Name: Mike
Bio: Coach Mike Tully has studied peak performance for three decades, first as an international sports writer and then as a championship coach. Coach Tully covered Olympic Games in Lake Placid, Los Angeles, Sarajevo and Seoul, as well as more than 100 consecutive World Series games. Now he takes the insights gained from the greatest athletes in the world and brings them into high school and college gyms. "Mike Tully is a devoted, caring, passionate coach who makes a difference in the lives of those he is coaching." -- DR. CARL McGOWN, Two-time NCAA national championship coach
Posts by :
The One Question You Must Ask Each Applicant
April 4th, 2018Suppose you’re a boss who must make a key hire. Or a college admissions director who faces a choice between two or three qualified applicants. Or a coach who is holding tryouts. No matter what your organization is, its future depends on how often you make the right choice.
But how do you see into the future? How can you know if the person sitting in front of you will grow, persevere, win? You’ll never for sure, and that’s what makes hiring so tricky — and such an opportunity to gain an edge over your competitors. Here’s the one question you can ask your applicants to help take some mystery out of the future:
“Are either of your parents a coach or a teacher?”
This idea comes from “Dream Like a Champion: Wins, Losses and Leadership the Nebraska Volleyball Way” by John Cook and Brandon Vogel. Cook makes this observation: “I have found over the years that about 60 percent of our athletes are daughters of teachers or coaches.”
So powerful is this factor that Cook and his staff have given it a name. The 60 Percent Rule.
Cook explains his discovery this way, “If a prospect has at least one parent who is a teacher or a coach, those kids bring something different to a team. They know it is not about them. It is about something bigger than themselves.”
Note: Cook does not say that he necessarily asks this question of each recruit. He probably knows the answer anyway through meeting the family. But he does find that children of coaches and teachers tend to make great additions to a team.
“If you grew up with a teacher or a coach, your mom and dad did not do that for the money. They did it because they care about kids. Athletes who grow up in that kind of environment have role models that make them understand what it takes to make a great team and a great teammate.”
So the next time you’re faced with a key personnel decision, ask, “Are either of your parents a coach or a teacher?” It could tell you much more than a resume can.
Anyone can polish up a resume. Anyone can look good in an interview. But not everyone grew up in an environment where value was placed on being a great teammate, where the children realized there was something bigger than them.
*** *** *** *** ***
For more on coaching, try “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” by Gary Prichard and Mike Tully
When Your Frat Brother Doesn’t Wake Up
September 20th, 2017No one ever thinks it will happen to them.
That’s what I tell my athletes.
No one ever thinks they will be the one to overdose, to choke on their own vomit, to suffer a sexual assault while drunk.
No one ever goes to a party thinking that they will never come home.
But it happens all the time, and coaches and teachers and parents desperately try to make this point in a way that will stick with young people.
Dr. Louis M. Profeta has done it as well as anyone. In this spectacular article, he makes his audience see, hear and, yes, smell the morning when they get out of bed and stumble over a “blue and stiff body.”
“Dead, waxy, with ‘rock-still’ clouded eyes,” writes Profeta, an emergency room physician. “You could never envision a stare so distant. You played pickup basketball yesterday at the campus rec center.”
Profeta’s words make me think of visualization, a mental skill in which athletes see themselves performing at their peak. With his vivid use of language, Profeta outlines the stakes in a much bigger game.
“I showed them how I would tell their mom and dad that they were dead and how mom would pull hunks of her hair out ’til it bled and dad would punch the wall shattering a bone or two but not noticing, a river of snot pouring from his face.”
Is that clear enough a picture for you?
No one ever thinks it will happen to them. Some people will read this article and still believe it could never happen to them.
But maybe, just maybe, Profeta’s words will save one person from an action that could kill.
“It takes one little mistake to ruin your life or someone else’s life forever.”
