Posts by stevemagness
Understanding Interaction: The time I learnd how to coach at a bar.
I’m an introvert. I grew up eschewing high school and college parties for the sake of my 10 pm bedtime and the 15-mile run I had the next morning. At that point in my life, I would rather get sleep than go through the college tradition of bar hopping. That scene was not my comfort…
Read MoreEpisode 84: Finding the Fatal Flaw that is Holding You Back
What holds you back? What keeps you from performing to the best of your ability? That’s the topic of this weeks On Coaching Podcast with Magness & Marcus. We dive into identifying and then fixing the common issues we see in athletes that prevent them from taking that next step in performance. And, as you’ll…
Read MoreIntroducing: The Scholar Membership Coaching Program
I’d like to introduce a program that I’m now offering. An opportunity to join a small group of coaches looking to get better at what they do: coaching. A mentor is indispensable. They generously pass on their knowledge and wisdom to you, so that you can apply that to your own craft in your own…
Read MoreEpisode 83: Breaking Through- The Reality of the Ups and Downs of Performance
Breakthroughs. It’s what keeps many of us going. The knowledge (and hope) that a leap in performance is just around the corner. But what do performance breakthroughs look like? Are there signs that a breakthrough might be around the corner? In this weeks On Coaching Podcast, Jon and Steve take a deep dive into the…
Read MoreUncertainty: Why You Need to Add it to Your Workouts
When we venture down to our local track and prepare for our evening interval workout, we know what the workout is going to be down to how many intervals we are going to run, how fast, and how much recovery we will take. Furthermore, even if we have a coach, we have some control over…
Read MoreEpisode 82: How Do You Define Success in Workouts and Races?
In this weeks episode of On Coaching, we tackle how to define success (or failure) in workouts and races. Far too often we operate in a time or performance framework. We judge a workout based on whether we ran faster than was written on the paper. How we define success has a direct impact on…
Read MoreWhat Holds Us Back from Performing to Our Capabilities? Our Self.
When it comes to performing at just about any task, what holds us back isn’t our coach or teacher. It’s not our training and practice. It’s often ourselves. When we are in the middle of a performance, our mind almost always searches for an out. A rock to step on during a race, an excuse…
Read MoreThe Simple Principle of Training
There’s a simple message that I learned from a grad school professor, Charlie Casserly, about coaching. Learn a lot but then simplify. People often use the old coaching adage of “keep it simple stupid,” to mean that too much information is bad. That you shouldn’t complicate the act of coaching. There’s a crucial mistake in…
Read MoreThe Pre-Race Moment: Taking Advantage of where Psychology and Biology Intersect
I first came across Dave Hamilton’s work when presenting at a conference put on by the Seattle Sounders. At the time, he worked with USA field hockey, after serving a similar role with British field hockey for the 2012 Olympics. As Dave stood at the lectern presenting his findings, my inbuilt skepticism dissipated into a…
Read MoreThe Blame Game: How our reaction to failure influences future performance
Think back to a recent poor performance. What was the cause? Maybe you were sick, had poor sleep leading up to the race, overcooked the workouts leading up to the race, or simply ‘gave in’ when the pain set in. Chances are you have an answer to why you ran poorly. It might not…
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