your best that should be satisfying enough.

Teams should work together to be the best that they can be as a whole.  We are all limited and imperfect, but together we can be whole, limitless and fully capable to accomplish anything before us.  To become the best team that you can be, everybody has to work hard, do the right things, and do them the right way.  That is what is called ‘The Process.’  The process is doing the right thing, the right way, over time.  The process drives the result.  How hard the team works and how well they work together is the process.  What the team and the players do every day is the process.  Practice, film, the weight room, conditioning, diet, the classroom, etc. is all a part of the process.

How well they do those things is driven by the character of the team, the coaches, and the players.  Your character is who you are, what you do, and how you do it.  It is who you are as a person.  Your character drives the process.  Your character drives how hard you are willing to work.  Building and improving character will improve your work ethic (the process) which will improve your results. 

If the goal of the team is to maximize its ability, the biggest way to do so is to build up the character of everybody in the organization, from the coach to the players to the managers.

Brett Ledbetter Follow Up

This past week for our professional development leading into the new school year, we were blessed to have Brett Ledbetter come to talk to us about the importance of building character in our kids and athletes in helping maximize the ability of our teams.  The link to his power point can be found here: please click here

We were asked to answer survey questions about his visit, and below are the questions and my responses so that I can remember to ignite commitment, get kids to their sweet spot, frame struggle as development, and measure commitment level of out athletes.

How do you ignite commitment levels inside the classroom (or with teams)?
We try to identify what the individual goals of each of our kids are, we try to give them the road map on how to achieve those goals, and we give constant and consistent feedback throughout the process on how they are moving towards those goals.  It is cliche, but we understand that the relationship with the kid/athlete is very important, so we make sure that everybody in our program has a meaningful relationship with at least one coach on our staff.  We also identify which kids we need to monitor more closely and talk about how we can do more and be better for them individually.

How do coaches/teachers undermine their athletes/students from getting in the sweet spot?
One way is coaches/teachers don't have high enough goals for the student.  Another way is the coach/teacher tries to push the kid without building the relationship first.  Its hard to push these kids into their sweet spot without first having a relationship.  Also, its important for these kids to hear and understand the why.  They don't always automatically understand that you are trying to get them to their sweet spot; they just think you are being mean. 

How do you frame struggle as development?

In my classroom with the subject that I teach, struggle is a way of life for my students.  They have always struggled with Math, which is why they are in my class.  From day one, we acknowledge the struggles that they have and we own it.  But we also talk constantly about how important it is to fight through the struggles.  We talk about how everybody has struggles in their life and stuff that they don’t like and stuff that they aren’t good at and that sometimes those things are the same.  But we also say that we have a job to do, and that job is to show up and do the best that we can, and if we do that over the course of the year, we can celebrate by passing the STAAR test.  We don’t run from the struggle in the classroom because we can’t.  We are going to face it every day.  We treat it as part of the process and something to learn and grow from and through.  If we can get through this struggle, we can get through much more as they get older.

Being in such a tough district last year in athletics, we talked about it all of the time.  The number one way we frame struggle as development is telling them that struggle is development and that you can't grow to your full potential without struggle.  Struggle is the biggest part of getting out of your comfort zone, and getting out of your comfort zone is the fastest, most effective, and most sustainable path to growth.  Communication is the way that we frame struggle as development while also communicating with our students and our athletes that we care and that we will give them the tools to be successful and that we will go through the journey with them.

What are the signs you can tell someone's commitment level? 
We can tell how committed someone is a few different ways.  Of course, if they are willing to come in early or stay late is one way to measure commitment.  Also, if you see growth in areas that you have identified as weaknesses and you can tell that they have been working on improving those weaknesses, that is a sign of commitment.  Being willing to spend time outside of school or practice is a major sign of commitment because it takes more than practice or class to become the best that you can be.  The questions that they ask is also a way to measure commitment.  Committed students and athletes will ask questions when necessary because they want to know how they can be better and they want feedback.  However, its important for the coach to create and environment where the student/athlete is comfortable and confident enough to ask questions.  Eye contact and engagement in class and practice is also a major indicator of commitment.  Are they focused, engaged, and attentive in instruction?  Are the locked in?  How locked in are they?  Those are ways to measure commitment as well.

An Ear To Hear | A Teachable Spirit | Be Humble Enough to Learn

• 
  

An Ear To Hear

A Teachable Spirit

Be Humble Enough to Learn

As school starts, these three things are important for any student, kid athlete, teacher, parent, coach to remember.

