Teaching and Learning
Forget The Gadgets and Hacks: Nail The Basics
We’ve lost our way. We’ve been bamboozled, tricked, fooled. We’ve been convinced that the final 1% is more important the beginning 99%. In our present world, gadgets, and hacks not only lead the way¬–they are the only way. Cryo-saunas, fasting, super foods, magical supplements, polyphasic sleep, and on and on the list goes. We live…
Read More“How do you feel?”- Understanding What Athlete Feedback Tells Us
“Never ask how it felt! You’re creating doubt!” the supposed master coach quipped. I had just asked an athlete how their last interval felt. I was young and I didn’t understand it then. Perhaps I’m still too dense, but I don’t understand it now either. This coaches point was that he wanted athletes to run…
Read MoreWhat Unlearning and Re-learning How to Ride a Bike Can Teach Us
One of my professors during grad school was fond of telling me that coaching was all about learning. In the science field, it was about understanding motor learning and how our brain’s process and develop the skills that sport requires. His point was that that connection determined how we do what we do in sport,…
Read More“Our sport is your sport’s punishment”- A Brief Look at Motivation and Punishment
“Our sport is your sports punishment” Way back when I was a high school runner, quotes like these would invariably pop up on the back of a High School Cross-Country team’s shirt. The obvious point was that what we do as runners is often what team sports were assigned to do when they showed up…
Read MoreCoaching Psychology- Delivering the right message and understanding where athletes are coming from.
When Patrick McHugh read the book The Energy Bus, he felt inspired. Patrick is an excellent High School Coach. He’s meticulous in his planning, always trying to learn, and willing to reach out to others to help perfect his craft. In other words, he’s the perfect guy to energetically transfer his lessons from a book…
Read MoreTo Push or Settle: A look at Passion and Relentless Drive
When you grow up as a track athlete you are faced with the black and white nature of the sport. You instantly know if a race was successful or not based on the time run and the place given. No matter how much ruminating about the weather or pacing or tactics that might have accounted for…
Read MoreWhy every person matters- Motivation Contagion
As a coach, I tend towards obsessing over the workout details and my first love has always been the physiology behind those details. The workout planning and details are what initially drew my to coaching. However, in a team environment, these details matter little unless everyone buys in and stays motivated to pursue the end…
Read MoreInformation gathering-BS Detection and Big Words Syndrome
When I first got interested in learning more about coaching and the science behind it, one of my mentors, Tom Tellez, told me about the process of learning. When you are new to a particular topic, everything seems intriguing and complex. You don’t have a built in filter, as you don’t know what is right,…
Read MoreWhy “Gladwell’s” 10,000 rule is just plain wrong.
The battle over nature versus nurture in expert performance is a never-ending one. It seems as we have shifted back and forth between seemingly extreme views of deterministic gene views and Gladwell popularized 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. Of course no one believes it is an either/or question, even if they frame their stance that…
Read MoreMotivation in Elite and High School Runners
Here’s a quick “study” I had to do for a sports psychology class in grad school. It was just a quick thing I had to put together for class, but it’s kind of interesting because I got to look at elite runners, which no one ever does. So I figured I’d share it for those…
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