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How to Keep Your Ax Sharp In-Season

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Phillip Rivers, the Quarterback for the San Diego Chargers, has turned the Latin phrase Nunc Coepi into a motto for their entire team.  Nunc Coepi means, “And now I begin again.” What I like about this sentiment is that each day we get a chance to start over.

Each practice we get to try and move toward our goal of having a championship culture in our program.  We know we’re going to struggle and make mistakes but rather than dwell on the problems that we’ve had in the past, we want to focus on what we’re doing now to realize our vision for the program.

Abraham Lincoln and Keeping Your Ax Sharp – I head a story about Abraham Lincoln and how he said if he had two hours to cut a tree down, he would spend one hour sharpening his ax.  Many of us get so caught up in the day to day grind of our coaching jobs that we neglect to find inspiration and motivation to keep us going.

I don’t know about you but, in the middle of January or February, I am chomping at the bit to start the season.  A big part of that is that I am getting all sorts of inspiration and motivation from hearing the best coaches in the country during the “clinic season.”  Try to find some of that inspiration in season so that you can share that with your team.

If you want to skip ahead to the story in the video below, go to 6:50 to hear the story, however, the entire video is good stuff.

I highly recommend finding great positive coaching influences that will help remind you of what your vision is for your program and what steps you can take now to move toward that vision.  In addition to the article that is the basis for this entire post, I’ve found recent posts on James Vint’s blog or reading sections of Randy Jackson’s book Culture Defeats Strategy, to help refocus and remind me of what I’m wanting to accomplish.

So often we get bogged down with the day to day grind of kids being late to practice, the team room being dirty, wrapping up fundraising or planning practice.  We need to fill our tank up with good influences so that we don’t find ourselves just dwelling on the draining part of our profession.

Here is a top five ways I am trying to keep my ax sharp during the season:

  1. Call Dr. Gilbert’s Success Hotline every morning on my way to school – 973-743-4690.  This may end up being the best 3 minutes of your day.  I don’t remember every message that Dr. Gilbert leaves but, I do know I have a better attitude walking into school on the days when I call in than when I don’t.
  2. Brian Cain’s Monday Message – You can sign up to have Brian’s Morning Message emailed to you.  There are a lot of good ideas and tips included in the videos he sends.
  3. Brian Johnson’s Philosopher’s Notes – Brian’s podcast and Youtube videos are great ways to get some big ideas in a short time.
  4. Review Clinic Materials, Nike COY Coaches Notes, etc. – I’ve scheduled time in my days this past week to review a book such as Randy’s book or Dale Mueller’s presentation at the AFCA convention in 2015.  Remind yourself of the things you set out to do at the beginning of the season.
  5. Use you Coaching Network – One of the most therapeutic things I have found to do in season is give another coach a call to check in and get a fresh perspective.  A lot of times I find that the same issues that I feel are unique to our program are actually the same ones others are dealing with.  Sharing ideas and commiserating in-season helps in keeping a proper perspective during a time when most of us are incredibly myopic.

Have some ideas that you’d like to share on how you keep your ax sharp in season?  Post on our Facebook Page or tweet @nathanstanley.  I’d love to hear other ideas.

Keeping the Message Fresh

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cardinals_seahawks_football-08d40Recently I read this interview with Pete Carroll where he talked about how good coaches leave the profession when they lose their drive to, “fight the day in, day out whatever.”  In reading the interview, this quote by Carroll stood out:

“You will find a way to make your message fresher. You’ll find a way to make your connections in a way that will continue to inspire and direct and motivate. That’s what I’m banking on.

This is not a how-to. This is a who you are.

You do what you have to do to compete, and that takes you to places where you are in a relentless state to find an edge and compete. That mentality keeps you on and on point. The how is following the drive, being resourceful and creative.

I would say this: It’s not how you get your message across. It’s how many creative ways you find to get your message across until it finds a way to hit home so you can try to connect with people. The how-to is all about day in, day out finding a way to feed the monster, the drive that lives inside.”

