Deliberate Practice
Are You Great?
Spring has brought the usual array of new baseball books, and one of them should catch the eye of coaches everywhere.
It’s called “The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent and IQ is Wrong,” by David Shenk.
The content shouldn’t come as any surprise if you’ve read books like “The [...]
Being the Best
We just finished two weeks of watching athletes who fought to be the best. Now March Madness gives us another example.
Tina Charles recently became UConn’s career leader in scoring and rebounds and stands as quite possibly the best player in the country entering the tournament season.
“She told me when she came to Connecticut, that she [...]
Problems and Possibilities
Every problem disguises a possibility.
And so it is with all the snowstorms, which, among other things, have complicated life for baseball and softball coaches around large parts of the United States.
Fields are covered with snow. One coach in Virginia told me he doesn’t expect to even see green until April.
Even so, the schedule will not [...]
Walking the Walk
So the father was lecturing his son.
“When Abraham Lincoln was your age, he was walking eight miles to school,” the father said.
Replied the son, “When Abraham Lincoln was your age, he was president.”
See? Kids can lecture, too.
So it not enough for parents and coaches to talk the talk.
“What you do speaks so loud I cannot [...]
The Olympic Flame
Today Filip Bondy of the New York Daily News writes about the American team’s high hopes in the Winter Olympics in Vancouver: “While you were dozing these past four years, your fellow Americans somehow became proficient at biathlon, ice dancing, snowboarding, luge, Nordic combined, women’s bobsled and a lot of events that normally make you [...]
What is the Purpose of Homework?
A few days ago the Record newspaper of Bergen County, N.J., printed an essay from a student on the amount of homework today’s students receive.
I know virtually nothing about modern homework: how much there is, what it consists of, etc. All I know is that the backpacks the kids use today seem bigger and heavier [...]
Developing Passionate Kids
Anyone who knows how to walk has gone through the steps of mastery: See a skill, try it, fail at it, try it again with adjustments, and repeat the process until successful.
That’s how people learn to walk, talk or play the violin. Trouble comes from the third step: fail. People don’t seem to mind the [...]
The Super Bowl and You
This coming Sunday, millions of people will demonstrate the power that is within them. They’ll do it by the simple act of watching the Super Bowl.
What exactly does watching the Super Bowl prove? Everything. It proves that people have the ability to set goals and work to achieve them.
Just think. How often do you find [...]
World-Class Motivation
With the Olympics coming up, we soon will be seeing people whose skills are world-class. And most of us will be tempted to think that those people live in a different world from us. But that’s not true.
In today’s world — especially in today’s economy — everyone needs high-level skills. And to acquire high-level skills, [...]
Precious Practice Minutes
Yesterday I overheard a conversation between coaches who were setting up a program.
Of all the things they discussed, what really shone forth was a reverence for each minute of practice. One coach emphasized that there must be a reason for everything that the team does. The time can be put to maximum use.
For instance, during [...]