Have an ear to hear and listen to learn when your coach, teacher or parent is talking.  There are two types of students and athletes – the ones who really listen to the coach and learn what he is teaching, and the ones who aren’t.  The ones who are bought-in and the ones who aren't.  The student-athletes who are bought-in and intentionally listen will perform better every time.

Have a teachable spirit that is willing and eager to learn and apply new things that will help you and that will make you better.  A teachable spirit means that you are willing to learn new things, and that takes being humble enough to know that you don’t know everything. 

Be humble enough to learn because there is always a chance to get better and to learn new things if you are willing to be taught and you have a teachable spirit.  But you have to first know that you don’t know everything and that every situation is a chance for you to learn something new.  Be thankful when somebody takes the time to teach you something new that will make you better.   Be thankful enough that you pay attention to what is being said, think about how you can apply the new information, and try to use the new information to the best of your ability.

Have an ear to hear new things that will help you, have a teachable spirit that will help take in new information.  To do this, you must be humble enough to know that you don’t know everything and you can improve and get better. 

Manchester City Circle Warm Up

I have always been fascinated with the footwork of soccer players.  Soccer and basketball really do complement each other in terms of strategy, conditioning and footwork.  You have to play in space, move together, and be able to win your one on one matchups within the team concept. 

One thing that soccer players do is have really neat warm up drills that teach the proper footwork that they apply in games.  Below is a video posted from Manchester City.  It’s a good 5 minute warm-up that can be a switch up from what you do every day in practice.

This coach uses 26 cones for 18 players and he goes through a series of movements around, through, and over the cones.  He will give a movement, like bunny hops over the cones, and on his whistle, the players will either run to the center of the circle or to the outside of the circle and back.  They did 2 sets of each exercise, and each exercise lasted about 15 seconds.  Enjoy the video and the list of movements are below:

- Jog
- Zig-Zag
- Rainbows
- Bunny hops
- High kicks/shuffle back
- Trunk twists
- Close the gate
- Open the gate
- Forward and backwards
- Kick-backs

Fundamentals Of Dribbling

It's like driving: when you can dribble (drive), you can go anywhere you want to go.  You have to have your eyes up, you have to pay attention, but you can go wherever you want to go.

When you drive, you have to keep your eyes on the road and you can't look down.  It's the same when you dribble - you have to keep your eyes up.  When you are looking up, you can see everything around you.  When you look down, you can only see what is below you.

Stay low in a good stance so that if the defense crowds and pressures you, you can quickly and explosively get away.  If you are standing up tall, the defense can crowd you and pressure you backwards.  Be ready and in position to attack.

Use your fingertips.  Learn how to make music with the basketball.  Play with the basketball.  Have fun with the basketball.

Lessons Learned in Youth Baseball

Greg Amsinger, Jim Thome and Joe Girardi chat about their kids playing baseball and the lessons they try to pass on to them.

Some of the key takeaways that I got from this 6 minute video are:

- Point out the good things that they did.

- Teach them to want to come back the next day because they enjoyed it – be encouragers.

- Ask them their thought process behind certain plays and actions to teach them to take ownership over what they did.

- Don’t forget how tough games can be.  Encourage and embrace your kids.

- Enjoy the love of the game.

- Let the coaches coach your kids and set the example.

- Talk the game on the ride to the park, don’t talk the game on the ride home.  Embrace that time together with your kid.

- Take your kids outside and work with them.  Work with them as much as they want.  When they want to work on their game, make yourself available.

- Let them play other sports to teach them to be athletes.

You Have To Play #PLAYSports

If you want to be good at anything, you have to PLAY!  If you want to be good at sports, you have to play sports.  A lot.  I’m not talking about practice or games; I am talking about playing.  Playing on your own with your ball, having fun, and learning what you can do with it. 

If you want to be good at basketball, you have to play with the basketball the same way kids play with toy race cars and barbies.  The more you play with it, the better you get.  You have to learn all of the tricks and moves and shots that you can do with it.  The more you play with it, the more ‘tricks’ that you learn, and the more your skills and talent grows.  But, you have to play.

If you want to be a great quarterback, you have to play with how you can throw the ball.  You have to play with how hard you can throw it, you have to play with how many different routes you can throw to, and you have to play with how many ways you can throw the ball.  You have to play with how many ways you can get out of the pocket.  You have to play.

