9 Rules to Motivate

1. Expect the best from the people you lead.

2. Make a thorough study of the other person's needs.

3. Establish high standards for excellence.

4. Create an environment where failure is not fatal.

5. Employ models to encourage success.

6. Recognize and applaude achievement.

7. Employ a mixture of positive and negative reinforcement.

8. Take steps to keep your own motivation high.

** From Bringing Out the Best in People...Alan Loy McGinnis

Coaching Leadership

This is the time of the year when I receive a lot of inquires from the local colleges to accept internship students into our Strength and Conditioning Mentorship Program.

The goal of the mentorship program is to develop young men and women who are interested in the field of strength and conditioning and would like to pursue it after graduation.

During their time in our program, we teach each student a variety of topics that will help them develop their own training philosophy and give them a better understanding of the athletic development process. With this in mind, we have created a Program of Instruction that covers all the seven components utilized to develop our athletes. But, the most important and critical component that we teach is leadership. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of our program, we make an effort to provide a realistic perspective to our soon to be graduates.

In life as in athletics, you win and succeed with great leaders. We strive to teach our coaches in training that the greatest achievement men and women can make is to influence others to accomplish great achievements by providing purpose, direction and motivation.

During our first meeting with our selected few, we cover six key characteristics that helps them understand the effort and consistency necessary to be successful. The six characteristics are:


1. Knowledge: Not only determined from experience, training, and formal education, but also through personal studies of the profession.

2. Vision: Develop a clear understanding of current state, define a desired end point, discern the sequence of activity that will complete the task from start to finish.

3. Judgement: Is a matter of common sense tempered by experience and training.

4. Initiative: This is a sustaining element in the coaching profession. It is essential for a coach to recognize, execute and take advantage of opportunities.

5. Self-confidence: Self-confidence is based on professional knowledge, training, education, faith in your own ability and that of your staff. Arrogance, on the other hand, is founded on appearance rather than substance; it focuses on self, rather than the mission or organization.

6. Integrity: High standards of personal conduct based on professional ethics and personal integrity are essential in all programs. Honesty and loyalty are indespensible attributes to the success of the team or organization.

Training Principles

TRAIN SMART
Have a plan. Your program should be based on a periodization-training model that divides the year into phases. Each phase has a specific purpose and incorporates different activities, different volumes, and different work intensities. Periodization training helps you make consistent gains, prevent injuries, avoid burnout, and give your best effort when you need it –during the season.

TRAIN HARD
Attack your workouts! You should focus on getting better in all areas, with good discipline, positive attitude and lots of hard work. Always try to use good technique and give 100% during your workouts.

TRAIN CONSISTENTLY
Avoid extremes in training by training at a reasonable level consistently. This will allow the body time to adapt to the stress of training and develop a solid fitness base. If a few days of training are missed, a few extra days of hard training will not compensate the lost conditioning. Instead, the athlete will overstress the body and will be more predisposed to injury.

COST TO BENEFIT RATIO
For every exercise that is incorporated into the program, the benefit of that exercise must outweigh the potential for injury. Each exercise in your program should meet this criteria.

PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD
Start slowly and be progressive. You should try to improve during every training session. Overload happens when the body has to respond to training loads that are greater than normal. Intensity and volume are the key factors used to progressively increase the load. Remember these three rules: Core strength before extremity strength, body weight before external resistance and fundamental movement skills before sport-specific skills.

NUTRITION CORNER: WATER

Your body is just like your car’s engine; if you can’t cool it off, it won’t perform. Overheat your body and you run the risk of breaking down entirely. That’s why it’s important to monitor your fluid intake during workouts and games to avoid dehydration and heat exhaustion. Be especially watchful on hot and/or humid days. To make sure that you stay hydrated, drink before and during practices/games and drink often. Remember, if your thirsty, you’re already dehydrated.

Your body is approximately 65% water. During games, drills and workouts, you lose body fluids through sweating. It’s not unusual for some athletes, especially pitchers and catchers, to lose four pounds of body weight (about two quarts of sweat) each hour. At this rate, you could lose 10-12 pounds in a 3-hour game. A 10-pound weight loss for a 200-pounder is a 5% loss in body weight. A 5% loss can be extremely detrimental to both your health and performance. Research indicates that even a 2% decrease in body weight due to dehydration can reduce performance by 8-10%. You’ll feel tired and drained. You won’t be able to train or compete at your best and you’ll significantly increase your risk of heat illness.

To determine dehydration status weigh yourself before and after practice and games. Replace each pound of weight lost with 24 ounces of fluid. Also monitor your urine. If it’s clear, you’re OK. If it’s dark and smells like ammonia, you’re approaching or have reached dehydration.

