Yoda and Trying

Yoda, or shall I say George Lucas, has simplicity taught a mindset of perseverance and commitment in one phrase that coaches search their entire careers to teach.   Coaches dream of athletes who just commit without a fear of "failure or mistakes."

Since I've been working at Brain Highways, I've had the opportunity to learn how the brain connects, becomes more efficient, and creates maps.  One thing that Brain Highways teaches to their champions is that the words failure and mistake don't really exist.  If you think about what happens in the brain when a so called 'mistake' happens, you wrap myelin and create highways one way or another.  It's up to you to decide how the myelin or highways are connected.  From that point on, I had a massive paradigm shift in my thoughts regarding how the brain and skill can improve.  When I think about this concept,Yoda immediately popped in my head.

This past month I've been also critical of any filler words that I use when coaching.  Check out a recent post about my struggles with the word "good." I recently picked up on how I say the word try. I immediately thought of that funny looking bald man with big ears.  When I say something simple as "let's just try it," it seems positive and harmless.  However, saying "try" gives permission for athlete to perform without a deliberate practice mindset.  There is no focus or areas in which to be mindful.  There is no awareness instead just an overall sense of "try."

When your in a training session there should always be purpose.  There should be something you are consistently trying to improve.  "Trying" just leads to people becoming general practitioners, wasting their time at a broad concept.  It also allows for your brain to find reasons that it didn't work out as you envisioned.  The connection you make in your brain never is solidified when you have a "try it," mindset.  I now allow my athletes to give me 20 push ups if I use the word 'try.'

Throw out "try" from your vocabulary.  Instead make a decision whether or not you're going to do it.  Substitute the actual verb your are going to accomplish.  Maybe Hollywood can teach us something after all....

Josh Foer Talks about the Art of Practice

Basketball junkie, Sefu Bernard, sent me a great video from Josh Foer, the author of Moonwalking with Einstein.  Foer is a journalist who took up the art of memory and ended up becoming the national champion.  In this video, Josh talks about how experts practice with a different mindset than do others who simply stay in an autonomic state.The first example he explains through typing is so basic, yet so genius in describing how our brain can function with practice


Joshua Foer: Step Outside Your Comfort Zone and Study Yourself Failing from 99% on Vimeo.


An important factor to consider with any sort of skill is measurable results.  The experts find ways to measure if their methods are making progress.  Don't just guess.

Gifts are for Birthdays

I hate to be Mr. Negative on a Monday morning, but I need to question a word that we hear probably everyday, especially in the athletics world.

Gifted.

I now cringe when I hear it.  Similar to the evil 1950's teacher scratching the chalkboard at school, which you now must visualize and it probably made you clench your teeth in imaginary pain.  My apologies.  However lets think about how the we and the media use the word gifted.

What are gifts?  Something you receive without compensation.  We then look at our elite of the world, and see them as very gifted.  Sure Kobe Bryant was gifted with his height and probably a couple more fast twitch muscle fibers than the rest of us, but to say his game is a gift?   Ludicrous.

If you ever meet Kobe, I dare you to tell him his game was just a gift.  His jump shot?  Yeah, it was carried down from his father in that jump shot DNA strand scientists just discovered. Oh his ability to control his body to get the defender off balance, yeah that was his Christmas present from 1999.  The real gift is that his Dad was a professional basketball player, and he had the opportunity to watch and emulate for his entire childhood.  That was the real gift.

When we see the elite perform, we forget about all the time they've spent working incredibly hard on their craft.  The countless hours of deliberate practice and how much many of these people have sacrificed to be able to perform at the highest level.  So please give them there credit.  Their skill is not a gift from the DNA God's.  Yes they might have a couple advantages when it comes to genetics, but I bet we could find thousands who had those same genetic gifts who didn't end up in the elite.

This classic Jordan commercial sums up my thoughts completely.  Choose your words wisely and all but eliminate the word gifted when describing elite performers.

Finding the Edge with Practice

In youth sport leagues, teaching skills is usually coached by demonstrating, then simply expecting the kids to benefit from repetition. What about the kid who is athletically underdeveloped and the basic skill you expect everyone to perform is too hard for them? What about when the drill is too easy for the 8 year old "stud" athlete?

