“The civilized
man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on
crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but
he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
The irony of having improved knowledge, systems, and methods
available to us in this day and age only to have the demands on those same
things squeezed for every ounce of efficiency is something many of us struggle
with in the day to day management of teams and athletes worldwide. For
everything we gain that helps us do our jobs better it seems we lose something
else along the way that makes doing our jobs equally challenging in a different
way. It seems obvious that at the highest levels sports have never been played
at a higher level however when we evaluate ourselves, and our programs, most of
us have a very good idea of just how much we feel is being left on the table.
Most often this is absolutely by necessity but one of the absolute truths that
gets lost in the shuffle is this, “More is not better. Less is not better. Only
better is better.”
So I submit now that the very best of what my programming
has to offer fails in comparison to what has been lost for the youth athlete of
today: growing up to learn the value of diversity in movement and activities,
in learning to push their bodies hard but also knowing what it is to just walk or
run when you have “nowhere to go but all day to get there”, to understand that
failure is not something you can opt out of in the learning process but is
there for us because our growth requires it. No, our program cannot give these
kids that environment back yet but our programming can take steps that will
impact their value systems in such a way that they can, with time, grow to
appreciate these things. Then mindfulness perhaps becomes the center. Not
upgrades. Not efficiency. Just, perhaps, simple awareness that what we value
grows with us.
“You want to know how
to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and just paint
naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or
the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence. If
you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your
machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden
sharp on the seventh? It all goes together.” – Robert Pirsig (from “Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”)
There are no shortcuts. The voodoo? The crazy skills of that
manual therapist you hear legendary stories about? They are just paying
attention. Perhaps better attention. But still nevertheless they didn’t
spontaneously develop those skills. The movie “Miracle” and Herb Brooks? No
way! Every account we have of the tremendous process of identification and
development of that team says that there were deliberate steps taken every step
of the way to let everyone know this was possible. The only miracle may have
been in getting people to believe. We don’t need our clients/athletes to know
right now that they can do it. All they have to know, and believe, is that it
is possible.
And perhaps if we had been taking better care of ourselves,
or our clients/athletes of themselves, then the necessity of such magic would
be reduced. Irrefutable. Qualifying what is important about what we pay
attention to is certainly necessary. But we still have to understand the value
system and way of thinking that led our clients/athletes to this point: what is
it that you thought was so important that it allowed you to make your
health/performance less important? That is a message aligned with quality and
with excellence. That is a conversation I will gladly take part in.
“I’ve come to a
frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my
personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the
weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life
miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of
inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that
decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child
humanized or dehumanized.” – Haim Ginott
The gaps present in the development status of our
clients/athletes require that we develop a similar value system in learning how
to identify and address key strengths and weaknesses in their performance. These
gaps are where plateaus happen and where everyone gets stuck. We have to be
able to address these gaps competently but we have to remember these gaps are
not where our clients/athletes live it is just where they get stuck. We may
sell the correction of these gaps as a major part of our process, because they
are, but if we do not first and foremost offer up our work’s quality and excellence
as the umbrella under which everything else lives then we leave people with the
idea that their fix is transactional. We have to be able to lay the groundwork
on the need for transformation. For a majority of us having that standard of
excellence as a transactional figure in their lives is the only thing that
gives us the ability to help these people make transformational changes (for
more on transactional vs transformational please read “InsideOut Coaching” from
Joe Ehrmann). We cannot and will not be able to “rah rah rah” our way out of
some of these problems. Enthusiasm is always required but in the absence of the
necessary skills to help others make positive changes it is a shallow form of
connection. We will still have to accept responsibility for not being able to
identify those things that limited someone in their pursuit of achieving their
full potential.
If we can instead use this message of transformation, of
quality, and of excellence to take progression and growth as a step-by-step
process we will better understand the things that limit ourselves and our
clients/athletes. The simplicity of this process should not be underestimated.
There is a story about JP Morgan that says he offered a large sum of money to
any person who could share with him the secret of success. After many failures
a man came to his office and offered an envelope. JP Morgan opened the
enveloped, read its contents, and gave the man the money. What was in the
envelope? “1. Write down the things you have to do today. 2. Do them.”
If we attempt to aid our clients/athletes in their growth
and use the power of our connection as the driver I think we will have found a
far more powerful way to get things done. Instead of discussing the ankle joint
and why it fails we should instead be as specific as possible and discuss
“13-year-old Emma’s ankle” and the things we absolutely have to do to keep Emma
healthy. Use this process to do what we can to help Emma and others, learn what
we have to in order to do what we cannot currently do, and then do them. 1. How
do we address Emma’s ankle properly? 2. How do we make Emma unstoppable?
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