Her phrase comes to mind as I digest a recent post on Larry O’Connor’s blog, Run4yr life. Larry is a marathoner preparing for Boston in April. From the sound of this post, he has reached a higher level of training, a level where he thinks carefully about the effect of each and every training move.

We call this mindfulness, and it’s one of the most important qualities we can bring to practice. Here’s the difference between practice and mindful practice.

In practice, you might hit 100 golf balls. In mindful practice, you hit one ball, analyze the result, and decide on the adjustments to be made. Then you hit another one and repeat the process. With practice you might improve. With mindful practice, you improve. A lot.

“What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence,” said Samuel Johnson.

Mindful practice, also called deliberate practice, falls in line with the findings of Dr. Anders Ericksson, the world’s so-called “expert on experts.” His first condition for optimal learning is “motivation to attend to task.” In plain English, that means “”caring enough to think carefully about what you’re doing.”

It sounds like Larry O’Connor is doing just that.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

One day, when Wayne Gretzky was already the greatest hockey player in the world, he was practicing with his team, the Edmonton Oilers. Walter watched from the stands.

Afterwards, the two drove home together.

“You just wasted two hours of your life,” Walter Gretzky told his son. “If you’re going to practice, then do it right.”

No word on what happened the rest of the ride home. Maybe there was a sullen silence.

But Walter Gretzky’s comments are a reminder that even the world’s best need a wake-up call now and then. It can come from a coach, a family member, or an unexpected loss. That’s what happened to the Soviet hockey team when the U.S. Olympians defeated them in 1980.

Performers must be, in the words of golfer Bobby Jones, “everlastingly on the lookout against the self.”

Slumps often begin when things are going well. When results are good, performers never notice little flaws creeping into their game. The flaws only get discovered when results begin to fall.

Walter Gretzky knew his son well enough to know whether or not he was working hard. Trouble is, as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has said, you can fool yourself about how hard you are working.

Don’t fool yourself about your practice ethic.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

How? How do turnaround artists show people how to win?

Harbaugh said something that really caught my attention. He told a radio interviewer, “We just try to get better every day.”

Sounds so simple. Coaches say it all the time. But just try doing it. Life, as they say, has its ups and downs. Distractions arise. Discouragement sets in. But you can pursue constant improvement. The Japanese call it ‘kaizen.’ Harbaugh himself warned that improvement is a process.

And here are some parts of the process:

Identify what needs to be done. (Task)
Make sure it gets done. (Stay on task)
Make sure it gets done as well as it can be done. (Complete and perfect the task)
Get all the feedback you can. Learn the best way to measure results.
Try again, using all your new information.
Repeat.
Stay motivated for this process.

Peak performance expert Dr. Anders Ericsson, known as the “expert on experts” for his research into improvement, lists four factors in acquiring skill: Motivation to attend to task; practice design in which the task can easily be understood, lots of feedback, and lots of repetitions.

Steve Jobs was a tireless pursuer of a better way. Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs portrays someone who seldom accepted the status quo, even when being treated in the hospital.

“At one point, the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated,” Isaacson writes.
“Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he ordered them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked. . . . He also hated the oxygen monitor they put on his finger. He told them it was ugly and too complex.”

Any coach can adopt Harbaugh’s ideal of constant improvement, and Dr. Ericsson’s model of achieving it. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you must add to what already exists.

“Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing… layout, processes, and procedures,” said author and speaker Tom Peters.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” said Da Vinci.

With the 49ers on the rise, the other Bay Area team, the Oakland Raiders, are trying to improve. Owner Mark Davis has hired Reggie McKenzie as their general manager, and McKenzie has fired coach Hue Jackson. McKenzie said he wanted to bring in his own man. Only time will tell how that will turn out.

Meanwhile, way back in the NFL preseason, the Saints beat the 49ers. It will be interesting to see who has improved more since then.

For instance, the Denver Broncos, who play the Pittsburgh Steelers Sunday, would not even be in the playoffs were it not for Matt Prater. He kicked field goals of 59 and 51 yards to help his team beat the Chicago Bears during the regular season. In his career, Prater is 28-for-29 in field goal attempts in the fourth quarter or overtime.