Coffee and alcohol are diuretics; they can cause you to lose water. Caffeine makes you feel more alert. Alcohol numbs the sense of fatigue and pain. Both cause you to lose body water. Drink each in moderation. Drinking 3-4 cups of coffee before and during a game contributes to dehydration. Beer also contains carbonation, which gives you a sense of fullness and tends to limit fluid consumption at a time when fluid consumption should be high.

You don’t have to be gasping for water to be dried out. One of the earliest signs of dehydration is fatigue. Other signs include red skin, loss of appetite, dizziness, muscle cramps or spasms and urine that is dark yellow and has a strong odor.

Napping: The Expert's Guide

Jennifer Ackerman
The Guardian

January 27, 2009

A short snooze during the day will boost your mood and your intelligence - but there's more to it than simply closing your eyes.

For years, napping has been derided as a sign of laziness. We are "caught" napping or "found asleep at the switch". But lately it has garnered new respect, thanks to scientific evidence that midday dozing benefits both mental acuity and overall health. A slew of recent studies have shown that naps boost alertness, creativity, mood, and productivity in the later hours of the day.

A nap of 60 minutes improves alertness for up to 10 hours. Research on pilots shows that a 26-minute "Nasa" nap in flight (while the plane is manned by a copilot) enhanced performance by 34% and overall alertness by 54%. One Harvard study published last year showed that a 45-minute nap improves learning and memory. Napping reduces stress and lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke, diabetes, and excessive weight gain.

Getting even the briefest nap is better than nothing. A 2008 study in Düsseldorf showed that the onset of sleep may trigger active memory processes that remain effective even if sleep is limited to only a few minutes. And last year, a British study suggested that just knowing a nap was coming was enough to lower blood pressure.

Naps make you brainier, healthier, safer. But to understand how you can nap best, you need to understand your body.

Jennifer Ackerman is the author of Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body

How long should you rest for?

In designing the optimal nap you need to grasp its potential components. During sleep, your brain's electrical activity goes through a five-phase cycle.

A short afternoon catnap of 20 minutes yields mostly Stage 2 sleep, which enhances alertness and concentration, elevates mood, and sharpens motor skills. To boost alertness on waking, you can drink a cup of coffee before you nap. Caffeine requires 20 or 30 minutes to take effect, so it will kick in just as you're waking. Naps of up to 45 minutes may also include rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which enhances creative thinking and boosts sensory processing.

Limit your nap to 45 minutes or less, if you need to spring into action after dozing. Otherwise, you may drift into slow-wave sleep. Waking from this stage results in sleep inertia, that grogginess and disorientation that can last for half an hour or more.

But you might want to take a long nap, at least 90 minutes. Many of us get about an hour to an hour-and-a-half less sleep a night than we need. One recent study shows that the sleep-deprived brain toggles between normal activity and complete lapses, or failures, a dangerous state of slowed responses and foggy inattention. Sound familiar?

Naps of 90 to 120 minutes usually comprise all stages, including REM and deep slow-wave sleep, which helps to clear your mind, improve memory recall, and recoup lost sleep. Longer naps in the morning yield more REM sleep, while those in the afternoon offer more slow-wave sleep. A nap that is long enough to include a full sleep cycle, at least 90 minutes, will limit sleep inertia by allowing you to wake from REM sleep.

The Science of Sleep

Why do we need to nap?

Most mammals sleep for short periods throughout the day. Humans have consolidated sleep into one long period, but our bodies are programmed for two periods of intense sleepiness: in the early morning, from about 2am to 4am, and in the afternoon, between 1pm and 3pm. This midday wave of drowsiness is not due to heat or a heavy lunch (it occurs even if we skip eating) but from an afternoon quiescent phase in our physiology, which diminishes our reaction time, memory, coordination, mood, and alertness.

Are You a Lark or An Owl?

To determine the best time to nap, it helps to know your "chronotype". What time would you get up and go to sleep if you were entirely free to plan your day? If you're a lark, apt to wake as early as 6am and go to sleep around 9pm or 10pm, you're going to feel your nap need around 1pm or 1.30 pm.

If you're an owl, preferring to go to bed after midnight or 1am, and to wake around 8am or 9am, your afternoon "sleep gate" will open later, closer to 2.30pm or 3pm.

Physical Strength, Fighting Ability Revealed In Human Faces

A study conducted by a team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara has found that a mechanism exists within the human brain that enables people to determine with uncanny accuracy the fighting ability of men around them by honing in on their upper body strength. What's more, that assessment can be made even when everything but the men's faces are obscured from view.

A paper highlighting the researchers' findings appears in the current issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society. "Assessing fighting ability was important for our ancestors, and the characteristic that the mind implicitly equates with fighting ability is upper body strength," said Aaron Sell, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSB's Center for Evolutionary Psychology and the paper's lead author. "That's the component of strength that's most relevant to premodern combat. The visual assessment of fighting ability is almost perfectly correlated with the perception of strength, and both closely track actual upper body strength. What is a bit spooky is that upper body strength can even be read on a person's face.

