Stuart McMillan
ALTIS CEO
Jamaican Swagger
Back in 2013, I wrote the following post while I was staying in Jamaica with my buddy Donovan Bailey. Aside from doing a lot of nothing, I spent a ton of time at tracks, talking to coaches, watching young athletes train, talking to former athletes, and trying to further understand what exactly it is about this tiny island that enables...
Perfection
I have made a lot of mistakes in my career; as a person, a coach, and a business owner. I'm not proud of those mistakes - but without them, I am not the person, coach, or business-owner that I am today. There is an honesty in making mistakes - a necessary confrontation with reality. People seem proud of their perfectionism,...
The Joneses
"the leaves of a tree delight us more than the roots"Tolstoy We have a natural proclivity to gravitate towards that which is new, and exciting. The newest Apple product, the bigger house, the faster car; we're on a never-ending quest to out-do each other. And ourselves. Just two decades ago, things that were new, or didn't even exist, are now...
Elevator Philosophy
As coaches, we are faced with multiple questions every day, and having a framework to guide us in answering these questions is essential. It is an obvious statement - but one that is surprisingly often overlooked. Rather than writing programs based upon educated personal beliefs (or a 'training philosophy'), many of us mindlessly prescribe what was given to us when...
Sport Science – what is the point?
This is a guest-post by Canadian Strength Coach and Sport Scientist, Dr. Matt Jordan. Back in 2014, while we were coaching our respective athletes at the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, we sat down and discussed quite a few topics in depth. This post was the result of one of these discussions - and was based on a question I had...
Just a Dumb Coach
Jodie Williams is smarter than me. As hard as it is for me to admit that, it is true. Anaso Jobodwana is also smarter than me. So is Lolo Jones. And Kaillie Humphries. And Ameer Webb. Andre De Grasse. Steve Mesler. Christian Malcolm. Glenn Smith. And a few hundred other folk who have had the (dis?)pleasure of my...
THE DRUNK, THE POLICEMAN, AND THE PRIEST
None of us learn something new, and hold it entirely independent of what we already know. We incorporate it into the history of personal knowledge we have been creating our entire lives. This is how knowledge works, and it often throws up challenges in how we appreciate the things that are not happening outside of our brains, our worlds, our existences. It is so easy to...
#EmbraceTheSuck
Over the last week, I have been sharing my thoughts on ‘leaning into discomfort’ as a way to reduce ‘limbic friction’, and how we can seek out such opportunities. Starting February 1st, myself - as well as a few friends and colleagues from around the world (won’t you join us?) will be ‘embracing the suck’, by doing something sucky...
Try a Little Suckiness
As I previously wrote, the embrace the suck concept first resonated with me a few years back. To bring a little suckiness into my life, I resolved to do something that sucked every day. I generally stuck to physical things - but this also included more psychologically challenging things as well (such as reading articles, books, etc. that went against...
Do the Work
“First say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do.” Epictetus How do we get comfortable with the uncomfortable? By leaning into the discomfort. Analyze high performers in any domain - sport, business, art, etc., and you will find that one commonality is that high performers don’t wait for inspiration - they simply ...
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