So what do kickers think about in the moments leading up to the attempt? Brendan Gibbons, who kicked a field goal to give Michigan an overtime victory over Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl, gave his answer.

“Brunette girls,” Gibbons said. Then he explained. “Every time we were like struggling in kicking, Coach (Brady Hoke) tells me to think about girls on a beach or brunette girls. So that’s what we did. Made the kick.”

Hoke gave great advice. Performance under pressure comes down to what you’re thinking about, or more exactly, what you’re not thinking about. Phrases like “Do or die,” or “It’s now or never” only add pressure.

The secret is to keep your mind off your mind, as a sports psychologist might say.

“I try not to overthink,” said the Broncos’ Prater. “In fact, I don’t think about anything.”

John Kasay, a longtime kicker in the NFL, once offered another explanation for missing a kick that would have given the Carolina Panthers a victory.

“I can say with absolute confidence that God did not want me to make that field goal,” Kasay was quoted as saying.

To which someone observed, “God does not care about football. God is a baseball fan.”

You see? It doesn’t pay for kickers to think.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836.

Shinny is a simple variation of ice hockey in which one player tries to keep the puck, and all the others try to get it away from him.

There was a time when all Canadian boys played it because it was so easy to start a game. All you needed was ice, a puck and sticks. Nowadays, I’m not so sure how many people play it, because organized leagues start at such a young age.
Sigl and I were talking about practice, and how important it is to make sure that athletes compete not only in games but in the hours that lead up to it. Shinny is a simple form of competition: you have to learn to keep the puck or you will lose it. In trying to hold the puck or capture it, players are developing their skills and their competitive instincts. It’s a basic form of deliberate practice.

While waiting to give a talk in Minnesota last summer, I was two athletes practicing on a basketball court. Each player would shoot a three-point shot and a layup. If both shots went in, the player got to try again. If one shot missed, it was the other player’s turn.

It was a brilliantly designed practice in which both players got to work on important skills.

On the playgrounds of New York, this principle is on display in the simple basketball ritual of “I’ve got winner.” If you win, you stay. If you lose, you leave the court and wait the next turn. It’s a way to force people to either improve or leave the court all the time.

Whatever sport you’re coaching, work hard to use competition in practice. It will help develop what North Carolina women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance calls that “wonderful practice intensity.”

I wonder how many of the players in the Winter Classic ever played shinny. And I wonder, with the temperature at 13 degrees while I write this, how many young people are playing it right now!

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836.

Now billionaire sports owner Mark Cuban is echoing Pritchard. In this article from Business Insider, Cuban, owner of the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks, discusses controlling your own effort.

What really caught my eye was the reference to fooling yourself. We can always fool ourselves about how hard we are working. I’m going to use Cuban’s article to push and motivate me in the New Year.

Here are three things that coaches can do to make sure they are working as hard as they can.

Plan practices. It’s often not easy. Tired after practice, you’re in no condition to plan the next one. Then, when you get home, you get bogged down by a variety of tasks and distractions. It’s best to get into a habit.

Measure. If your don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. The best coaches keep stats so they can learn more about their athletes and how the practice went. If you don’t like the normal stats in your sport, invent your own. Penn State volleyball coach Russ Rose, for example, doesn’t measure things that happen. He measures things that should have happened but didn’t.

Feedback. More and more athletes are telling me they can’t feel themselves doing the things I’m telling them they do. They don’t have body awareness. So you’ve got to give consistent, meaningful feedback. It can get boring saying the same things over and over, but your team needs it.

So if you plan your practices, measure what’s going on, and provide strong feedback, you will be working harder than ever, and your teams will improve. You’ll be working smart as well as hard.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836.

It all begins in the few precious hours before Dick Clark comes on TV and the ball comes down in Times Square. With one fun exercise you can create a year to remember.

Just use the Banquet Technique. It comes in three steps.

