A Coach's Diary

I was on a Zoom meeting, and the superintendent in our district asked the group, 'Why is energy important?' I am a big believer in bringing energy and enthusiasm to everything that I do.  My coach in college always preached about the importance of bringing your own energy to practice and games and that your energy is contagious. Everything is really just made up of vibrating energy.  We are energy.  " Energy powers machines and moves our bodies. It is exchanged in every interaction. Energy is the unseen force necessary for growth, development, and change."  Energy is what we are made of and it makes us go.  The more energy that you have, the farther you can go.  The more POSITIVE energy that you have, the farther you can go in the right direction. Energy powers your thoughts, your emotions, and your actions, so it is important to have the 'right' energy.  Having the right energy at practice leads to a more productive workout where teams are wo...

I heard a great speaker talk about the importance of being purposeful in practice.   He said that every practice should have two goals: 1 - Every individual gets better and FEELS better and more skilled.   Players have more fun when they are more skilled because they have more possibilities and solutions available, and they are more confident. An everyday goal should be to GET BETTER. 2 - The team should be more prepared to win games. I would add that another goal should be that athletes are more prepared to win at life as well. 'THAT IS WHAT WE WORKED ON' He uses the phrase, 'Thats what we worked on to constantly reinforce and reward teaching points.  He says that we want our players to always come back to understanding what we are working on and if it is helping us become better players and teams, he does that by using the 3 Rs: Reinforcing what we teach. Reminding what we teach. Rewarding and noticing progress. A bi...

There are many reasons that athletes don't achieve their goals, but one reason they don't make it is because they run into opposition, adversity, or what they feel and and don't feel like doing, and they didn't know how to stand against adversity and their feelings and work their way through it. The journey is hard, and we might not always feel like putting in the work necessary to keep progressing to the next level.  We sometimes let how we feel hold us back. I don't feel like getting to the gym early. I don't feel like getting these extra sprints in. I don't feel like touching this line. I don't feel like doing this at-home workout. Don't wait and see how you feel before you decide what you are going to do.  You decide what you are going to do, led by the Spirit, and if your feelings don't like it you just take them with you anyways.  Do what you know you are supposed to do.

"Hard work is just the price of admission.  Be dedicated.  Be determined.  Work to be great at your craft.  Be patient.  Knock on the door.  Continue to work.  Continue to learn.  Good things happen over the course of time." "The most dangerous person over the course of time is the one who is constantly improving." Both quotes above were given by Charlotte Hornet's assistant coach Jay Hernandez.  He also shared the following competitive shooting drills that he uses with the Charlotte Hornets.  These are great tools for your players to have.  

Below are some notes that I took from a speech by basketball trainer David Thorpe.  The speech was titled, 'We are first in the business to inspire.'  There were some good notes about building culture, mentoring and inspiring your people, embracing the merry-go-round, and scientists vs artists. Be A Culture Builder Culture is everything.  Some of the best coaches aren't great Xs and Os, but they are great motivators and culture builders.  Their teams would do ANYTHING to WIN, and the way that they cared about each other was like family.  This is just as valuable, if not more valuable, than being a great Xs and Os guy. Teach your players how to respect the game, respect their teammates, respect their coaches, and respect themselves.  Encourage your players to be the best TEAMMATES that they can be. The CULTURE of a team is as important as anything else.   Take the time to invest in the culture and developing great TEAMMATES. We Are...

"I was fortunate to have coaches who had the COURAGE to coach me. They weren't trying to be my friend or hang out with me. They said this is what you HAVE to do: Be a good person, go to school, go compete!!" I heard NBA legend Isaiah Thomas say this on a podcast yesterday when talking about his coaches. At every level, he played for tough, demanding coaches. A lot of high-level coaches say that we have to have a more relationship-based approach to effectively reach, tea ch, and inspire today's athletes. We have to be ready to explain the why behind our methods, and we have to build relationships so that our athletes trust us and let us in. But we still have to COACH and TEACH. We still have to hold them accountable and hold them to the standards that we set, and we have to have the courage to correct when needed. A high-level soccer coach said that the best coaches he sees are coaches who are able to hold their players accountable and correct them while st...