*** *** *** *** ***
Thank you for visiting Total Game Plan. If your team, group or business needs a motivational speaker, please email coachtully @ totalgameplan.com. Here are some other resources for your success:
“Think Better, Win More!” will give you a mental game to match your physical game.
To get better at anything, check out “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success.”
Do you coach females? Are you a female athlete, or the parent of one? Here’s “Was It Something I Said? A Guide to Coaching Female Athletes” by Vanessa Sullivan and Mike Tully
Need some motivation? Everyone needs it now and then. Open any page of “Thank God You’re Lazy! The Instant Cure for What’s Holding You Back” by Dr. Rob Gilbert and Mike Tully.
Are you a teacher, boss or sports coach? Here’s “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” by Mike Tully and Gary Pritchard.
Want to have your best basketball season ever? Here’s “Basketball: What Great Players Know that You Don’t Know,” by Mike Tully and Gio Grassi.
What Will You Be Three Weeks From Now?
September 19th, 2017Years ago, before a baseball all-star team sailed to Japan on a goodwill trip, catcher Moe Berg received an invitation to join them.
This offer came not because of Berg’s baseball talent but because of his skill at foreign languages.
“It’s true that I know foreign languages,” Berg protested, “but Japanese is not one of them.”
Berg wound up going on the trip anyway. When it was over, the players gathered on the dock, waiting to board for the trip back home. There they saw Berg chatting with Japanese officials — in Japanese.
“Wait a second,” they said to him. “Didn’t you say you didn’t speak Japanese?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but that was three weeks ago.”
Even allowing for some poetic license, this story is a reminder that what you are today need not be what you can become. And what you become is a product of how you think and how much you can grow.
“Becoming is better than being,” said Carol S. Dweck, author of “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.”
You, can change your work habits, your diet, your schedule, your mindset. Small gains in any of these areas can change how you view the idea of impossible.
“We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us,” Dweck said. “We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.”
Which brings us back to Berg. He was an average big-league baseball player at best. But he was good enough to play in the major leagues, and he was world class when it came to learning languages.
“He can speak seven languages, and can’t hit in any of them,” quipped a teammate.
Remember Berg when you’re tempted to think you’re limited in some way. Make the right changes, and you can amaze yourself with your improvement. Even in three weeks.
*** *** *** *** ***
Thank you for visiting Total Game Plan. If your team, group or business needs a motivational speaker, please email coachtully @ totalgameplan.com. Here are some other resources for your success:
“Think Better, Win More!” will give you a mental game to match your physical game.
To get better at anything, check out “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success.”
Do you coach females? Are you a female athlete, or the parent of one? Here’s “Was It Something I Said? A Guide to Coaching Female Athletes” by Vanessa Sullivan and Mike Tully
Need some motivation? Everyone needs it now and then. Open any page of “Thank God You’re Lazy! The Instant Cure for What’s Holding You Back” by Dr. Rob Gilbert and Mike Tully.
Are you a teacher, boss or sports coach? Here’s “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” by Mike Tully and Gary Pritchard.
Want to have your best basketball season ever? Here’s “Basketball: What Great Players Know that You Don’t Know,” by Mike Tully and Gio Grassi.
What Brett Favre Can Teach Sports Parents
September 18th, 2017Even in winning a Super Bowl, Brett Favre never made a better call than the one he made in watching his daughter play college volleyball.
“I try not to be one of those parents,” the famed Green Bay Packers quarterback said recently while watching a match in which his daughter, Breleigh, did not get off the bench. “I’m not a yeller. I just watch. If she gets in, she gets in and we try to support her as much as we can.”
Breleigh, a freshman, has played in only nine of Southern Miss’s first 54 sets. If she’s looking for more time, her dad knows where she can begin.
“Whether I think she should play more or not, it isn’t my decision,” Brett Favre said. “I just try to tell her that every day in practice you make it impossible for them to not play you. It really falls on you. If you’re impossible to stop in practice and you’re blocking everything they hit, she’s (the coach) a fool for not playing you.”
