David, J.J. and Franz...

In an end of the month installment of five important thoughts and quotes from three people who are way smarter than us, we start off with one of the great authors of our generation in the subject of sports and how to coach. David Epstein has published two must haves for any coaches bookshelf: "The Sports Gene" is 2013 and his 2019 opus, "Range." Here, in the newly updated version of Range, Epstein talks to coaches about the future and how we are navigating it.

"In other words: career zig-zaggers are more likely to feel unappreciated while on the path to developing a broad skill set, but also more likely (eventually) to ascend to the highest echelon in their work. This gets at a fundamental conundrum: optimizing for the short-term feels safe, but often undermines development in the long-term." 

Epstein understands and has looked at the idea of hiring with just one task of knowledge but points out that one must overcome that safety and reach beyond for a long term career. By the way coaches, this goes for players too!

Los Angeles Lakers head coach J.J. Redick has shown himself to be a generational basketball mind: his podcasts and  articles and interviews. And in a league full of tradition and old drills and training methods, Redick sees it differently.

"Player development is about putting people in game-like environments and then drilling that versus drilling how to get to your bag. I had a coach tell me this year, I was asking, I was like: This player has gotten better in pick and roll [and they said]: 'Yeah, we have pick and roll study hall. We'll sit there and watch one specific player that does one specific thing really well in pick and roll, and then we'll go out on the court and recreate that environment so he works on those reads."

Reading, game like and practice for the game v. practicing for a salary or a highlight reel is what J.J. is envisioning. It will be a fun season to watch him at the helm of the Lakers.

Franz Stampfl coached Roger Bannister to the first sub 4 minute mile in history. What you don't know is Stampfl was a WWII veteran, prisoner of war, surviving his prison transport ship being torpedoed by a German U-boat and surviving 8 hours in cold, oil-slicked seas and helped coach and organize sports in the camps until the end of the war. He was a stalwart of 'interval style training' and in addition to Bannister helped tennis players and boxers to success and coached 11 different athletes in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. In a tragic bit of irony, he was involved in a car accident in 1980 that left him a quadriplegic until his death 15 years later. 

Coaching Bannister, Stampfl uttered one of the most obvious but hidden thoughts about coaching: "Training is principally an act of faith."

This resonates so clearly yet is rarely spoken of. Your athletes, the parents of your athletes, even your club directors and athletic directors, they entrust all in you- an ultimate act of faith.

Talking about training, he said, “The coach’s job is twenty percent technical and training, and eighty per cent inspirational. He may know all there is to know about tactics, technique and training, but if he cannot win the confidence and comradeship of his pupils he will never be a good coach.”

This is an area that coaching clinics and you tube videos have steered away from but is even more relevant now than ever. Relationships over reps, trust over technique.

Finally, Stampfl ends this blog with this gem: "Fear is the strongest driving force in competition. Not fear of one's opponent, but of the skill and high standard which he represents: fear, too, of not acquitting oneself well. In the achievement of greater performances, of beating formidable rivals, the athlete defeats fear and conquers himself."

Mic drop...