We all know that repetition and routine is key to building skills.  However, the tendency is for this routine and repetition to become mundane and “boring” and for many, it will feel like you’re in a rut.  Anticipating this is the best way to combat it.  When you feel like you’re in a rut or that you’re message is losing its effect, have a plan for how you will a) get your “message” across to the kids and b) find ways to liven up practices without breaking the habits we want to build and c) “feed the monster, the drive that lives inside,” as Coach Carroll calls it.

When I originally wrote this post it was so long that I decided to break it up into three parts.  I’d like to start with focusing on keeping your message fresh.  We spend a lot of time sharing our core values with our players and our parents.  It is very important to our program and key to how I want to establish our culture.  However, I know that over time, we will start to have kids tuning us out.  We want to renew that commitment to our core values and character education and find new ways to present these ideas to our players.  It is still early in our season and so to this point, our coaches have rotated introducing topics such as our core values and other character related topics.

Here are a few quick ideas for presenting these ideas in the future:

  • Assigning players a core value to talk about with the team.  In the past when we’ve done this our kids have a tendency to lay a big egg so this year, we’re going to make a coach listen to the player’s message first and then help him with it.
  • Bringing in guest speakers.
  • Finding audio/visual resources to get our point across.  This past week I wanted to get across the idea of “passion” to our players so I showed a video of Drew Brees, Tim Tebow and Ray Lewis motivating their teammates.  I think you can use movie clips to get your point across.

What ways that are you sharing your message with your players each day?  Tweet at me @nathanstanley or post a comment on the Smartcoaching.co Facebook page.  I’d love to steal your ideas!

 

Be Good or Be Different

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Sometime around 2005 or 2006, I was reading a recap of the NCAA National Wrestling Tournament and saw an infographic on the number of aliDivision I All Americans by State of Origin.  Up at the top of the list as I recall was Pennsylvania.  In this particular year, not only were they at the top of the list, there wasn’t a state that was even close to them in total AA’s.  The question that popped into my mind was, “What are they doing in their high schools that no one else is?”

Be Good or Be Different.  I have developed the general philosophy of “be good or be different.”  The idea behind this is that we want to either be one of the best at what we do or have the ability to be the best at what we do.  If we don’t feel we have the ability to be the best at it,  we will search for an alternative to gaining an edge on our competition.  I don’t understand why so many teams now run the “offense du jour” regardless of talent and coaching.  It is logical to me that if you have the personnel to run the spread, or you have an expertise that leads you to believe that you can get your players there over time, it makes sense.  However, if you’re in league with three teams from bigger schools, with a higher SES and they all run Air Raid, I don’t think it’s in your interest to follow suit.

A great example of this has been discussed on a recent episode wilt-chamberlainof Revisionist History when Malcolm Gladwell examined the absurdity of Wilt Chamberlain shooting free throws underhand for a season (including his 100 point game), seeing a huge improvement and inexplicably going back to an overhand shot the next season.

“Chamberlain had every incentive in the world to keep shooting free throws underhanded, and he didn’t. I think when people don’t do the thing they ought to do, we assume it’s because of ignorance. This is not that. This is doing something dumb even though you’re fully aware that you’re doing something dumb.”                                                                                -Malcolm Gladwell

It begs the question: if players like Shaquille O’Neal and DeAndre Jordan could significantly increase their effectiveness in close games (and in the process make themselves even more valuable to their team and sponsors) don’t you think it would at least be worth a try?

Another great example of how being different can provide huge benefits has been the University of Oregon.  It is still hard to believe that Oregon has played for two national championships over the past few years.  If you had followed the program 20 years ago, I am not sure if you would have thought it possible.  But between practicing differently than everyone (No Sweat Thursdays, music throughout practice, using GPS on players during practice), their uniforms looking different from everyone and their offense running differently from everyone has netted them a lot of success. (I understand that a lot of teams have followed suit but I think being different has been a big part of the Ducks’ success since the arrival of Chip Kelly).

The Pareto Principle.  In his 2001 book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about General Electric CEO, Jack Welch’s decision to review everything that GE did at the time and cut every division where it was determined they couldn’t be #1 or 2 in the industry.  The principle behind that decision is the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule which states that 80% of your production comes from only 20% of what you do.  If you can focus and grow the 20%, your 80% is going to grow as well.

