Planning strategies in sports have been fairly stagnate over the last few decades; often still relying on outdated Soviet-based models. In the search for fresh ideas, more and more coaches are looking to realms outside of sport for inspiration, be it from the military, business, or finance.
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We often share our training methods and programming. But behind every plan is a philosophy. A philosophy is the set of beliefs that act as a guiding principle for our decisions. On this week’s podcast we share our own training and coaching philosophies, with examples of how that translates from theory to practice.
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Great coaches have one thing in common that we don’t talk about much: they demonstrate love in their coaching. You hear about passion, you hear about drive, and you hear about communication, but we often avoid talking about love. Dr. Jerry Lynch has spent his career working at the intersection of sports psychology, leadership, and philosophy. This is where you find many of the hidden topics like love that can be the biggest drivers of performance. On this week’s GAINcast Lynch joins us to share some of his reflections on coaching, self-improvement, and Buddha.
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Earlier this week Nick Garcia wrote about how we think too much about good technique rather than what style will fit an individual athlete. Looking at the final technique is trying to reverse engineer the problem. What we should be looking at is the philosophy that it all started with. One thing that top coaches have in common is that they understand the throw and have an idea of what forces they want to create. How that looks and what the athlete needs to do to achieve it might result in different technique, but the core idea is front and center. Read more
What are the rules that consistently govern your actions? What do you turn to when faced with challenging circumstances or unique opportunities? How do you know if what you’re doing aligns with what you believe or with who you are? Though it seems elementary to one’s ability to function at a high level, so few people have actually taken the time to write out who they are and what they believe in. Read more
On last week’s GAINcast Vern and I discussed the importance of connections in training. When it comes down to it, performance is about making connections. At one level it is about connecting muscles and joints to move together with optimal coordination. At another level it is about connecting ideas from different disciplines to find the best way to guide your athlete. At both levels we can learn a lot by looking at the field of ecology. Ecology, by its very nature, is a discipline devoted to connections: it is a branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. Barry Commoner was a leading ecologist and his 1971 book The Closing Circle
An undeniable law of existence is that there is an expiration date to everything. You see this wisdom express in every text of spirituality across the globe. In Judeo-Christian traditions this truth is succinctly discussed in the the Old Testament in Ecclesiastes 3 which is commonly known as the “A Time For Everything” chapter. This truth is a focus in Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Native American traditions as well as numerous others. Many philosophers, scientists, and artist know this as well. The inescapable intelligence of term limits is a deep enteral wisdom. Why then it is common practice to coach with an open ended timeline? Read more
With the holiday season here I am in a bit of a philosophical mood. So for this Words of Wisdom post I decided take a look at a few quotes that get to a key point at the heart of my own training philosophy. Read more
Our jobs would be a lot easier if we could just copy and paste training programs for our athletes. But that is rarely what works to produce results, as Nick and I discussed on the HMMR Media Podcast last month. It also is boring; a robot can copy and paste results after all. What makes coaching so fun and interesting is that it is challenging. In this Words of Wisdom I bring together some quotes I have come across recently that demonstrate the importance of finding your own unique solution as a coach, and a unique solution for your athletes. Read more
I’m a little late on the bandwagon, but I finally sat down with Nassim Taleb’s bestselling book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder earlier in the month. I’ve given the book some time to settle and it has already influenced my thoughts on training more than any of the training-related books I have read recently. Read more
