The Hands of a Sherpa...

 

This blog was started a few years ago with the title and idea of helping coaches, and maybe some parents and athletes, to navigate the fluid world of youth sports in a sometimes feral atmosphere.

The depths can be frightening and paralyzing, sometimes causing the principle irreparable harm and a possible future career guiding young people into adulthood with sport.

Yet the heights can be overwhelming and almost spiritual. Seeing a player you helped guide, like a sherpa on K2, accomplish their goals and dreams is nothing short of euphoria, giving you confidence for the next athlete that comes your way.

While we as coaches can make careers and businesses on these accomplishments, it's always important to put our egos aside and recognize that however large we feel our contributions were, the athlete is the nucleus of that growth atom.

A 12 year old boy leaves a note for his Mom. "Could u please wake me up at 7:00. And could u leave me a couple of dollars. James Harden. P.S. Keep this paper. Imma be a ⭐.

His love of the game drove this 12 year old to get to the courts early, to play, work on his game and an inner confidence that shone through this note has made Harden a future Hall of Fame guard in the NBA.

Maybe a Mother knows or maybe she just wanted what made her son happy at the time. Harden  probably couldn't have known the path his career would take but that inner confidence was a catalyst for his work ethic and skill acquisition. Along the way, Harden probably had coaches he would credit for his success but it was 12 year old James who made the decision to get up early and work. It was James who put the time in and learned. And it is James who will retire as one of the greatest shooting guards in NBA history.

When she was in fifth grade, a skinny but athletic youngster from Burleson, Texas told her teacher she would be in the Olympics some day. Her teacher scoffed and rebuffed her, telling her she was dreaming and she should set her sights on realities and leave the pipe dreams aside.

That night, the young girls painted this.

Crying a river of tears as she dreamed of being an Olympian, this young 12 year old, who was playing softball, volleyball, basketball, track and every other sport she could muster, put her confidence in overdrive and the work she put in followed.

Stacy Sykora joined the USA National team in 1999 and wound up a three time USA Olympian, a multi year winner of Libero of the Year and finished her career in 2011 after a life altering bus accident in Brazil. Her high school, club and college coaches had a hand in her success and perhaps it was a fifth grade teacher who could take most of the credit. But it is Stacy who is a model of grit and determination, of beating the odds with her work ethic and confidence. 

On a Christmas morning in 1987, a three year old boy is gifted a play hoop and ball. His other toys surround him in the picture, but the smile on his face holding the tiny basketball is infectious. 

Thirty seven years later, this young boy has toppled nearly every NBA record printed. He is playing in his 21st season still revered as one of the best in the game. His work ethic to get to this place is the lore of legends. 

LeBron James' first hoop at 3 didn't make him the conversation starter of greatest players of all time. He has a confidence, a standard he continues to hold himself AND his teammates to. He has won four NBA Championships in ten appearances. That is not luck. That is drive, intelligence and the goal to stay physically superior to all he plays against. While a three year old might have the dream, it is the next 37 years that dictate the epic saga that is LeBron's career.

"We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort." - Jesse Owens.

If you are a Coach, (or a teacher), we can all  be Sherpas. We can help guide our athletes up and down the mountains and valleys. We can urge them to take the steps, forge their own way in the paths we have laid out for them, but make no mistake, it is their lungs burning at the top of the mountain. 

Be humble, accept that we can only be part of greatness, not the only reason. Great athletes recognize who their guide was along the toughest parts of their journey. Sometimes they will remember and tell you, other times they may not. Either way, relish the moments you have as the Sherpa in the life of your athletes. NBA stars, Olympians, Super Bowl Champions, Premiere League winners or simply kids who needed someone to believe in them, build their confidence and teach them the meaning of hard work in the sport they love. Both are equally paramount.

Coach, what you do is important. You are important. Whether they say it or not, your athletes thank you and appreciate you when we do it right.

Happy Holidays.

Six Smart Stocking Stuffers...

Happy Holidays. It's another installment of quotes from people way smarter than us, this one a six-set-sampler for around the tree.