It really falls on you. That’s the message for any parent. Teach your child that success happens within the self.
*** *** *** *** ***
Thank you for visiting Total Game Plan. If your team, group or business needs a motivational speaker, please email coachtully @ totalgameplan.com. Here are some other resources for your success:
“Think Better, Win More!” will give you a mental game to match your physical game.
To get better at anything, check out “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success.”
Do you coach females? Are you a female athlete, or the parent of one? Here’s “Was It Something I Said? A Guide to Coaching Female Athletes” by Vanessa Sullivan and Mike Tully
Need some motivation? Everyone needs it now and then. Open any page of “Thank God You’re Lazy! The Instant Cure for What’s Holding You Back” by Dr. Rob Gilbert and Mike Tully.
Are you a teacher, boss or sports coach? Here’s “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” by Mike Tully and Gary Pritchard.
Want to have your best basketball season ever? Here’s “Basketball: What Great Players Know that You Don’t Know,” by Mike Tully and Gio Grassi.
The Mental Skill That Decided the Super Bowl
February 6th, 2017Depending on whom you were rooting for:
Either the Falcons pulled a choke for the ages or
New England showed the focus of a wolf looking at a lamb chop.
Either way, the mental game — and a very specific skill — decided Super Bowl LI. This very specific skill divides winners from losers. It’s simple, but never easy. If you can use this skill, you own the key to excellence in sports and life.
What is this magic formula?
It’s the ability to stay in the moment. It’s the ability to let go of mistakes and to avoid getting ahead of yourself. It’s about consistency: never getting too high or too low.
Aesop wrote about it centuries ago in “The Tortoise and the Hare.” As you probably recall, the fleet-footed hare and the plodding tortoise decide to race. Not surprisingly, the hare sprints out to big lead. He stops to rest and falls asleep. Meanwhile, the tortoise keeps putting one foot in front of the other. When the hare finally wakes up, he races to the finish line. But the tortoise has already passed it.
Sound familiar?
Atlanta raced out to a big lead. It would be human nature for the Falcons to start looking ahead to that Lombardi Trophy. Instead, the Patriots kept in the game, going play by play. At the end, the tortoise won.
Do pro athletes really talk about this stuff? You bet they do! I was a sports writer for 12 years, and I can assure you that staying the moment and keeping a consistent approach were the things that they talked about the most!
Sports writers don’t like to hear it. They prefer more colorful quotes, something like Joe Namath’s famous guarantee that the New Jets would win Super Bowl III. But guarantees don’t win games. Staying in the moment and avoiding highs and low do.
Branch Rickey, the best mind in baseball history, referred to winning and losing as “the two imposters.”
I am trying to teach my 13-year-old volleyball players to pay no attention to the score and instead focus on the next ball. It’s easy to say, tough to do. But it wins.
*** *** *** *** ***
Thank you for visiting Total Game Plan. If your team, group or business needs a motivational speaker, please email coachtully @ totalgameplan.com. Here are some other resources for your success:
“Think Better, Win More!” will give you a mental game to match your physical game.
To get better at anything, check out “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success.”
Do you coach females? Are you a female athlete, or the parent of one? Here’s “Was It Something I Said? A Guide to Coaching Female Athletes” by Vanessa Sullivan and Mike Tully
Need some motivation? Everyone needs it now and then. Open any page of “Thank God You’re Lazy! The Instant Cure for What’s Holding You Back” by Dr. Rob Gilbert and Mike Tully.
Are you a teacher, boss or sports coach? Here’s “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” by Mike Tully and Gary Pritchard.
Want to have your best basketball season ever? Here’s “Basketball: What Great Players Know that You Don’t Know,” by Mike Tully and Gio Grassi.
What Successful Teams Have More Than Anything Else
February 1st, 2017 Let’s say you’re the athletic director at a school.