Either way it's wasting valuable practice time.

The edge is when we find that spot that is just a little out of reach, and we can quickly make adjustments to get there. Some have called it deliberate practice, deep practice, or meaningful practice. If it's too easy, little progress is made and the brain can quickly fill up with ideas and thoughts that hard work isn't necessary because everything comes easy to me. Fixed mindset. If it's too hard the brain can shut down with frustration.

Maybe better practice was what Shaq needed?

Finding this edge is an art. Every skill and exercise can be different for each kid. After recently teaching some young athletes the skill of jumping and landing, we quickly realized breaking down the skill is MUCH, MUCH harder than making it complex. Narrowing the focus to one aspect of the skill and building from there is necessary for laying a successful foundation for growth. Keeping the kids engaged by asking questions about how they are performing and how there peers or the coach is performing allows them to be apart of the process and continues the ignition to expand the skill.

The amazing part after breaking these skills down to the very basics and giving success, we saw nothing but smiles and a desire to keep staying at their edge. We even had a couple kids say, "I don't think I'm at my edge." So we progressed them.

There is no reason we can't have a young child understand this concept and apply it to other skills like music, math, science, etc. Understanding how they can get the most out of their practice time makes learning fun and engaging, rather than something they're told to do.

If you're in the San Diego area, Encinitas/North County, I am working with a company called Brain Highways to teach young kids, ages 6-8 and 9-12, this ability to find their edge by using 8 fundamental movement and sports skills. The class starts October 5th on Wednesday evenings. To sign up visit this link,http://www.brainhighways.com/c/sports, or shoot me an email @ Caseywheel@gmail.com.

3 Techniques to Improving Coaching Communication

My readers will know I absolutely love the idea of deliberate practice. Daniel Coyle even made a great acronym for it in his last post, R.E.P.S..

R-Reach and Repeat
E-Engagement
P-Purposefulness
S-Strong, direct, immediate feedback

As I learn more and more about deliberate practice I think of ways to apply it to improving as a coach. How can I deliberately practice coaching better? It's not a very easy question to answer. Practicing a sport, instrument, or new skill can be much easier to find ways to deliberately practice better. But how can we do it as a coach? Of course we can read books about new drills and progressions, and constantly look to improve our program. What I want to talk about is how can we deliberately practice communication. We must take a proactive approach, and figure out where we need improvement.

Step 1: Have a notebook with you at all times during the workout.

I have to thank fitness pioneer Alwyn Cosgrove (picture left) for truly waking me up to this idea. Everyone knows it's a good idea to have something handy to write down ideas but he put it in a whole new context for me. When Alwyn started training and coaching he would write down 100 words for every session. He had 30 sessions a week (30x100=3,000 words) x 50 weeks? He literally wrote 150,000 words per year. If a average book is 250 words per page, he wrote a 600 page book every year.

Now I don't always write 100 words per session but I always keep a notebook handy for new ways I coached a drills, things I see that need to
be improved, areas of weakness with my communication, or a joke that wasn't funny (which is probably in the 90% range). This is the utilizing reach and repeat method for communication. Push yourself to find weaknesses! Once again thank you Alwyn, this significantly improved me as a coach.

Step 2: Ask Athletes for Honest Feedback

The best part of coaching is the relationships you build with your athletes. Having them on a friendship, but I'll still do anything necessary to improve you even if that means breaking you, bond is unparalleled. Asking your athletes at the end of sessions of what they liked or disliked, what areas were unclear, what parts do you think could be improved. The better the relationship, the more honest the feedback will become.

Hug it out bro....

Step 3: Ask other Coaches to Critique

This is hard for me as I am the only coach now at my school and getting another coach to come watch isn't always easy. However, this is a very powerful tool that can really be beneficial. In the sport performance industry we always talk about how important it is to go to watch other coaches, usually the experts. How often could we ask a fellow coach down the street to just come observe and see if he finds any areas that need sharpening? I certainly don't have coaches emailing me that often about coming to watch my small program develop, time to go find them. However I do live in San Diego aka a whales..... oops I mean "America's Finest City", what they $%*^ are you guys waiting for!