Sell conducted the study with Leda Cosmides, a professor of psychology and co-director of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology; John Tooby, a professor of anthropology and also co-director of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology; Michael Gurven, an associate professor of anthropology; and graduate students Daniel Sznycer and Christopher von Rueden.

The study consisted of four sections, each of which asked the test subjects to assess the physical strength of individuals based on photographs of their faces, their bodies, or both. Subjects were asked to rank the physical strength or fighting ability of the people in the photographs on a scale of one to seven. When the photographs depicted men whose strength had been measured precisely on weight-lifting machines, the researchers found an almost perfect correlation between perceptions of fighting ability and perceptions of strength. "When you see that kind of correlation it's telling you you're measuring the same underlying variable," said Tooby.

They also found that perceptions of strength and fighting ability reflected the target's actual strength, as measured on weight-lifting machines at the gym. In other sections of the study, the researchers showed that this result extended far beyond the gym. Both men and women accurately judge men's strength, whether those men are drawn from a general campus population, a hunter-horticulturalist group in Bolivia, or a group of herder-horticulturalists living in the Argentinian Andes.

Leg strength was measured along with upper body strength in both the United States and Bolivian populations, but the results showed that perceptions of men's strength and fighting ability reflect upper body strength, not that of legs. "That makes sense," said Cosmides. "If, for example, you're trying to lift something really heavy, or run a long distance, your lower body –– your legs –– will also be significant. But for fighting at close quarters, it's the upper body that really matters." Added Tooby: "Whether people are assessing toughness or strength, it's upper body strength they implicitly register. And that's the critical information our ancestors needed in deciding –– or feeling –– whether to surrender a disputed resource or escalate aggressively."

The researchers suggest that the ability to judge physical strength and fighting ability serves different, but equally important, purposes for men and women. In men, the mechanism is a barometer for measuring potential threats and determining how aggressive or submissive they should be when facing a possible enemy. For women, the mechanism helps identify males who can adequately protect them and their children. Men have a lot more experience with rough and tumble play and direct experience with fighting, yet women are just as good at assessing these variables. The authors also point out that neither men nor women fare as well in assessing women's strength. This is entirely expected because, ancestrally, inflicting violence was mostly the province of men.

"The next step is to isolate what it is in the face that indicates upper body strength," said Sell. He suggests that the correlation may lie in the heavier brow ridge and thicker jaw that result from increased levels of testosterone. "Many studies have been done on the effects of testosterone on the face. There's a good chance testosterone is involved in regulating the body for battle, and men with high testosterone –– those with a heavy brow ridge and thicker jaw –– developed bodies that were more prepared for combat."

"One reason we evolved the ability to perceive physical strength in the face may be that it's where we focus our attention when we look at someone," said Cosmides.

"Even if we are able to see someone's body, we always look at the face. It's so rich in social information –– what a person is thinking or feeling –– and adding the assessment of physical strength is a huge benefit. A person who is angry and strong offers a much greater threat than the person who is angry but weak."

University of California - Santa Barbara (2008, October 25). Physical Strength, Fighting Ability Revealed In Human Faces. ScienceDaily. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/10/081022135809.htm

The Problem with Youth Training

"Our culture is based on the gratification system - we strive to see results now even if the act of trying to create results in the short-term proves to be contradictory to the science of motor development and blatantly less beneficial than a more holistic and long-term approach." Brian Grasso

Did you know that there are over 40 million young athletes participating in organized sports annually in the United States? Over 3.5 million sport-related injuries are reported every year.

During the last five years, I have been involved in the training of young athletes at the high school level. Prior to working at the high school level, I spent time in the college and pro ranks, working with some of the best athletes in the world. So I have had the opportunity to see first hand the progression in development from the youngest level to the most elite.

My thoughts on the development of youth athletic population has had to mature as I have spent more time working with young athletes. What I have notice through my work with athletes is that the younger the athlete learns skill and movement aptitude the more capable and injury-resistant he will be on the field. That you must teach how to execute the finer points of movement and allow them to improve systematically over time while being patient and focused in the long-term benefits to the athletes. I have seen coaches and trainers sacrifice long-term improvement for quick success and immediate on-field results.

This morning I was talking to my good friend Tim Maxey, strength and conditioning coach of the Cleveland Indians about the development of young baseball players around the country. What we see is the shortsighted approach to developing young athletes that is hurting their chances to develop the proper body awareness, balance, relative strength and proper movement technique that is essential in the development long-term systematic programs.

So lets take a step back, try to avoid falling into the lets win now mentality, allow our young athletes the opportunity to develop in slow incremental steps that are envisioned in a hollistic and long-term approach.