I attended the SportInMind Football Psychology Workshop, with Dan Abrahams, partly because I have just started onto the football coaching pathway, but mostly because I am becoming more and more interested in what Dan describes as “human and performance psychology – the internal that drives the external.”
And I have to say that Dan did exactly what he set out to do – challenged (in a good way) my own approach to how I coach. (more…)
“Slow down, and you will bowl straighter”. I never appreciated receiving this advice when I was a young (never very) quick bowler, and I certainly don’t like hearing it now, from an experienced player advising a youngster who I have been encouraging to (try to) bowl fast.
Bowling fast and straight is not impossible. It is challenging, but anything worth doing generally is. Being told to slow down does not make a fast bowler. And the role of the coach has to be to encourage the exceptional.
But how to deal with this (well-intentioned but ultimately unhelpful) advice from beyond the boundary?
By making sure that everyone connected with the team – players, parents, other coaches, committee members – knows about “the plan”, whatever it might be. Fast bowlers try to bowl fast; slow bowlers flight the ball and give it a rip; fielders are encouraged to try for run outs (so you had better be ready to back-up the throws).
And that’s where “connection and extension” comes in. (more…)
Hardly anyone sings the Star Spangled banner, to the dismay of my companion, CC, a baseball traditionalist (who does sing)…I am a visitor, so I am forgiven. The line “the land of the free” does get the crowd cheering, but why wait so long to participate?
“They are all too uptight”, is CC’s diagnosis – “there’s no physical contact in the crowd, and no one sings until they have had a few drinks.” And, indeed, come the seventh innings stretch, many more voices join in with “Take me down to the ball game”. And by comparison with the anthem, the rendition of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline…oh, oh, oh”, a favourite for the Red Sox fans, before the ninth is almost ecstatic.
But I had expected something else in the home of the brave, and so did CC.
The Teesra 