Articles
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...
Unique Abilities
An athlete’s unique abilities are those factors that co-exist and interact to form the athlete’s ‘authentic movement solution’. There are both internal and external factors that make coaching each athlete unique. Their structure, their force-producing abilities, their coordination, and their current technical understanding of the task at hand means that movement solutions are individual. Their relative levels of neuromuscular and cardiovascular...
#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 ...
Embrace Change
Anyway - the point to all of this is to talk 'Embrace the Suck'. Next month, in an attempt to reduce my ‘limbic friction’ - i.e. to reduce the gap between intention and action - I will be running 5 miles, trap-bar deadlifting 100 kilos 100 times, and doing 100 push-ups - every day, for a month. This will be...
Limbic Friction
A few years back, I asked my buddy Brian MacKenzie if he could come out to Phoenix, and present at an ALTIS Apprentice Coach Program. He said he’d love to - but could he bring a friend? Seems he was working with this friend on some stuff around fear and breathing. I said - “absolutely! That sounds cool. Let’s do it!” Turned out that...
Embrace the Suck
“Embrace the Suck” The first person I heard say this was David Goggins a few years back. Goggins’ slogan is rooted in the assertion that we are - generally - pretty soft. As soon as something becomes overly challenging, we stop - we find a way not to do it, or an easier way to do it. We impose limits...