First up is Oxford Brookes University Senior Lecturer and Subject Coordinator for Sport, Coaching & PE, Danny Newcombe. Here, Danny talks about the idea of giving our athletes problems to solve instead of the solution first.

"So, once we set that problem, then how do we help them? How do we support the players to solve it? So, it's not just, ‘I’m going to throw the child in the deep end of the swimming pool’ and set the problem. but I have to coach. What I’ve seen, I guess, is we coach the solutions before we've set the problem. So, it's not the game as the teacher because I still think there's a vital role in what the coach says in that process.” 

Chris Chamides is in his 3rd season as the head women's soccer coach at Loyola Marymount University. In that three years, he has taken a program not known at all for soccer and turned them into a WCC feared opponent. He was named the WCC Coach of the Year for 2024, and in this chat, he speaks of under coaching to get to know his players and what they are capable of.

“The reads that a player has to make cannot be something where they're glancing over the sideline to me. They have to be in real time like any athlete does. And with that, I have to foster that. I have to foster that sense of ownership for their game. And so, for them to get to their highest levels, I have to give them a million reps of freedom in order for me to understand how they're wired and how they typically do things without ignoring me, just how they do things. And once I understand how they do things: how they pass the ball, what choices they make, what are their inclinations in this moment versus that moment, once I understand them really well, then I can begin to coach them. So, I under coach to learn them. I don't want to give them too much information. And then once I get them going where I have a sense as we as a staff, can kind of wrap our head around who they are as a player, then we begin to give some information, not too much, just some in order for them, in my opinion, that maximizes their abilities in the long run and it makes them enjoy their game more.” 

"You can't really influence somebody until you meet them where they are and then lead them from that point. You can't just get frustrated that they're not where you want them to be. You got to figure out where they are. why they are there, connect with them at that point, and then build up some equity to influence."

This sage advice comes from Jenny Boucek, a former player, WNBA coach and now an assistant coach with the NBA's Indiana Pacers. She speaks from several opportunities to coach and interactions with players. 

Staying with the NBA, New Jersey Nets Head Coach Jordi Fernandez, who has coached with some of the NBA's greatest, saw his team coming together a few weeks ago after a win over the Phoenix Suns. It was also a win the same day he found out his top player and leading scorer would be lost for a month due to injury.

"I think that we're coming together. We're valuing the same things. At the beginning, you hear it, but you know, you start buying into it when you see it, and that's the most important thing. In every five-game series, we were two and three, and finally, in this one, where we're three and one right now, we have the opportunity for one more before we play the fifth. And it's important, because that shows you growth. A lot of times you look at the season, like, 82 games, and you can get lost with, you know, goals. It's a lot of games coming at you. So, I learned that from teams that I've been with and always has helped your focus. Whether you're in a good place or you're struggling, you got to look at things with perspective and find the positives and clean up the negatives. And I think that that was a big step. It was our second chance that we had to win three in a row, the first time we couldn't do it, we couldn't accomplish it. And now we did."

Harvard Professor, author, podcaster and self described happiness expert Arthur Brooks spoke of the disconnect when trying to solve complicated and complex problems.

"In mathematics, there's two kinds of problems. There's complicated problems and complex problems. It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but I’m not. Complicated problems are solvable with enough genius, but they don't change, and you've got a solution forever. Complex problems are human and dynamic. They're behavioral. They're like falling in love or winning the Super Bowl. Those are complex problems. You can simulate the Super Bowl, the Patriots versus the Seahawks, over and over and over and over again, and you're not going to get it right, because it's a highly complex and epic human situation. So, if your work is all that complex, 1,000% it's about love. It's about success. It's about human interaction. It's about sports interpretation of the experience. We've got all these complicated solutions to complex problems, and that's why we feel empty."

Finally, Pittsburgh Pirates skills coordinator, mental performance coach Andy Bass tries to drill down on what constraints actually are in coaching, how they can be used and how coaches should use this as a tool, not a coaching replacement.