First, imagine that this time next year you are a guest at a banquet that celebrates your achievements. Imagine what you would like the speaker to say. Be as specific and vivid as possible. What did you accomplish? Who was with you? How did it feel? How did it look? Enjoy this exercise. Hear the speaker. See the look of admiration from others at the banquet. It’s like goal-setting, except that in your mind it has already happened. So visualize as richly and deeply as you can. There is no cost to dream. For instance, if you’re a college football player, picture yourself in the NFL. If you’re in the NFL, picture yourself headed to the Pro Bowl. If you’re an entertainer, imagine yourself performing with Katy Perry. If you’re an up-and-coming comic like my friend Logan Hobson, see yourself on Comedy Central. Seeing such a dazzling future will motivate you

Second, take stock of where you are right now. How far are you from where you want to be? As peak performance coach Dave Cross likes to say, “The road to improvement begins with an honest self-assessment.” New York Rangers Coach John Tortorella asks his players to assess themselves constantly. There’s no point in fooling yourself. This is a private exercise; there’s no one there to judge you.

Third, develop a strategy that will take you from where you are to where you want to be. Here’s a hint: Success is simple. (Not easy, simple.) Usually you can create a great future by identifying ONE thing that you must do every day, then making sure you DO it. If you want to call it a New Year’s Resolution, OK.

Chose the one thing that suits you. For me, that one thing is blogging. For others it may be diet, regular exercise, daily attendance at AA meetings. Give it some thought. Remember, champions identify what needs to be done and make sure it gets done.

To summarize, see the future you want. Assess where you are now. Develop a plan to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Happy New Year!

His reason was simple. Thinking about clothes was simply not important to him. In no way was it a priority.

No matter what your wardrobe looks like, you can use Jobs’ example in your life, whether in coaching, teaching, business, health. Here’s how: Ask yourself what’s really important. Then ask yourself why you don’t do it all the time.

Or even better: Ask yourself what’s really important. Then ask yourself if you’re sure.

Here’s an excerpt from Scott Illiano’s brilliant book, “Our Time: A High School Baseball Coach’s Journey.” He discusses the effort to improve his team’s hitting.

“The New York Yankees had hired tennis pro Sean Brawley to help them improve their drill work. Some of his findings were incredible. First, he asked the Yankee brass to identify the single most important element to being an extraordinary hitter. Nearly every member of the Yankees brass agreed that the element was tracking or seeing the baseball. Miraculously, the then-twenty-six-time world champions had no drills at all to enhance a hitter’s ability to see the baseball. Brawley used his expertise to set one up for them. The split second the hitter would see the ball released from the pitcher’s hand, he would yell ‘pitch.’ The split second rte ball would make contact with the bat he would yell ‘hit.’ It is impossible to do this ‘pitch-hit’ drill without practicing how to track the ball. We did this every day.”

In other words, the greatest pro franchise in North America had identified what it thought was the most important part of hitting, but didn’t have a single drill to practice it.

If that can be true, then how sure can anyone be that they’re doing things right? Or even that they’re doing the right things?

It leads to questions like these: Are baseball teams using the right pre-game activities to prepare for competition? Do they teach hitting and other skills correctly?

Years ago my friend, sports psychologist Dr. Rob Gilbert, and I gave a presentation to the coaching staff of a good college football program. As part of our talk, we challenged the coaches to identify the three most important elements to winning a football game. They couldn’t agree on an answer!

Imagine. Here’s a good program. The coaches are committed enough to bring in guest speakers. Yet they hadn’t identified the areas on which they should focus!

Not Jobs.

It’s said that even in the hospital, he looked at the medical devices with a critical eye, saying that they could be more attractive, more user-friendly, more efficient.

No matter what he did, he was consumed by a search for a better way. He wanted to do things right, and to do the right things. If he were running your team, what flaws and inefficiencies might he see? Now that he’s gone, that work is up to you.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836.

Whatever you’re selling, take a look at this article and see if any of these traps are holding you back.

Remember, communication is a skill like any other, and with the right kind of practice — deliberate practice — you can get better at it. Being clear is a key  step toward making your team mentally stronger; who can be mentally strong when they’re wondering what the heck you’re talking about?

Temple basketball coach Fran Dunphy underlined the need for teamwork by taking his team for a workout with the crew squad. His players got a first-hand look at chemistry.

Give this coach high marks for understanding that the game goes well beyond X’s and O’s It’s about teamwork and creating a sense of mission.

And, by the way, are there any athletes tougher and more dedicated than crew athletes?