The Game Day Principle

"But coach, I can't run because I hurt my wrist."

I once coached a kid, let's call him Taylor, who was very injury-prone. It felt like each week during the pre-season, he was hurting something, and Taylor was starting to spend as much time in the training room as he was on the court. This was happening before practice officially started for high school basketball in Texas, but we were able to do strength and conditioning before school to get their bodies prepared for the season, and we were able to do skills training and scrimmage during our period.

Taylor had a lot of potential, and he had a legit chance to make the varsity team as a sophomore and play meaningful minutes, but the injuries were hurting his chances. Injuries can be difficult to manage as a high school coach, especially during the grind of the off-season. On one hand, we want to honor the injuries and make sure that we do what we can to keep our athletes healthy. On the other hand, we had to figure out what injuries needed to be cured through time off and what needed to be played through.

I was reading Jon Gordon's book called Training Camp, and the main character was a football player trying to make the NFL but was injured his ankle during training camp. Martin, the injured aspiring NFL player, walked into the weight room one day and was asked by the strength coach if he was going to work out. Martin said that he didn't think that he could because of his injury. The strength coach laughed and told him that there was nothing wrong with his arms and chest.

The strength coach told Martin a story about Jerry Rice. He said, 

"Jerry wasn't the fastest, and he wasn't the tallest. But Jerry worked and trained harder than any football player I've ever know. That's why he became the greatest wide receiver to ever play the game. Everyone thinks he was the best because of how he performed on Game Day, but actually it's how he prepared for Game Day that made him perform so well. If you want to be great you have to commit to a challenging process of preparation."

In the book, they called defined the Game Day Principle. 5% of our life is spent performing in the game, while 95% of our life is preparing, practicing, and waiting for the game. A high school basketball game is 36 minutes, and it might take 1-2 hours to complete it from start to finish. In Texas, we play two games per week. That is 2-4 hours of our week. There are 168 hours in a week, so we only spend a small percentage of our lives actually performing. To be great on game day, you have to be willing to pay the price with countless hours of hard work between the games. As they wrote in the book, how we practice and prepare 95% of our time determines how we perform on game day. 

We had a similar conversation with Shawn. We told him that though he had an injured wrist, the trainer said that he could run and do conditioning. We also told him that while our number one concern was his health, the off-season was his opportunity to get better so that he could earn more playing time when the season started. Shawn couldn't do that if he spent more time in the training room than at practice. We also shared with him our thoughts about the Game Day Principle.

Taylor didn't spend another day in the training room that year, he became one of our best defenders, and we went deeper in the playoffs that season than any team at the school in the last 30 years.