Toronto’s two main coaches appear to be using the same motivational playbook lately. Last year, Dwane Casey arranged for a 1,300 pound boulder to be placed in the Raptors dressing room, in order to reinforce the team’s “Pound the Rock” motto. During off-season renovations, Randy Carlyle decided to install a slab of limestone, which weighs over five thousand pounds, to demonstrate that the organization is “Rock Solid.” Although Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment often tolerates the status quo, they were not apparently not satisfied with the Thornhill quarry that provided last year’s stone, purchasing the from a location in Wiarton …
Basketball and Rowing
Rowing – as chronicled in books like The Amateurs and The Eight – is a peculiar sport. Only a select few have a chance for glory every four years at the Olympics, a few more experience successful international careers, some compete at the collegiate level in the spring yet many toil year-round in complete obscurity. Workouts on the water, in the tank, on the erg machine or on the stadium steps have been described “pain” and “hell” yet they are completed nonetheless. In the midst of a mediocre 2008 campaign, the Harvard Men’s Varsity Eight falls short at the Eastern …
Why Are You Here?
Players frequently try out for teams, working as hard as they can to make a school team or a regional select squad. What is the point of this exercise? Certainly, youth are enabled to meet their fitness, belonging, and esteem needs. Some might even achieve their self-actualization goals. To satisfy all of these requirements, athletes must possess a deeper motivation. Everyone must ask themselves: what do I want for myself today, this week, and this month? What do I want for myself in the long-term? Once that vision is established, one should ask themselves how they will get there. What …
The Talent Code
Mind or matter, art or science, nature or nurture … coaches have been debating how athletes develop talent for years. Hypotheses abound, some supported by empirical evidence and others by experimental results. The Talent Code hopes to cut through all of these ideas and provide a concrete theory. The slim volume may lack the depth to settle this debate once and for all but it certainly provides a few pieces of advice that could help any coach, teacher, or educator. The book focuses on the creation of myelin, a substance which insulates connections between neurons and improves the efficiency of …
My Bad
Taking responsibility and finding ways to improve team performance is entirely different from taking responsibility and repeatedly making the same mistake. Saying that it is your bad doesn’t make it better. We’ve all been coaching for years and know it’s your bad. Furthermore, anyone who has been playing the sport for more than twenty minutes should know it’s your bad. The phrase has become cursory and trite like cocktail party conversation; on some teams, it is as incessant as a broken record. Coaches don’t say that it is their bad when the bench is uncomfortable. David Frost: President Nixon, do …
Why Do We Coach?
Paul J. Meyer once said: “You never work for someone else. The truth is someone is paying you to work for yourself.” Someone recently suggested that coaching for the purposes of self-actualisation was possibly selfish. In the end, don’t all humans choose their actions in order to satisfy a need (physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation)? Even those employed in an altruistic occupation do so because helping others meets their belonging, esteem, or self-actualisation needs. The suggestion was made with a somewhat negative connotation. I couldn’t disagree more. People are free to act as they wish and no one can …