“I wish he'd made a different name than constraint. It does not mean inhibiting movement. That can happen, but it's not a constraint. It isn't a strait jacket where you're limiting movement and signaling movement. It's a constraint, like an evolutionary constraint. It’s basically allowing the drill to do the talking. And I know that from a purely theoretical standpoint. I think coaches hear this and they say, well, I should never talk. Not true at all. Outcome goals give them external cues, but it's thinking about making the drill get more information in the coaching itself. It's not tones when you're drilling through in soccer. It's allowing the environment to dictate the outcome of the movement, and it's allowing the athlete to explore through failure and variability, versus one guided repetition."

 Books, interviews, podcasts; however we can get you more information, we will continue to do so. If you have any for us to share, please forward to erichbke@msn.com.

FeedForward

With every training session, you as the coach get a certain amount of opportunities for feedback. Sometimes, if your athletes or students are playing, you want to curb what you have to say. And when we are teaching them skills or ideas, we want to give them the cues and information they need.

A few ideas have come up recently about feedback that are important to share. They are not ground breaking but at a recent clinic in which the coaches were also in learning modes, feedback became an issue.

First, as the saying goes, if you try to catch five rabbits you won't catch any. This couldn't be more true. Often we give too much feedback on different things. For middle blockers in our sport, they are inundated with 20 things to think about every play: block, don't block, get out of the setters way, read that hitter, push your hands over the net, faster feet, cover your hitter, make yourself available, etc.... It's a wonder more middles don't need therapy sessions when they retire. 

Keep your feedback  to ONE thing. Of course there are 20 different things that you, as the coach, see the players are doing wrong, but just focus on that ONE thing for the time of the game or drill. You have time to go to the other 19 at other games and drills.

Another thought was from the book "The Coaches Guide to Teaching" by the brilliant Doug Lemov. It's a wonderful book with so much great information, but one thing that might catch your attention is Doug's question about how important your athletes will feel your feedback is.

His point is if you are hammering home a cue or a point over and over again, the players can feel from you how important that is. However, as soon as play begins, the coach begins talking about 20 other things and soon the athlete realizes that the cue or point they were hammering home before isn't as important as they thought because the coach is talking about all these other things.

That is our mistake as coaches. If we want that specific point or cue to hit home, we have to treat it like it is of major importance and not interfere with the message by talking about other things. Keep your point relevant and important to your athletes.

The last point to make is how much feedback. Twenty five or 30 years ago, it was thought that every rep needed some coaching feedback. But science has shown us that the brain is easily overloaded and too much feedback is actually detrimental to the learning process.

Pick your spots. Watching an athlete take one rep and giving feedback isn't a very representative sampling. Give the athlete several reps, see if an overlying problem exists that you can give feedback on...ONE problem at a time.

Too much feedback is worse than none at all. Remember your student athletes have a very low threshold for attention: don't waste it. Find that piece of information that the player can use directly to make them better. There is no reason to talk about other things.

For the sake of practicing what we preach, we'll end on these cues about feedback to your athletes.

Specific, succinct, selective.

WARmups

Recently, the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA), one of the preeminent volleyball coaching education resources in the country, sent out a link to members to download 20 practice plans for the upcoming season. The practice plans were free for an e mail (of course) and a PDF link was sent.

This was the first 45 minutes of the first two hour practice:

The first 45 minutes of a two hour practice were dedicated to NOT having a ball cross the net. In fact, half of that 45 minutes was spent with NO ball at all. By the end of the first two hour practice, the athletes had not played one minute.

As you forage to the next practice and the next, you notice the same: Practice #2 with 20 minutes of non ball warm ups and 15 minutes more of the ball not crossing the net. Although there was 30 minutes of play out of the two hours in #2, the subsequent practices showed more of the same: stodgy, non challenging drills preceded by footwork patterns that put on display the idea of action with NO perception, and small nuggets of play imbedded within the banal.

Butterfly drills, shuttle drills, zone serving with no reception, blocking footwork and shuffle drills for 15 minutes.

If you want to get kids to quit the sport, these are the 20 practices to do it!