One of the positives about Social Media is that we can see what people like us are doing around the world.  We can see the skills and talents of athletes our age everywhere, so we can compare ourselves to the best, we can measure ourselves against others, and we can see what we do well and see where we can improve. There are cool things being done and shared everywhere on Social Media.  Use that as inspiration to go work on your game. The downfall of Social Media is that we don't see the grind behind each post.  We only see the one, perfect, finished post, but we don't see the many mistakes before and after that post was shared. We have to make sure that we understand that a lot of work goes into being great at something.  A lot of work goes into that one post, or that one skill, or that one perfect shot.  It really is a process of messing up over and over again, learning from your mistakes, grit, resilience, and perseverance. One of the...

Coach Frank Martin is known for being a tough, hard-nosed, old school basketball coach.  He was asked how he has changed his coaching style and philosophy and mindset while working with today's athlete. He said that he hasn't changed his style and what he believes in, but he has had to find PEACE in having more PATIENCE today.   Kids transfer and leave earlier and more often today, and parents don't make their kids stay and go through adversity like they once did.  We have to be more PATIENT because they haven't been prepared to handle a tougher environment. Young people learn DIFFERENTLY now than they used to.  They now have so much information and they don't know what to do with it all.  They don't care how we grew up, what we had to go through, and what and how we had to learn.   They want to know that we CARE about how they learn, and we have to ADAPT to comprehend and learn about THEIR environment, THEIR learning styles, a...

At the start of every basketball practice, in the middle of every basketball practice and at the end of every basketball practice, I talk to my young team about the word 'compete.' That is the central theme of our team.  I want them to know that we might not always be the best, we might not always win, but we will always give ourselves a chance by competing.   We talk about what the word compete means, what it looks like in n practice, and how we can compete with ourselves and others today. We self-assess and talk about our level of competition in practice.  We talk about areas that we competed hard in, and we talk about areas where we could have competed harder. I tell them that when a team plays against us, they need to know that it will be a tough game and that they will have to play hard and well to beat us. We talk about how important it is to compete with and against their teammates every drill because iron sharpens iron.  We also t...

BEING A GREAT TEAMMATE should be a goal of every athlete playing team sports and the goal of every parent for their young athletes.  One of the positive side effects of team sports is learning how to work with and compete with others.  This is a skill that will stick with you for the rest of your life. Make it a goal to be the BEST teammate on the team.  Make it a goal to bring positive energy to every practice and every game.  Make it a goal to push your teammates so that they can be the best that they can be, and make it a goal to pull them along by encouraging. Your teammates might not always treat you right, but you can only control what you can control and how you treat others. When people first think about NBA star Carmelo Anthony, 'great teammate' isn't usually the first thing to come to mind.  But in an interview on the Pull Up Podcast with CJ McCollum, he was asked about his favorite teammates, and Melo had a very insightful response:...

With kids stuck in the house, I think it's important that we have good activities to fill the time productively at home. YouTube has everything that we need to make sure that our kids are stimulated athletically and academically. Here are a few things my daughters did today, plus some other resources that I have seen.  Hopefully these resources can help your kid stay on track and busy during this shut down. In The Lab - This is a GREAT resource for basketball.  He has a great video series that can occupy your time and that you and your family can dive into, and he has a series where he breaks down ball-handling drills that your athletes can follow at home: Progressive Soccer - This channel does a great job of providing different types of soccer content.  We started with doing a couple of rounds of their footwork soccer drills: I found this video for our footwork: And this video for an at-home Plyometric workout: John Beck h...

