Every Coach Needs A Coach

If you have ever baked potato in the microwave, and then baked potato in the oven, you know the difference in the quality and deliciousness of the final product. The point of today's podcast is to understand the quality results require time, energy, and effort. You can be a microwave coach, and it will get you by. Or you could be a 60 minutes in the oven at 400° Coach, and your final product will be outstanding.

When the guru sat down to worship each evening, the ashram cat we get in the way and would distract the worshipers. So he ordered the cat be tied during evening worship. After the guru died, the cat continued to be tied during evening worship. And when the cat expired, another cat was brought to the ashram so that it could be duly tied during the evening worship. Centuries later learned treatises were written by the guru's  disciples on the liturgical significance of tying up a cat while worship is being performed." Why do we do what we do? I challenge you to look at some of your habits or rituals as a coach, a staff, and a team, and understand  the reasoning for your decisions and habits. 

We can only handle  1 piece of information at a time. We can only truly focus on 1 task at a time. Doug Lemov's biggest takeaway from literally writing books on 'getting better at getting better' was that we must work within the confines our our working memory to perform optimally. 

"When we set children against one another in contests from spelling bees to awards assemblies to science fairs, that are really contests, from dodgeball to honor rolls to prizes for the best painting or the most books read - we teach them to confuse excellence with winning, as if the only way to do something well is to outdo others. We encourage them to measure their own value in terms of how many people they've been which is not exactly a path to mental health. We invite them to see their peers not as potential friends or collaborators but as obstacles to their own success. Finally we leave children to regard whatever they are doing as a means to an end: the point isn't to paint or read or design a science experiment, but win. The act of painting reading or designing is there by devalued in the child’s mind." Alfie Kohn, The Myth of the Spoiled Child

"I saw a monkey reach into the river, take out a fish and put it in a tree. 'What are you doing? I asked the monkey. 'I'm saving him from drowning' he replied. 

Remember that our athletes are like the fish and the monkey. Each is going to thrive and excel in certain environments, and those environments might change on a daily basis. Learn about your athletes and how they feel appreciated, loved, encouraged and discouraged. It will help you help them. 

Coach Todd Wolfson is the varsity boy's basketball coach at St. Francis High School in La Cañada, California. Today we took some time to talk about why he coaches, the importance of trusting everyone in your program, doing things differently from others around you, and the importance of patience and understanding that we don't need to win the championship in the first 2-3 days of the season. Coach Wolfson can be reached via twitter at @SFHSHoops (https://twitter.com/SFHShoops?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)

My dad likes to day 'you can't be anyone other than who you are'. Often we hear people asking us or our athletes "oh are you going to be the next Michael Jordan?" and while that's fine to have role models and people to look up to, I think it's important to encourage our athletes (and ourselves) to be the best version of YOU. Not the second best version of Michael Jordan. 

LeBron James embodies this beautifully in this 15 second clip here 

https://www.espn.com/watch/player/_/id/25317911