Shame on the AVCA. Perhaps they received these plans from a coach and without editing just posted them. This coach, with respect, may not be up to date on the science of the sport that has been available for the last 25 years. No matter, the AVCA is one of the few educational resources for volleyball coaches in our country and with these free practice plans, new coaches will drag their athletes into a boring and monotonous set of practices that will see them exit the sport soon after. They thought volleyball was supposed to be fun!

Warmups are the biggest pushback when talking to coaches about how to make their practices more athlete centered. The tradition of run and stretch and footwork patterns and shuffles is dull and lifeless, it sucks the life out of a practice session and takes young athletes who crave the speed and excitement of the game and reduce it to pre programmed movements and actions. 

The war on warmups has three fronts to the battle. First is the science.

There are over 330 studies at the Center for Disease Control that state that static stretching before a workout is without value and can, in some cases, be harmful. A recent New York Times article on fitness myths listed this as #1! (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/well/move/fitness-myths.html)

It's also ridiculous to think that every athlete needs to stretch the same muscles. Setters, liberos and outside hitters use different muscles during practice but the idea of everyone doing the same stretches is as outdated as thinking everyone is comfortable in the same shoes.

Yes, a dynamic warmup is more effective than static stretching but if the same warmup is done at every practice the same way, human nature will take over and it will become rote and ineffective as athletes will just go through the motions to get to what they want to do....PLAY!

This leads to the second front of the war, engagement.

Go to a concert of a band you are a huge fan of. Chances are you will know the first song, probably the second and maybe even the third song. Why do music acts start concerts with songs that their fans know? To get them excited, jumping and dancing, singing along...engaging their audience.

Why can't this be the case at a volleyball practice? Why can't we engage athletes while they are warming up? Why can't we play short court monarch of the court with no jumping and passing only: competitive, fun, play! Why can't we rotate teams and then add setting to the game? Then add jumping or attacking and go full court? 

The same 10-15 minutes of running in circles, doing ineffective stretches and footwork patterns without any perception of the game just became 10-15 minutes of engaged athletes getting contacts, opportunities to read the ball, read players and the game, and oh yeah...have fun!

This is a simple fix for Coaches. It will take imagination and forcing yourself off your path of dependency, (coaching how you were coached), but the results from your athletes will prove to you quickly how much more effective this warm up is.

The third front in the war on warmups is financial.

The cost of gyms has, and continues, to skyrocket. Let's just take a small gym at a local middle school that charges $75 per hour. The cost of practice is $150 per team. If you take the first 15 minutes of practice running, stretching and avoiding a volleyball, you have charged your athletes $18.75 of practice time that was useless. That's $150 a month and over a 7 month season, comes to $1050. 

That's for just one team. Multiply that by how many teams are in your club and you can see the amount of money being flushed at the expense of outdated traditions.

One other thought. If you ARE the team getting 15 minutes more touches and opportunities to read every practice over a team that is running and stretching and boring their athletes every practice, who is going to show more improvement? As USAV Grassroots Guru John Kessel says often, "this is a learning competition." How better for our athletes to learn than to play?

If you have players that need to stretch because it is their mental or pre practice routine or they are coming back from injury, they have before practice starts to do what they need to. But once the whistle blows to start practice, put a ball into the warmup. Your athletes will respond!

As for the AVCA, there needs to be a reevaluation of what is being offered. If they want to become another of a long list of volleyball "content providers" with no responsibility for what they put out, then they should reevaluate what is being shared. If you are going to ignore science and engagement, what are you actually doing for your coaches? 

Make your warmups athlete centered, use your imagination to get them fun and engaging and give your team a leg up on the competition by giving them an extra 2 hours a month of play instead of running and stretching. 

They deserve it!

Let Them Off The Hook...

 Our lives are mired in prediction.

Open your eyes in the morning and the shower radio will estimate your drive to work based on previous days models, the weather and the day. And speaking of the weather, perhaps rain in the afternoon, so dress accordingly. Suddenly a text from the office: the boss might be in today so please make sure you have your reports up to date. Before you have left the house, you are already draped in predications that will dictate your day.  Of course, the ONLY thing we know about predictions is sometimes they are right, sometimes they are wrong.