You hire a coach who will be there only one day a week. He’s not a coach by trade, and he does not even attend his team’s competitions.
What do you get?
Well, in the case of the Essex Catholic High School fencing program, you get a dynasty. Multiple, multiple state titles. And a winning streak that soars well beyond 100.
So says my friend Tom DePoto, a college fencer of some renown and a graduate of that Essex Catholic program.
At first when he told me the story, I didn’t know what to make of it. Now I do. It’s the story of a great team culture, where accountability and sharing mean everything.
“The seniors coached the juniors,” my friend said. “The juniors coached the sophomores and the sophomores coached the freshmen.”
And the process kept repeating itself, year after year, long after those freshmen graduated.
“Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with a passion,” said Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb.
In our book “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” Gary Pritchard and I define team culture as “The way we do things here.”
Culture shows itself in many ways. If players or employees wander in late, that’s culture. If the coach favors some people and denies others a chance, that’s culture.
Culture surrounds you. Your family has one. So does your office or your sports team. It’s either a good one or a bad one, but it’s there.
“I used to believe that culture was ‘soft,’ and had little bearing on our bottom line,” said Vern Dosch, author of ‘Wired Differently.’ What I believe today is that our culture has everything to do with our bottom line, now and into the future.”
It certainly worked for the Essex Catholic fencers.
*** *** *** *** ***
Thank you for visiting Total Game Plan. If your team, group or business needs a motivational speaker, please email coachtully @ totalgameplan.com. Here are some other resources for your success:
“Think Better, Win More!” will give you a mental game to match your physical game.
To get better at anything, check out “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success.”
Do you coach females? Are you a female athlete, or the parent of one? Here’s “Was It Something I Said? A Guide to Coaching Female Athletes” by Vanessa Sullivan and Mike Tully
Need some motivation? Everyone needs it now and then. Open any page of “Thank God You’re Lazy! The Instant Cure for What’s Holding You Back” by Dr. Rob Gilbert and Mike Tully.
Are you a teacher, boss or sports coach? Here’s “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” by Mike Tully and Gary Pritchard.
Want to have your best basketball season ever? Here’s “Basketball: What Great Players Know that You Don’t Know,” by Mike Tully and Gio Grassi.
How to be a hero
January 31st, 2017 Heroes come in all packages. This one arrived on this date 98 years ago. He was born into a family of sharecroppers, and received the name of Jack Roosevelt Robinson.
No one would have seen this baby and guess that he would change the world. There was no neon sign above his home saying that a star lived inside.
Greatness doesn’t arrive that way. Greatness arrives in decisions that people make. And Robinson’s decisions, in his short life of 53 years, provide that you don’t need to fly or wear a colorful costume to be a hero.
“A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer,” said Novalis, a poet who lived in Germany in the 18th century.
Said American writer Joseph Campbell, “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”
Both quotes fit Robinson like, pardon the expression, a baseball glove. In breaking the color barrier in big-league baseball in 1947, he faced obstacles no other player did. Opponents tuned him. Some Brooklyn Dodgers teammates threatened to go on strike. His wife Rachel heard the most grotesque obscenities in the stands when she watched him play.
Yet Robinson had made the decision. He promised then-Dodgers boss Branch Rickey that he would not fight back against the taunts, knowing that the entire future of African-American ballplayers was riding on his conduct. It was a high-stakes game and, “Above anything else, I hate to lose,” he said.
And in the most significant battle of his life, he did not lose. He kept his composure, living by the decision he had made.
Your life is just like Robinson’s in the sense that your decisions are your destiny. Each day the choices that you make add up to what you will accomplish and how you will be remembered.
“The way I figured it,” Robinson said, “I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.”
This year marks the 70th anniversary of Robinson’s entry into the big leagues. Over that time his decision has created opportunities for many other people. No one can know for sure what impact your decisions will have. All that’s certain is that their sum will determine what you achieve and how you will be remembered.