Cole Anthony is one of the top college basketball players.  An assistant UNC basketball coach said that Cole Anthony is one of the most focused people that he has ever been around.  He said that one of the things that makes Cole Anthony great is that everyday he makes it his goal to RELENTLESSLY work and try to be the best that he can be. Coach Wooden has a famous quote that said,  “ 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.”  “ Success   is never final; failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts.” Work hard.  Stay focused.  Do your best and good things will happen.

When an athlete is blowing up because they didn't get the ball, or didn't get the call or didn't make the play, INVITE THEM TO YOUR CALM.  DON'T LET THEM INVITE YOU TO THEIR STORM. Stay calm, stay cool, and calm them down so that you can diagnose the problem and find a solution. The same can be said for a mad parent.  I had a parent try to rip into me after a basketball game because of his daughter's playing time.  She was a starter, but she didn't play in the final minutes of a close game because her backup was on a roll.  We played above our heads, but we lost.   Immediately after the game, the athlete came to me crying and upset and seeking answers as to why she wasn't allowed to finish the game.  Her dad felt like he needed to come to the rescue of his distraught daughter and continued the storm in my direction. A younger version of me would have been easily invited into both of their storms, and it would not have been good ...

ATHLETES:  Don't be afraid to lose.  If you want to accomplish anything great, you can't be so afraid to lose that you don't put yourself out there, that you don't try your hardest, or that you won't try that new move that coach has been teaching you. You will lose.   You will mess up.   You will experience failure.   It's just a part of sports and it's a part of life. The key is how you approach losing and how you handle it. Don't let losing break you.  Understand that losing just teaches you what you need to do to get better.  Learn how to learn and grow from your mistakes, failures, and losses.   There are few things worse than athletes who hold themselves back because they are afraid to do their best or afraid of a challenge because they are too worried about losing.  Don't stay at the same gym or the same field where you are always the best just so you can win all of the time.  It won't m...

Whenever I am coaching against a really good shooter, my biggest goal is to make their first 2-3 shots tough, contested misses. This sets a tone for my team and can affect the shooter mentally. Striking first like this can be applied to any sport: Rushing a QB into making an errant first pass. Force a drop by the Wide Receiver on his first target. Score a quick goal or stop a goal early. Get a lead-off hit or homerun. Sports are just as much mental as they are physical.   So many games are won mentally during the first few possessions.   This is why having a sense of urgency and being ready to play are so important. The Law of Momentum is real. When you are on the negative end of this, and you miss your first few shots or get lose the ball early or make any kind of early mistakes have a Next Play Mentality. Just focus on making the next play a positive one.   Any one play can change the momentum for your team.   Just make the next pl...

"Make your coaches play you. Make them regret NOT playing you. There is always someone out there who wants your position or wants the position that you want. You have to fight for your spot.  Every day. Fight for your minutes. You have to grind it out because if you don't, someone else will." This was a message that the mother of Steph and Seth Curry left on a recent podcast.  We now know Steph as a 2-time NBA MVP and one of the most popular players in the world, and younger brother Seth has created a great career for himself in the NBA, but fame and success was not always the case. They were both overlooked coming out of high school.  They were only offered scholarships by smaller D1 schools, and many of the bigger schools felt that they were too small and not ready for the bigger stage. But, they both kept grind, kept getting better, and are now doing very well for themselves in the NBA. No matter where you are at and no matter what your circumstances ...

It's not how good you are NOW that matters; its how good are you GOING to be.   But how do you get better, or great, at what you do? Great coaching and a willingness to be coached are important factors in how we become the best that we can be. When you try to make it on your own, you might not recognize the obstacles or lack of skills that are holding you back, or you might now know how to fix it.  When you go on your own, at some point, you stop improving. When we have coaches who are watching us and want to help us grow and get better, we get to a different level of awareness.  Great coaches are your eyes and your ears.  They give you a better picture of your reality.  They break down your actions and they help you build them back up again.  With great coaching, you get better.   It might be painful; it can be hard being watched and criticized and told that you have to work on things.  There are periods where you feel like yo...