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.