*** *** *** *** ***
Thank you for visiting Total Game Plan. If your team, group or business needs a motivational speaker, please email coachtully @ totalgameplan.com. Here are some other resources for your success:
“Think Better, Win More!” will give you a mental game to match your physical game.
To get better at anything, check out “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success.”
Do you coach females? Are you a female athlete, or the parent of one? Here’s “Was It Something I Said? A Guide to Coaching Female Athletes” by Vanessa Sullivan and Mike Tully
Need some motivation? Everyone needs it now and then. Open any page of “Thank God You’re Lazy! The Instant Cure for What’s Holding You Back” by Dr. Rob Gilbert and Mike Tully.
Are you a teacher, boss or sports coach? Here’s “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” by Mike Tully and Gary Pritchard.
Want to have your best basketball season ever? Here’s “Basketball: What Great Players Know that You Don’t Know,” by Mike Tully and Gio Grassi.
The Best Story in Super Bowl History
January 27th, 2017The bigger the problem, the better the story. So says my friend and mentor Dr. Rob Gilbert.
Without the iceberg, there’s no story about the Titanic.
Without her disabilities, Helen Keller becomes just another person.
That brings us to Super Bowl LI, and the avalanche of stories that will come with it.
Chance are that nothing in the next week will approach the story that has already taken place. It involves Matt Patricia, defensive coordinator for the New England Patriots. His story, told in this article in the New York Post, shows that everything you want is outside your comfort zone.
Fresh out of New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Patricia could have eased into a $100,000-per-year job with Westinghouse. Instead, he followed a dream. He took a job coaching defensive line for Amherst College in western Massachusetts. It paid $6,000.
Patricia kept dreaming big, sending his resume to NFL teams. He got a reply from the Patriots and came aboard. He helped New England win the Super Bowl in 2015 with a last-minute miracle. Patricia had a feeling that the Seattle Seahawks would pass instead of run from the 1-yard-line and 26 seconds left. Into the game he sent defensive back Malcolm Butler, who intercepted a pass to seal New England’s victory.
It all began with a decision to turn down what was easy and to gamble on what was improbable.
Anyone can do it. You can do it. If you burn with passion for something, it can happen.
“The brick walls are there for a reason,” said Randy Pausch, professor and computer whiz who responded to a cancer diagnosis by inspiring others. “The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”
You’ll hear dozens of stories about the Super Bowl. But those stories are about football and football players. Matt Patricia’s story is about you, and what can happen when you dream and let your passion carry you.
*** *** *** *** ***
Thank you for visiting Total Game Plan. If your team, group or business needs a motivational speaker, please email coachtully @ totalgameplan.com. Here are some other resources for your success:
“Think Better, Win More!” will give you a mental game to match your physical game.
To get better at anything, check out “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success.”
Do you coach females? Are you a female athlete, or the parent of one? Here’s “Was It Something I Said? A Guide to Coaching Female Athletes” by Vanessa Sullivan and Mike Tully
Need some motivation? Everyone needs it now and then. Open any page of “Thank God You’re Lazy! The Instant Cure for What’s Holding You Back” by Dr. Rob Gilbert and Mike Tully.
Are you a teacher, boss or sports coach? Here’s “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” by Mike Tully and Gary Pritchard.
Want to have your best basketball season ever? Here’s “Basketball: What Great Players Know that You Don’t Know,” by Mike Tully and Gio Grassi.
Excellence in the Cold
January 23rd, 2017 In her book “First Marathons,” world-class runner Grete Waitz wrote, “I prefer to train in the dark, cold winter months when it takes a stern attitude to get out of bed before dawn and head out the door to below-freezing weather conditions. Anyone can run on a nice, warm, brisk day.”
With those words, Waitz captured the difference between winners and also-rans. Winners run when they must, no matter what the conditions. Also-rans run when they feel like it, when the conditions favor them.