Turn on the news and for the past six months, everyone with a pulse will tell you who will win the 2024 presidential election and by how much. Who will win the World Series? There are thousands who want to tell you who will win and many thousands still that want you to bet your daughter's college tuition on it. Before the NBA season's first jump ball, sports betting wants you to lay down your paycheck on who you think will be the Rookie of the Year and here are the names THEY think will be in the race for that award. Wait...what?

We have gotten lost between reality and the fantasy world of prediction and it has spread to our young athletes.

On August 12th, the Florida State Seminole football team was ranked #10 in the country. Let's  be clear, there was no preseason tournament to give FSU a solid footing at #10, this was prediction. From sports writers, from media and social media posts. From perhaps players and coaches in interviews. Regardless of the stimuli, FSU was a top 10 national powerhouse on August 12th.

Then they lost their first two games. 

One month later, the folks that bet on them, based on other's predictions, now called for the coach to be fired. They were the biggest disappointment in college football, the most underwhelming team of the season. 

Tragically what is lost amongst this hyperbole is the simple fact that sometimes predictions are right, and sometimes they're wrong. It doesn't seem like FSU was as good a football team as people predicted, but rather than admit their faulty predictions, sports writers, pundits, bettors and bookmakers turned their wrath onto a coach and a group of eighty 18-23 year olds. 

In 2012, a prognosticator named Nate Silver predicted the presidential election state by state: 50 for 50! He was  a genius. Four years later, he posted on his new prediction website fivethirtyeight, the following:

Excuses, misinformation and humility in hand, Nate Silver tumbled back to earth.

ESPN, which used to be a sports network showing different sports and games for 18-20 hours a day now broadcasts a game or two each day- maybe, using the rest of their airtime for prognosticators, prediction and advice to gamblers. Some of the content will be right, some will be wrong. But as long as the public consumes these opinions, don't look for the network to go back to broadcasting sports anytime soon on their main channel.

There are some "rules" that we, as sports fans, know. First, no matter what we think, sports are random. Half of teams win and half of teams lose  and that is the only certainty we can count on. Even sports that allow ties will have teams helped and hurt by the outcome.

At the root of a lot of this crystal ball gazing is the growth in online sports gambling, a prediction that was easy to see coming. But the speed of which it is growing is staggering. It is estimated by 2029, the total revenue of online gambling will exceed $65b from over 180 million users. It's no wonder websites, tv networks and prognosticators alike want a piece of this cash cow. And thus we see ESPN go from a sports network to one of prediction, criticism when they are wrong and gloating when they get one right!

Often, the person giving you their prediction isn't qualified. There are some excellent TV hosts who have never played the sport they are reporting on, never been in the locker room or chatted with a coach or players, and yet they are deemed the "expert" because they have the one quality the networks put above all others...they are good on TV!

Our Arizona Region, like so many others, will put together a seeding committee to place teams where they think they should be for the upcoming season. It's a small group who have no way of knowing all 13,000 members of our Arizona Region, who all the coaches are, which clubs are new, etc. They have only the self prediction of the team's coach or club director to base their information on. To no one's surprise, it is an imperfect science. And yet every season, Parents and coaches will use these anemic predictions to label their teams' seasons successful or disappointing.

Can we all agree that this is just wreckless and without merit?

Walk into a National Qualifier this season and listen to Parents talk about their son's team and the other teams in his pool. They talk as if they have been hired by the Youth Volleyball Network. "We shouldn't have any trouble with this team, they are small and their setter can't block." And when the final whistle blows and they do lose,  instinctively the coach doesn't know what he's doing, the players didn't try or work hard enough, the officials wanted the other team to win, etc. All of this vitriol because we can't reconcile that our predictions are just that: a guess!