Wrestling with Being Different.  Back to my obsession with Lehigh Valley high school wrestling.  It turns out that while Pennsylvania is consistently one of the best wrestling states in the Union, the year I found that aforementioned infographic, was a bit of an anomaly.  However, it spurred me on to do some deep thinking about the system that I was teaching and why I was teaching it.

Around that time, a friend was hired as the new head coach of one of the top programs in the state.  I had hired him in the past to do camps and clinics for me as he was a college coach and a multiple NCAA All-American.  I taught a lot of the same system he did and when he became a high school coach and became an opponent, I thought to myself, “How do I out teach him using his system?”  After all, I had only barely placed at the NAIA National Championships as senior in college and he had been on the Olympic Ladder.

daveCI started doing a lot of research on high school wrestling in Pennsylvania.  I was able to get VHS tapes and some DVDs of clinics by Ray Nunamaker, Rob Rohn, Mike Powell and others.  I was able to convince my wife to drive two hours out of the way from our trip to NYC in order to sit down and visit with Dave Crowell for three hours after taking the red eye from Portland to Newark.  Subsequently, I was able to bring Dave to our school twice to do a coaches clinic as well as a camp for my kids.

Coaches in our league told me that they had to dedicate significant portions of practices to prepare for us and several of them had named techniques after our school.  Over time, we found that kids who were otherwise below average wrestlers could find a way to be competitive because their opponents had a hard time adjusting to their style.  I’m not saying that we forsook fundamentals and were different for the sake of being different.  What we did was went outside of our bubble, found what we liked from those coaches and programs and, built a system that was unique and effective.

A Football Coach with Cauliflower Ears.  When I became the head football coach in 2012, I spent a lot of time thinking about what scheme we should run offensively.  My best experience professionally had been as an assistant coach for Craig Ruecker whose Multi Pro Offense has netted him 283 wins and two state titles (and counting) during his career.  So why didn’t we run that offense?  The two main reasons were that we were unsure about what kind of quarterback we were going to have and more important at the time is that there were three good teams in our league that were better at running it than we were.  A lot of that decision was based on my insecurity as a first time head coach but, what happened a year later helped prove my point.

After our first season where we went 11-1 and advanced to the semifinals of the State Playoffs for only the second time in school history, we had to deal with the fact that almost the entire Class of 2014 had transferred to a brand new school in our district.  We went from 25 seniors on our varsity team in 2012 to less than 10 in 2013, and only one of whom actually played football the season prior.  To add insult to injury, our quarterback who was the lone shining light in the senior class, transferred to the other high school the day before we left for a contact team camp.  It was an awful experience.

As a result, we ended up shifting our offense to the Single Wing.  For those that may not know, the Single Wing is an offense that dominated college and pro football through the first half of the 20th Century.  However, with maxresdefaultthe exception of a few holdouts, the offense fell into obscurity and nearly into the dustbin of history.  Needless to say, we are the most unique football program in the entire state.  We brought in Apopka High School Coach Rick Darlington to help us install the offense and since then, we’ve gone 14-6.

This past season, we went 8-3 (lost twice to the eventual state champions) and had 5500 yards of total offense.  We did have talent but, running the Single Wing has allowed us to cover up issues that come with being among the smallest teams in our division in a league with the largest teams.

I am not writing this to try to come off as being smarter than the average bear.  I’ve done plenty of dumb things both as a wrestling and football coach.  What I can say though is that by finding a way to create and edge for myself and the program, I have been far more successful than if I just did what everyone else did.  Regardless of sport or endeavor, I think it is a very valuable exercise to sit down and map out exactly what your “20%” is and how you can maximize its impact on your program.

How to Plan a Mom’s Night Class

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This past week we hosted our annual Mom’s Night.  Five seasons ago I hosted our first Mom’s Night and it was one of the most positive events that I’ve ever been a part of in coaching.  Over the past few years we’ve continued this tradition in our program and while we’ve tweaked the program from year to year to keep things fresh, it’s continued to be a popular night with our moms and players.  When I first started planning our Mmoms night2om’s Night, I tried to research what other teams were doing.  I know that a lot of teams host them but, it was hard to find examples and ideas for our event.  In writing this, I hope I can offer some ideas and direction so that you can plan your own event.