It’s the same with all sports, and it’s the same with everything in life.  If you want to be a great actor, you have to play with acting.  Play with acting out as many characters as you can.  The more characters that you play with, the more roles that you can play, the more versatile you are, and the more roles that you can get.

If you want to be a great leader, you have to play with how many ways you can influence as many different types of personalities as you can.  Leadership is different because you should want to lead with character and integrity, so you have to be careful with how you play and you have to be careful with how you use your influence.  But, you have to play.

And, the more distractions in front of you, the more things that you have to play with.  The more toys you buy, the more toys that they have to play with.  The more movies you buy, or the more electronics you buy, or the more whatever you buy, the more whatever you have to play with.

Determine what 3 things you think are important for them to play with and make sure that there aren't too many distractions that keep them from what's important.  God, family and friends.  Everything else is extra, so make sure that the extra is important and worthy of their time.  

To be great at anything, you have to love it enough to play with it enough to get enough and comfortable enough to be better than the rest.

You have to play.

Do You Bring Joy To Those You Lead

Noah Webster once defined joy as the passion or emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good.

Joy is being happy about what is going on in your life and being excited about what is about to happen.

Do you bring joy to those around you?  Do you bring joy to those you coach?  Are others excited to play for you or to be around you?  Find joy for yourself first and then be a joy to others.

Your Attitude Affects Your Experience

Two athletes transferred to a new school and new team.  The parents of both athletes asked their new coach if he thought their kids would like the new team.

The coach responded to both parents with a question:  ‘How did they like their old team?’

Player A’s parents’ response:  He didn’t like the coach, he didn’t get along with his teammates, and they didn’t get along with the other parents.

The coach’s response:  ‘Then there is a good chance he won’t like it here either.’

Player B’s parents’ response:  ‘He didn’t want to leave!  He loved his coach, he got along great with his teammates, and they loved the other parents.  We HATED to leave!’

The coach’s response:  Then he will probably love it here as well!

Not every team is great, not every coach is great, and parents won’t always be best friends with other parents, but your attitude about the situation is the biggest predictor of success and enjoyment.

Basketball Is Mental - Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf

Question: What does 'basketball is mental' mean?

Answer: So as you think, so will it be.  Your thinking affects your behavior and you have to have the right mindset.  Making the decision that this is what you want to do is the first step.  From there, you develop a strategy, and it has to include working harder than anyone else is working.  Working harder and smarter.  Don't put yourself in a box - play with the game and think outside the box.  The fundamentals are building blocks for the advanced stuff, but use your creativity to take your game to the next level.  The mental influences those decisions that you make and how you see the game.

Then you have to have the effort, the stamina and the strength to handle the competition.  There is a difference between wanting to be mediocre and wanting to be great.  If you are training, and you aren't contemplating quitting or you are close to death - you aren't pushing yourself hard enough.  You might be working, but you aren't working hard enough.

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf Teaches Shooting Fundamentals

Notes from one of the best shooters of all time - Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf teaching how he shoots!

1 - Follow Through
2 - The arc of the shot
3 - The feel of the shot

- Hand is not too close; fingers comfortable and natural, not too spread out
- Finger tip control - have a gap so you aren't palming it
- Off hand guides the ball; not too close and not underneath; be comfortably strong so it feels good but they can't knock the ball away
- Its good at the beginning to line up the seams to help with your follow-thru
- The follow through softens up the shot and lets it hang around the rim
- Legs shoulder width apart to create a balance
- Elbows in so your elbow and follow-thru is aligned with the basket
- Index finger to the basketball and the rim
- Backspin on the follow-thru
- Focus on a target - right over the front of the rim

Find what is comfortable for you and repetition.  Do it over and over again and pay attention to details.  The best shooters shoot the same shot every time, and it takes hundreds and thousands of shots to build up the muscle memory.

You should aim to get 80% to 90% shooting from the free-throw line by yourself.

Doc Rivers on Discussing Playing Time With His Kids

Doc Rivers talks about when one of his sons complained about playing time:

No coach wants to lose.  If you do the right thing, minutes go up. Kids need to learn how to fight for it and need to hear the truth father than hearing you bash the coach.  

"I support you and I know you can play.  But, you have to keep working and earning your spot [while respecting the coach and your teammates and while being a great friend and teammate].