This quote popped up on a Web site and made me wince. It took me back to practices I’ve run. Bad ones.
It’s from Phyllis Hunter, a Houston-based consultant.
“Teachers do not have a right to do whatever they think best in the classroom. It’s not about teachers or what the teachers need or the rights of [...]
Feb. 22 marks 31 years since the U.S. Olympic hockey team upset the Soviet Union en route to the gold medal.
Those of us old enough to remember saw the jubilation and the celebration on the ice. But no one saw the hard work behind the feat. Except the players. They will never forget. After [...]
Jordan McCabe is a young basketball player featured in this video.
He has practiced and performed with enough skill to draw the eyes of local media in the Pacific Northwest.
His drills certainly get your attention. But — here is the jackpot question for anyone who wants to acquire skill — do they help him become a [...]
Yesterday I spent a pleasant hour helping two athletes work on their free throws.
We used the model for deliberate practice:
Conscious effort to improve.
Task is just outside your area of competence.
Many repetitions, with feedback.
I encouraged them to use their own feedback, namely, look where the ball went and make adjustments. And just to make it more [...]
Yesterday I worked with a high school basketball team, and began by asking the players to rate, on a scale of one to 10, how hard they had been working so far this season.
Not one of them rated herself as more than an eight on the effort scale. One of them gave herself a five. [...]
Perhaps you’ve never heard of K. Anders Ericsson.
Whether you have or not, he is one of the most important people in your gym every day. Ericsson is a professor who has done extensive research into the field of skill: How to build it, keep it and deepen it.
As this article points out, you can think [...]
What is the difference between baseball players who reach the big leagues and those who don’t?
In case you’re tempted to say talent, forget it. Every year, players picked late in the draft (those considered to have less talent) overtake glamorous first-round prospects. Sometimes, non-drafted players (those not even considered worth giving a shot) zoom past [...]
The movie “Moonshot” chronicles the first moon landing and the preparation that went into it. In one scene, astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong emerge from the flight simulator after a series of failed landings.
Later, in their quarters, Aldrin is mad at Armstrong, wondering why he ignored instructions and crashed the lander. In contrast to [...]
Back in my sports writing days, I always tried to sit next to one particular person in the pressbox because he seemed to see so much in the game.
He was WATCHING the same thing the rest of us were, but he always SAW more. Listening to his insights, and hearing him pick apart the details [...]
Today’s post comes in the form of a poem offered by the Coaching Toolbox web site. Many thanks to Kevin Reilly for sending it along.
The poem portrays a young athlete learning how to handle praise; it would make great material to put on a gym wall.
It also raises the issue of deliberate practice, that very [...]