When to Host Your Event–Originally we held our Mom’s Night on the Wednesday of Homecoming.  I liked having it during Homecoming Week for a few reasons.  For those of us who have a lot going on during Homecoming that serves to distract your players, I think having a night that is really about family, is a calming and focussing experience for the team.  Holding it later in the season also allows our players and moms to have a more reflective frame of mind as they realize that regardless of the success of the team, that all of this will soon be over.  I also appreciate having the feel of fall with the cool crisp evening as we are out under the lights at the end of the evening.

However, due to conflicts with Homecoming this past year, I decided to move our Mom’s Night to before the first game.  Doing this allowed us to have a little variety in what we presented to the moms and allowed us to focus more on setting a tone for the season rather than reflecting on it.  We’ve done it both ways now and really it’s been great either way.

Agenda for the Evening–Since this year’s event was early in the season, I took the opportunity to share with our moms some things that I felt were important for them to hear as well as some things that I know they were interested in.

  • Welcome and Introductions–I like to have an opportunity to introduce our coaches and have the moms put a Mom's_Night_Agendaname with a face.  I also used this opportunity to talk with our moms about our core values and what they mean to us and how we selected them.
  • Concussion Prevention and Injury Protocols–We are very lucky to have one of the best ATC/R’s in the business at our school.  She presented the protocols we have for injuries and treatments as well as those specifically for concussions.  I followed up by sharing the steps we take to keep our players safe.
  • Sports Nutrition–I brought in two local business owners (one of whom was a former player) to talk about nutrition and performance.  I actually have an assistant coach who is qualified to talk about this but I felt it would be more impactful coming from an outside voice.  This presentation resulted in a lot of good questions from the parents and was good to set up our later conversation regarding team meals.
  • Officials Presentation–We brought in another alumnus who is now a college and high school official to talk about what football officials do.  He had a great message for the parents about why our officials do what they do and what exactly their job is.  I asked our guest to talk about the difference between NFHS and College/NFL rules.  He gave about five examples where coaches and the fans confuse what the high school rule is with what they watch on TV.
  • Parent Booster Presentation–Finally, we had a parent representative who is in charge of heading up our Football_Mom's_Logoteam meals talk about what the plan was for this season and what the organizer’s initial plan was.  I also talked about the history of our pregame and travel meals and how we’ve changed things over time and why.
  • Mom’s Gear–This year I purchased some t-shirts for our moms.  We asked for a $10 donation for them and they were very popular with the ladies!  This is the first year we’ve done this and we’ll definitely try to do it again next year.

In past year’s I’ve given presentations to the moms about our offense or defense.  Particularly popular is calling plays locker roomor our no-huddle system.  I have a presentation called, “10 Things your Husband doesn’t know about Football,” which goes over all the obscure rules left in the NFHS rule book.  All of these are fun and aimed at giving the moms insight into what we do on a daily basis.

All of this leads up to the part that I think is the most popular with the moms–our facility tour.  We have the players take their moms through our facility and then out onto the field to throw the ball around and see what it’s like to be on the game field under the lights.  I highly recommend your players show them their lockers and let them try on their gear.  This is always a highlight for the moms and we usually have a few that come out onto the field in their son’s helmet and shoulder pads to play catch.

The final part of the night is when we finish on the game field.  If you do the event later in the fall, you get to turn on the lights and it is a great setting.  We have had our players run drills with their moms or just throw the ball around with their moms.  This year, I had the boys teach their mom’s the school fight song as well as a team song we sing after wins or when the occasion calls for it.

 

I hope that this has given you some ideas to use with your program.  Regardless, I highly recommend you hold one of these events for your program this season.

What Dilbert and Nick Saban have in Common

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In 2012, I became the Head Football Coach and Athletic Director at the school where I had been the Head Wrestling Coach and a teacher for the previous seven years.  Over the next few years as I spend more and more time at my job, my weight ballooned to an unhealthy and uncomfortable 251 lbs at age 40 and standing 5’10.  Not good.