The tidal wave that is sports gambling and prediction is too seismic to thwart. It will be with us forever. Too many names are made with the outlandish prediction that comes true, (never mind the sweeping under the field of the dozens they missed). This isn't a call to disarm those with the microphones to start doing their jobs and actually dig, find and report true news stories: the advent of social media has left that in the rearview in the early 2000's. 

But let's let kids off the hook. Let games be played, appreciate the effort and growth and the fun they re having. There is plenty of time to make them the bullseye of misinformed rhetoric by those with oversized vocal chords or a large microphone at their disposal.

Your athletes don't deserve to be favorites or underdogs. They don't deserve the added pressure of odds in or out of their favor. 

They just deserve to be young athletes learning a sport. Please...

Opportunities Lost...

She stood there listening intently. Granted, it was spoken in English and she was not, but a team of translators got the point across. Game like training! Don't waste valuable practice time on things that will have NO transfer to the game of volleyball. 

She was a former professional club coach who had years of experience. And she nodded enthusiastically as the conversation encompassed practice: drill design, warm ups, transfer, engagement and retention. She looked like she understood!

When the clinic ended and her U18 girls team took the court, she instructed them on their warm up. And 15 girls grabbed a volleyball and began to dribble it as they ran around the court several times. The athletes, just following orders, seemed unengaged and for sure had done this warm up before.

Opportunity lost.

How about the pickleball instructor at the indoor facility in the west valley. What a gig! With your pink shoes displaying your brand, you have 8 kids, ages 7-12 maybe and teach them a sport that they can play with their parents for years to come. 

And how did pink shoes start practice?

First, of course, they ran around the facility. Jogging a few times around 12 or so courts when the actual pickleball court is the size of a large dining room table seemed to be overkill but it took 10 minutes of his one hour of lesson time. 

Next, he put cones down the middle of one side of the court, and with the kids standing on the sidelines, shuffled to the cones, touching the top and shuffling back. Over and over. Then they stood the other direction to make sure they were shuffling from both sides of their bodies.

The time at the end of this "warm up" was 19 after the hour. As we left, there was still not a single racquet or pickleball taken out or on the court.

Opportunity lost.

There is no telling how many kids will go through these worthless practice session and realize that pickleball is  not the game for them. ALL because a coach doesn't understand simple skill acquisition! 

Dear Parents. How are you okay with this? How are you good with a coach who uses 1/3 of the hour YOU are paying handsomely for to reinforce movements that quite simple could be better transferred and retained if done within a game like scenario? How is this okay?

Parents will complain of having to drive 45 minutes to a tournament to watch their daughter play, but they are okay getting ripped off by coaches pretending to be good trainers yet NOT training the game they are being paid for?

Parents, hold your coaches accountable! Learn more about how athletes acquire skill. Look into the ideas of motor learning and ask lots of questions. You may find those club dues you have worked so hard for have gone to waste with a coach who is pulling his drills off of Instagram and has no concept of how to actually train a sport.

Coaches, when will you stop following the path of dependency, doing what YOUR coach did to you training, practice and discipline wise because it is the easiest road to travel? What has to click in you that if you are asking your athletes to come out of their comfort zones, to try new things, to fail and learn, why are you taking the hypocrite's way and doing just the opposite?

For parents and coaches that fall under these categories, your young athletes will be the ones that pay the price. Maybe quitting the sport, maybe never reaching their potential, maybe both.

Opportunity Lost.

Stewie, Rafi and three in between....

As new books, new research and more podcasts pop up, there are even more great quotes from people way smarter than us. Take a look at what grabbed our attention the last couple of weeks.

Dr. Michael Gervais is a successful author, podcaster, speaker and of course high performance sports psychologist. Here, Dr. Mike talks about the five psychological skills he works with his athletes and clients on.