Having a coach who is from a whole different sport is probably even better. They look at it with a beginners eye, but still with the eye of a coach. Use that to your advantage. In fact I need to get on that now, have a great 4th of July weekend. My beer of choice will be Leinenkugel. A great summer wheat!

Applying Delibrate Practice to the Weight Room

There is a belief in the athletic development world that strength is a skill. I personally agree because strength is developed over long periods of time with LOTS of practice. No baby is born into the world strong or powerful. Developing skill takes practice, and also comes with frustration over how optimally to improve that skill.

If you're an experienced weight lifter you know all about the plateau. You try and push through by doing more weight, less weight, or try doing something a body builder told you about in Muscle and Fitness. We end up plateauing often because of poor long term programming, trying to much weight too early, or not adequately regenerating our body through diet, sleep, and recovery.

Our body also loves to adapt to what it's doing. That's why after living in San Diego for four years not, it's hard for me to go back to Vermont on the days when you spit and it will freeze before it hits ground. This (adapting not spitting) is called the SAID principle, Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands, fancy way of saying our body and mind try to adapt to our environment. That's why all the great strength coaches will changes phases with regards to volume, intensity, and tempo.

In Daniel Coyle's book The Talent Code, he talks about how great athletes, musicians, and performers go into deep/deliberate practice by either slowing the task down or speeding it up. This always for the brain and body never to become comfortable or completely adapted. By either slowing it down or speeding it up, one also becomes incredibly engaged and aware, focusing all energy towards improvement. Depending on what your trying to accomplish one might be better for the other, but for many skills, using both is a viable option that can be programed.

Lets apply this to the weight room. Even with guys who are trying to get stronger, many consistently stay in a comfort zone that labels them to their sport. Getting out of this comfort zone helps develop skills. In this case its strength and power, two concepts that all athlete's look to improve.

Deliberate Practice: Power
Power is often developed through Olympic lifts, plyometrics, med ball throws, and kettlebell swings. If we looked at the two options of deliberate practice, undoubtedly speeding it up would have to be the best option. You really can't move powerfully, slowly. It's so awkward that you can't even say it in a sentence correctly. A great way to make sure you bust through a power plateau is to reduce the weight and focus on the speed of the bar. Put your feet through the floor and make the bar move with purpose! Program this in early on, but don't be afraid to periodize a "light" week within a heavy block.

For example, in a 4 week phase that is going from 80-87.5% into another 4 week phase that goes into the heavier 90-95%, it might be smart to go back down to 60-75% in the last week in between phases. I heard Bill Hartman talk about how they accidentally stumbled upon this technique that works wonders for them at iFast (though their %'s may differ).

Deliberate Practice: Strength
We can use the same technique as above by reducing the weight and moving the load faster. Especially on the concentric phase, letting go of some of the weight and really working on the speed of movement has helped me and my athletes get through plateaus that we hit.

Another option is to slow the tempo of the weight, especially on the eccentric phase. Often coined eccentrics or negatives, be prepared for some serious DOMS. Again you must reduce your weight especially when going for 5-10 repetitions. Many strength coaches will include this as an eccentric phase for 3-4 weeks. Slow concentric movement is usually frowned upon, but if it's only for 3-4 weeks it might not be a bad idea to try controlling the bar on the way up as well.


What really makes this interesting is relating deliberate practice, which is proven to improve skills over time, to increase power and strength. These techniques that many strength and conditioning coaches use to progress physical tools, it also may be influencing cognitive connections as well with our ability to learn the movement more efficiently by focusing on it in a completely different way. I don't have any research to back this up (yet?) but my guess is we would see some pretty cool brain activity going from these different phases. That's just the geek in me.

These techniques can also differ from person to person. If a linebacker has been benching in the 85-95% range since they were in high school, I will put down a lot of money that taking some time in a lower percentage and speeding up/slowing down will improve there power and strength. If you took the opposite, a female XC runner, who only uses dumbbells under 20 lbs for 15-25 reps, it maybe time to change the speed or weight of the movement to create progression in the body and brain.

Note that these phases do not need to be long term, but are useful for creating new avenues in the body and brain for strength and power to be developed. Maybe I'll coin it muscle confusion......HAH!