This. Is. A. Coaching. Masterclass…! Seriously. It’s rare to observe basketball practices that have been mindfully designed to integrate the mental, technical, physical, social and competive constraints in a way that reads like a book. This is why we (affectionately) call Mike MacKay: Yoda Master MacKay. In his day “job”, he’s the Women’s High Performance …
Icebergs have two parts: what people see (above the surface) and what people don’t see (below the surface). Success Is An Iceberg We often get mesmerized by someone’s above the surface success and don’t factor in all the below the surface opportunity-costs they paid to achieve that success. This is the ‘iceberg illusion’. It’s been a …
The biggest mental load in performance, that an athlete must cope with, is in dealing with failures – both in the moment and after the fact. Yes, it’s the obvious ‘failure’ associated with a loss. Yet, more significant, and less obvious, are the micro ‘failures’ that accumulate over the course of a game (and even season). …
How often do you pause and reflect on what’s behind a skill? What I mean is: what are the unseen (cognitive) processes that precede the execution of the skill? If you haven’t given it a ton of thought, meet someone who has… Garth Smith, a soccer coach, who attempted to capture the myriad of variables – consciously and subconsciously …
Every once in a while, we get a glimpse into the mindset the separates the good from the great. Kobe gives us a sneak peek in his article, 8Teen, featured on The Player’s Tribune: Maybe I’m just old school. Maybe my line of thinking is that of a rotary phone. Maybe this smartphone generation enjoys …
You’re not going to find this at any basketball clinic or in any coaching book. Rarely will it show up in any works on leadership. But… it is the essence of great coaching and leadership. This is one of my everything-yet-nothing to do with coaching shares: Brené Brown on Empathy. Watch. Reflect. Apply… Takeaways… “Empathy fuels …
“Back in the day” before email (…okay, I officially feel old writing that, but it’s true…), my college basketball coach photocopied the chapter below and gave it to me and my teammates. It resonated true for me then as an athlete, as still does for me now. It’s worth printing off and passing along to …
Those driven toward excellence and winning, should never view failure as something that saps your energy, enthusiasm and vitality. Instead, it provides an opportunity to respond famously by animating, increasing your focus, and viewing the experience itself as an opportunity to learn, develop and adapt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying significant failures won’t …
I’ve always had a latent fascination and interest in the training that goes into ‘making’ a Navy SEAL. What’s involved in the training that yields an individual with mental make-up, self-awareness and discipline to warrant being able to be one of the few selected? (And, selfishly, what learnings can be extracted from this training that …
This video is a fantastic extension to all the discussion that came out of my previous post on mental toughness (see ‘Unfairness: The Missing Ingredient in the Debate on Toughness‘). This is actual footage shot at an in-class session from PGC Basketball… [I never get tired of listening to “Coach D” talk!]. /sef.