Competition matches up teams against players who may be very skilled and those who need to work on their game. Every game is unique: a team which has a clear physical advantage in the first game of a tournament might only be evenly matched with their second round opponent. Certainly, practice and training can improve physical performance factors. Another way to generate an advantage on the court is to establish a mental edge. Teams that get into the heads of opposing players benefit from errors due to frustration, aggressiveness and resignation. Move Constantly: Fitness is a physical performance factor but …
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
So often, documentaries are praised because they bring interesting information to light, not because of the director’s craft or production values. The documentary combines interviews with archival footage, mixing objective facts with subjective opinions. Viewers leave the theatre believing that they have been totally informed about the latest crisis which is about to erupt when in fact they were only shown highlights of one side of the issue. The works can still be a productive use of two hours but one must keep their critical thinking filters on at all times. At first glance, Client 9: The Rise and Fall …
Mistakes Worth Making
Aside from the priority placed on planning and reviewing – briefing and debriefing – as espoused by Robert McNamara and others, the main message of Mistakes Worth Making is that coaches must deal with the emotions of players, in addition to their skills. As evidenced by the title, there are some mistakes which lead to improvement and others which are desultory. As coaches, we aim to manage mistakes so that we (and athletes) learn from the positive errors and control the negative ones. A theme which is repeated through the book is that the emotions of athletes are as important …
Why We Make Mistakes
Why We Make Mistakes provides anecdotal evidence about why humans repeatedly commit the same common errors. The books is written like a concise summary of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and Outliers books that imparts more information in less words. The book outlines countless ways that someone can make a bad decision, from drivers to surgeons. There is no universal remedy to reduce blunders but overconfidence and a failure to understand and make use of feedback were consistent among multiple missteps. The old adage repeated by Winston Churchill seems to be appropriate: “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to …