A Coach's Diary

Don't quit. Don't give up. Be stronger. Last longer. Stick with things. Keep it up. Keep it up. Keep it up. Refuse to give up. Believe. If anybody can have it, you can have it.  You deserve it as much as everybody else. When it gets tough, the most important thing is the voice in your head and what it is saying. Anytime you find a really successful person, someone who is really doing great things, somewhere along the line they have developed the ability to go through adversity and to come out on the other side better, not bitter. Stand strong.  Be determined to do the best that you can and help others stand strong and determined to be their best.

ATHLETES:  The best way to prepare for the games is to have great practices.  But we also need to look at what we are doing between practices too. There is only so much improving that can come from a few practices a week, and much of a coach's responsibility is to get the TEAM ready to perform together. The best coaches find ways to get the TEAM ready while also growing individual players through player development, but there is only so much time that can be spent on player development. If you want to be the best that you can be, you have to put in extra practice between practices.  Pay attention to what your coach teaches in practice and your role.  Pay attention to the drills that you do.  Ask your coach what you need to work on individually, and practice all of that on your own. On off days, get extra reps in.  Find ways to come early to practice or stay late after practice to get extra work in. Your growth and development is up ...

In the video below, NFL legend Deon Sanders talks about the importance of competing in practice and the importance of creating and living by the right habits. To become the best that you can be, you have to compete everyday in practice.  You have to push yourself and your teammates.  You will win some battles, and you will lose some battles, but if you just keep competing, you will keep improving. When you compete every practice, you are creating the right habits.  We are what we do, so our habits will dictate our success.  When you live by the right habits, you have a chance to be special. It's about how you practice and your habits.  Don't cut any deals with your teammates - go at eachother.  This is how you make eachother better.  Every practice is a game.  It's the chance to compete. Iron sharpens iron. Whatever you do, just do it consistently. Create habits.  Practice at a certain time to create habits....

Here in Texas, girls' basketball practices just started, boys' basketball practice starts this week, and football and volleyball are gearing up for the playoffs. Whether you are a freshman just getting your career started or a senior starting your last season, ENJOY every second of it because when it's over, it's over.  Enjoy the excitement of the first practice, the first scrimmage and the first game.  The tournaments are the best way to get to know your teammates and coaches because you spend so much time with them. Recharge right before district starts and half-way through district.  Cherish those Saturday morning practices and those holiday practices.  Time in the gym alone with your team without having to worry about school is a BLESSING. Make a scrapbook, make a blog, video as much as you can.  Just enjoy it all.  Get to know your coaches on a different level than just sports.  Get to know their family.  Build a strong rela...

Coaching and leadership are part processes and systems and part influence and behaviors.   We put in systems and processes like how we want to play, actual plays, practice times and practice schedules, and drills to teach the game and to give our team structure, but its character and behavior that drives how much our kids buy-in, how hard they work, and how much time they put into getting better.   The better the character, the harder they work.  The more they listen and buy-in, the better the team.  Coaching is more than just plays; its influencing athletes to do what they need to do to execute at the highest level possible for themselves and for the team. When your team isn't working as hard as you would like, or they aren't listening like they should, or they aren't performing like you know they can, it can be very frustrating and it can be very easy to start playing the blame game. It is easy to start blaming this generation...

The Knuckleheads Podcast is hosted by Quenton Richardson and Darrius Miles.  they invite special guests, high-profile athletes, musicians and entertainers to get brutally honest about everything from current events to untold stories from the golden era of sports and culture. Named for the on-court celebration they made wildly popular, this unfiltered, hilarious and surprising podcast is like playing NBA 2K with no fouls. They recently had Kobe Bryant on and it was a great interview, where he talked about everything from his first years in the league to his new book. On Coming To An Already Established Team It was good for me to come in and play with so many all-stars; iron sharpens iron.  I had to do a lot and I had to be perfect just to get on the floor. Every day at practice has got to be a war because I have to prove that I deserve to be here and that I deserve to play.  Every play matters. Superheros In your game, you have weapons.  I u...

Can we commit to getting 1% better?  Every day, let's try to find a way to get at least a little better.   If we can just get a little better every day, then over time these small gains will add up to something special, and we will become the athlete/person that we want to be. Getting 1% better can mean a lot of different things.  It could be getting better at shooting, or dribbling or throwing, or any technical skill that your sport requires.  It could be doing 10 minutes of ball-handling every day this week, not leaving the gym until you make 50 free-throws, doing 5 sprints after your workout, hitting ten perfect forehands and backhands, or any kind of extra skill work pertaining to the sport that you play.  When you get better by putting in the work, your confidence grows. Getting 1% better can mean getting stronger.  It can mean giving your all in the weight room, going hard in every rep, and not just being in the room with your friend...

💪🏿 Find the best player in the gym and play them. 🏃 Find the fastest person at the workout and work  next to them. 🏀 Find the best shooter in the gym and shoot with them. ⚾️ Find the best hitter and pitch to them. ⚾️ Find the best pitcher, and hit off them. ⚽️ Find the best scorer and try to stop them. 🏀 Find the best goalkeeper and try to score on them. 🥅 Find the hardest worker and try to outwork them. 🎽 Find the person who can run the furthest, the longest and try to keep up! When you play against people who are better than you, you get better.  They push you harder and they expose your weaknesses.  They force you to maximize your strengths and grow your weaknesses.  They teach you how to have a growth mindset and learn from your failures.   We all win and lose in life - and sports can prepare you for that.  Your first loss shouldn't be as a college freshmen when you are away ...