What a pleasure it was, then, to see my friend and fellow coach Jeff Stiefbold use Waitz’s quote and mention me in a recent Facebook post. Jeff knows about winning. When he’s not training championship volleyball teams, he’s taking top-level nature shots.
I don’t know much about photography, but it’s clear that Jeff uses great patience and attention to detail in his work. It’s likely something he learned from his father, who was a renowned coach in his own right.
Anyone can take a picture. But not everyone can go out on a cold, dark day, waiting patiently for the right image to present itself. That is what Jeff does. It’s obvious in his pictures. For every beautiful image he produces, there’s hours spent in preparation and study.
So if the weather is cold and dark where you are today, it’s the perfect time to train the way champions do!
*** *** *** *** ***
Thank you for visiting Total Game Plan. If your team, group or business needs a motivational speaker, please email coachtully @ totalgameplan.com. Here are some other resources for your success:
“Think Better, Win More!” will give you a mental game to match your physical game.
To get better at anything, check out “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success.”
Do you coach females? Are you a female athlete, or the parent of one? Here’s “Was It Something I Said? A Guide to Coaching Female Athletes” by Vanessa Sullivan and Mike Tully
Need some motivation? Everyone needs it now and then. Open any page of “Thank God You’re Lazy! The Instant Cure for What’s Holding You Back” by Dr. Rob Gilbert and Mike Tully.
Are you a teacher, boss or sports coach? Here’s “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” by Mike Tully and Gary Pritchard.
Want to have your best basketball season ever? Here’s “Basketball: What Great Players Know that You Don’t Know,” by Mike Tully and Gio Grassi.
Obama As Sport Psychologist
January 2nd, 2017When President Obama leaves office in three weeks, he might consider a career in sport psychology. Issues like the economy, health-care and foreign relations will force anyone to be a problem-solver, and few problems are as tough as helping athletes relax before they compete.
After all, Yogi Berra famously proclaimed, “Fifty percent of baseball is half mental.”
That being true, Obama’s remarks at Pearl Harbor a month ago apply to the mental game.
“We cannot choose the history that we inherit,” the president said. “But we can choose what lessons to draw from it.”
Every sport psychologist has uttered some variation on that theme:
– You can’t always control what happens, but you can always control your reaction to what happens.
– It doesn’t matter what’s happening to you or around you. What matters is what’s happening inside you.
– Control what you can and let the rest go.
So many people, whether athletes or not, miss this wisdom. They live by this equation: E=O. To these people, event equals outcome. When adversity comes to them, the game is over. They blame. Or quit. Or lash out. “He hit me first” is a response used by first-graders of all ages. Jails are full of people who think event equals outcome.
Winners use another equation: E+R=O. Event plus reaction equals outcome. When adversity strikes, their game has just begun. Winners choose a constructive response. They don’t blame. Or quit. If someone hits them, they realize that hitting back is not the only possible response.
In school, in sport, or in business, make sure you live by E+R=O. Any event, coupled with your response, determines how the situation will turn out.
*** *** *** *** ***
Thank you for visiting Total Game Plan. If your team, group or business needs a motivational speaker, please email coachtully @ totalgameplan.com. Here are some other resources for your success:
“Think Better, Win More!” will give you a mental game to match your physical game.
To get better at anything, check out “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success.”
Do you coach females? Are you a female athlete, or the parent of one? Here’s “Was It Something I Said? A Guide to Coaching Female Athletes” by Vanessa Sullivan and Mike Tully
Need some motivation? Everyone needs it now and then. Open any page of “Thank God You’re Lazy! The Instant Cure for What’s Holding You Back” by Dr. Rob Gilbert and Mike Tully.
Are you a teacher, boss or sports coach? Here’s “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” by Mike Tully and Gary Pritchard.
Want to have your best basketball season ever? Here’s “Basketball: What Great Players Know that You Don’t Know,” by Mike Tully and Gio Grassi.