Articles
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...
ALTIS 360 Highlight – Speed Development with Clive Brewer
The latest addition to the FREE section of ALTIS 360 comes courtesy of Clive Brewer and his presentation titled, Developing Speed in a Chaotic Movement Context. Clive has 25 years of experience coaching a variety of sporting populations with most of his work coming at the professional level in Rugby, Soccer, and Baseball. You can get an understanding of what...
4 Reflections from the ALTIS Community in 2020
It is typical of our staff (and I’m sure many of you) to spend time in the latter stages of December reflecting on the past 12 months. For us, this is often centered around our programming, the successes and failures of the athletes we work with, areas we need to improve upon, and so on. This year though is a...
Strength and Endurance – Strange Bedfellows?
The following is an excerpt from the digital Course, Coaching the Endurance Events. Check it out here! “What about the added body mass? Won’t this make my runners slow?” This question highlights a legitimate concern, and has been used as justification for distance runners to not lift weights for decades. The most simple explanation for this is that the majority of...