"So there's a whole process to better understand who you are. What is the vision of a compelling future? What are your first principles? Can you articulate your purpose? And so there's a self discovery process that's the first thing, The second is there are very clear mental skills that you can train, just like you train your physical body. You can train your these mental skills. It's kind of sets and reps, if you will. So, deep focus, being calm, confident. Those are a handful of the big ones that we would train. Then there's the third component, the third factor, if you will, which is psychological frameworks. So developing your psychological framework, are you optimistic or pessimistic? Do you approach success or avoid failure? Do you see things as an opportunity or a threat? Have you mastered or are you mastering the ability to control what's in your control? Have you a deep framework to understand how to live with passion in any environment, not just the ones that are easy? I love playing the guitar, but I also need to have passion in other parts of my life as well. So understanding how to do that with a sense of resilience or grit. And and then there's a whole set of recovery practices. Those are also skills that you can build, and it's the basic ones everyone knows, but it's just making sure that they hold a seat at the table of high performance. And then the last is the concept of mindfulness. So mindfulness is the golden thread that runs through everything. It is a skill, it is a state of being, and over time, it is an enduring trait. And mindfulness is the practice of being a bit more aware so that you can live in the present moment more often. And the present moment is where all the psychological skills are trained and expressed and that's where everything amazing takes place."

New York Liberty All Star Breanna Stewart had her chances in game one of the WNBA finals v. the Minnesota Lynx. But in the closing minutes, Stewie missed a couple of open shots and a free throw which would have put the Liberty up late in the game. 

Stewart said after the game, “I want to be taking these shots. I feel like knowing my teammates and that everyone has confidence in me is important. It’s kind of like on to the next and still making sure I’m aggressive any time on the court. Obviously as a player, it’s very frustrating. But bounce back for Game 2.”

It's a standard athlete trope, bounce back for game two. But the reality is, what good is it to dwell on what has happened in the past? Learn from it, be better going forward. Sports writers and pundits eviscerated Stewart but she is at the elite end of her sport for a reason. Sometimes they go in, sometimes they don't. Winning and losing is random and your job, as an athlete, is to be ready the next time you are put into that situation with your body, mind and heart. While no one here is a prognosticator, don't be surprised to see Stewart rise to the occasion in game two.

"I think that feeling is that idea to trust your discomfort. I'm in this situation right now and I'm uncomfortable, and I've just got to find a way to articulate for myself why it's making me uncomfortable and why I need to make a change, and hopefully, the act of making change is the antidote to that discomfort and anxiety. Now, do you know that that change will be successful? you have no idea. But the act of doing it teaches you in some respect, that you are not a prisoner of your circumstance, your situation, any of those things. Your fate has not been written."

Actor, comedian John Stewart explains on a podcast how he deals with the idea of handling adversity. His idea of trusting discomfort is a staple of what great coaches ask of their athletes.

Dr. Keith Davids is a pioneer in Motor Learning and Skill Acquisition circles and he was asked about how weight lifters learn technique using Ecological Dynamics.

One of the things I'm really interested in now is that understanding has important implications for the way that we practice. Practice is not blind repetition, automatization of a movement or a technique that's been handed down. I saw somebody perform that way and it was great, and I want to replicate that. That's not how athletes should function. It's really about getting them to understand, how do they achieve their intended task goal which is to lift the bar with a certain weight above their head and the elbow joints have to reveal a certain angle, but they've just sort of slipped a bit of the conscious move so the way they address the environment is different when you're just repeating, rehearsing and complying with a movement pattern that you've got in your mind, compared to you actively engaging with the environment and interacting with these weights."

And finally, this week one of tennis' legends announced his retirement at the end of the 2024 season. Rafael Nadal has been at the top of his sport for 20 years and in this quote from USOC Sport Psychologist Peter Haberl, you might understand why Nadal was so consistently good for so long.

"When you hear him after the first round, and he's being asked about his opponent the next round, in the second round, his answer is very consistent. 'It's a test and will be the toughest match ever.' And in a third round, 'This should be the toughest match ever.' And to a fourth round, 'Toughest match ever.' In qualifying, 'Toughest match ever.' He's trying to find the toughest match ever. And what that tells me is, by approaching it that way, he never falls into the trap of thinking things will be easy. And then when they're hard, not being able to adjust to that. So, once he expects things to be difficult, he'll come fully prepared. And that way, he's never surprised by an opponent."