I decided it was time to make some changes.  The two main areas that I focused on was being active and recording what I was eating.  In terms of being active, I didn’t do anything specific other than to try and do something active every single day.  That could mean running, hiking, going for a walk with my kids, taking the kids for a bike ride, mountain biking, etc.  I didn’t really worry about anything other than getting out and enjoying myself.  The other change I made was to bike anywhere I would normally drive.  This included runs to the grocery store, taking the kids to the library and opening up the weight room.

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For my online nutrition journal, Myfitnesspal.com did a good job of tracking my macronutrients and calories over the course of the day.  My agreement with myself was that I could eat whatever I wanted so long as I tracked it.  As the summer went on, I really dialed in what I was eating both for performance and satisfaction.  By October, I had lost over 40 lbs and raced in the Seattle Super Spartan  which was around a 9 mile obstacle course.  I’ve been able to stay active (although during the school year I had to change what I was doing to stay active) and with a few breakdowns, kept my diet under control and feeling pretty good.  During that process, I stumbled upon two concepts that I would become more familiar with over the course of the next few months: Goals vs. Systems (as well as building habit loops as described here).

Mike Smith said in the book You Win the Locker Room First that, “Every team in the NFL starts the season with the same goal: win the Super Bowl.”  So, the question arises what do to do to motivate your team when the season starts 0-3?  Or 1-5?

Goals and Goal Setting are widely accepted as an important ingredient in high performing individuals and teams.  Many major programs, businesses, performers, etc., regularly post, track and evaluate their goals as an essential part of their day to day routines.  However, for every elite performer, there are an equal number, if not more of goal setters who come up short or abandon their goals prematurely.  One might assume this is due to a lack of discipline but, isn’t it just as likely that there are other alternative methods that may be more effective at “reprogramming” us into high performing individuals and teams.

Goals vs. Systems.  In my personal example of how I was able to become more active, I had discovered the concept of using a system, although I didn’t know it at the time.  It wasn’t until later that I heard Dilbert creator Scott Adams talk about his theory on the Tim Ferris Podcast. In the interview, Adams explained why he thinks that systems, rather than goals are a smarter way of pursuing personal and professional growth.

“You could word glue goals and systems together if you chose. All that I’m suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as different concepts has power.  Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out.  Systems people success every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do.  The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at every turn.  The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their systems.  That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.” -Scott Adams in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,

So, what are some ways that Systems vs. Goals can be applied to different endeavors?  Adams suggest the following examples:

“In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, learning to eat right is a system.  In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system.  In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system.”

How might we apply this to organized athletics?  Well, you do not have to go further than the University of Alabama and Nick Saban and “The Process”.  Rather than focusing on outcomes, Saban has built his success on the concept that players and coaches need to focus not on the SEC or National Championship but rather the task at hand such as this drill, the next play, this meeting, etc.  We can all break down the steps to being the version of our own best self and best of all, it’s probably almost 100% within our control.

A system that I have had for a while now for professional development has been to find coaches, outside of the area where I live who are doing what I want to do and then go out of my way to learn from them.  High School Football coaches visit college programs every spring to learn from the experts but I have found that visiting other high school programs is much more productive for me.  As a wrestling coach I learned a ton from visiting and bringing in Dave Crowell from Nazareth, PA and the Clovis Wrestling staff for camps and clinics.  As a football coach, I’ve visited several programs in New York, Texas and Florida and had  coaches such as Dale Mueller of Highland HS, KY, Rick Darlington of Apopka, FL and Randy Jackson of Grapevine HS, TX do clinics for my staff.  The information that we got from these interactions have played a big part of my development as a coach and what we’ve done with our program.

I wrote about how we apply “The Process,” in an earlier post that you may find helpful.  While I still believe in having goals, objectives, etc., I do try to think about ways that I can build systems as well as systems that I am already using.  If you have a system you use for your program or yourself and are willing to share, please post it on our Facebook page or tweet at me @nathanstanley.