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...

It is easy to become discouraged as a coach.  But every time you start to get discouraged, go back to why you chose this profession in the first place.  You love the kids, you love the game and you love to teach.  Let it show.  Your kids will follow your lead.

The word compete  comes from the Latin root word competere , which means to strive together. Your competition is not the enemy – they are your growth partners and you are striving together to make on another better. You want your teammates and your competition to be his or her best so they challenge you more so you’ll be pushed to be at your best. As a coach, be careful about how you approach competition because you don’t want to pit players against one another to the point where teammates have dysfunctional relationships by trying to defeat and establish superiority over each other. Change the opponent by redefining what competition is.   Competition: a partnership to challenge each other. Instead of being fueled by negative energy (fear that the other is going to be better) be fueled by positive energy knowing your competition is helping you be your best and knowing that your competition is your growth partner.

"Do you want to choose winning over standing out? It's a choice every player on every championship team has to do" - Doc Rivers

No one is bigger than the team. You're going to be on time, you're going play hard, you're going to know your job and you're going to know when to pass and shoot. If you can't do those four things you're not getting time here and we don't care who you are. – Hubie Brown

We know Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson today as a real-life action figure who leads an incredibly inspirational life, but as   a high school student, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson started getting into trouble. He was arrested for everything from fighting and stealing to forging checks, but Dwayne says he began to change his ways when he was 16 years old and he met the football coach.  Here is what he said he took away the most from that experience: "The empathy that he had for a punk kid who treated him so rudely and disrespectfully.  He looked past the BS and said that I believe in you and I want to turn you around.  Often times you see kids who are labelled punk kids, its true.  But there's good in them and we have to see that potential.  Especially kids who are kind of wayward and are going through it." We have and see those kids everyday.  But instead of seeing the punk on the outside, try finding the potential on the inside.  My mom always had ...

All credit for this article goes to the website, “Changing the Game Project.”  It is a great article about the importance of competing, using Lionel Messi as their muse.  In my opinion, competing is the most important character trait in athletes, young and old.  You can read the article in full here . “Competing for Lionel Messi is not a sometime thing; it is an all-time thing. He has always been smaller than the other kids. He was born with a growth hormone disorder, and as a child was nicknamed “the flea.” Clubs would not sign him because he was too small. Even when FC Barcelona brought him to Spain at age 13, he was always undersized. He had to learn grit, and persistence, and guile. The more you kicked him, the angrier he got, and the better he played. The will to compete does not simply show itself in games.  As his former Barcelona teammate Thierry Henry said, it showed in practice too .  He isn't a sometimes competitor: he is an all-time competit...

This is how I want to feel about what I do everyday; working with that caliber of people everyday and being able to say that this is easily  the best job that he has ever had. ESPN recently laid off 100 employees, many of them high profile.  David Ching sent this picture in a tweet stating how great his time was at ESPN.  I think it would be great working in an environment such as the one described here.  Some personal news pic.twitter.com/jLvoHel3Iv — David Ching (@davidching77) April 26, 2017 References Updated list of the biggest names laid off at ESPN.  Sports.Yahoo.com.  Retrieved on April 27, 2017.

All credit for this article goes to Kathleen Elkins and CNBC.com .  It was retrieved from yahoo.finance on 4/25/17.  It gives a little insight on how Kobe Bryant obsessiveness helped him become great. In  Kobe Bryant 's rookie season for the Lakers in 1996, he played five minutes and scored two points in a disappointing game against the Houston Rockets. "I needed to work harder,"  he writes  on  The Players' Tribune . He did. But three years later, he remembers, NBA legend Allen Iverson scored 41 points and made 10 assists while playing against him. "Working harder wasn't enough," Bryant says. "I had to study this man maniacally." And he did: "I obsessively read every article and book I could find about AI. I obsessively watched every game he had played. ... I obsessively studied his every success, and his every struggle. I obsessively searched for any weakness I could find." Bryant's fixation paid off. A year later, ...

You Can’t Just Sit Back And Wait For It To Come.  Organize Your Life So That You Can Go Out And Get What You Want.   Go Get What You Deserve.  Go Get What You WORK FOR.  I was watching the Grizzlies battle the Spurs in game 4 of their first round battle.  At half time, they had a clip of Grizzlies head coach David Fizdale talking to his team about the importance of ‘Dominating the Line of Scrimmage.’  “Dominate the line of scrimmage.  Be the most physical, toughest team.  Initiate the contact and take the action to THEM.” Play with a tough mindset and a sense of urgency.  Go get what you want from the beginning and do it the entire game.  You can’t sit back and wait for the game to come to you.  You will look up and realize that its 2 minutes left go in the 4 th quarter of a big game and it might be too late.  You can’t wait for life to just come to you.  You will look back and minutes, hours, days, and ...