So… You Don’t Like Your Coach or a Teammate
Learning to deal with difficult people is a right of passage in life, and whether we like it or not, we will encounter many different people who challenge us in this way our entire lives.
Sports provide a unique opportunity to learn how to deal with this at a young age. In this article, we’ll break down several methods to help you reclaim your power when having to deal with a difficult coach or teammate.
Learning to deal with difficult people is a right of passage in life, and whether we like it or not, we will encounter many different people who challenge us in this way our entire lives.
Sports provide a unique opportunity to learn how to deal with this at a young age. In this article, we’ll break down several methods to help you reclaim your power when having to deal with a difficult coach or teammate.
Without question, one of the most egregious human atrocities in our recent history was the Holocaust. Survivor Dr. Edith Eger, who also has recently authored the phenomenal book The Gift: 14 Lessons to Save Your Life, is one of the most profound works you can read.
It is akin to the popular Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, who was also a Holocaust survivor. Both Eger and Frankl survived a hell none of us can possibly imagine, but on top of that, both have expertise in psychology, making their writings some of the most valuable tools we can use to handle our modern problems.
I mention the Holocaust not to contrast against and thereby minimize our own problems, but to present three questions as they relate to a common mistake many of us make:
What is the severity of this issue really?
Am I making this particular situation worse by the way I am choosing to respond to it?
Is there a better way I can respond and handle myself, which ultimately is all I can control?
It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens that hurts us.
Our character, our basic identity, does actually not have to hurt at all.
In fact, our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge our character and develop the internal powers, the freedom to handle difficult circumstances in the future and to inspire others to do so as well.
With over 24 years experience in athletics as a player and now development coach, here are a few strategies I recommend for dealing with difficult coaches or teammates:
#1: Avoid a rigid perspective
It’s way too easy to get caught in thinking something either good or bad, when in reality, there is no such thing as good or bad, only how we choose to view and respond to any given situation.
So you feel like your coach plays favorites, and you’re not one of them. Or the way they speak to you is demeaning, constantly negative, or they don’t play you as much as you think they should; the important question to ask yourself is not “why me?”, but “how can I best respond and handle this?”
“Suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional.”
Try one or all of these:
Have the courage to establish more frequent and better communication with your coach. Typically in any relationship, when both people can gain a better understanding of one another, things tend to work out more positively. If you have a burning question for your coach (what can I do to earn more playing time?), or concern (I don’t like the way you talk to me sometimes), then go talk to them about it! And if you’re sitting over here feeling like they should reach out to you because they’re the adult and authority in this situation, think again, few coaches will do that, especially at higher levels.
The head coach too intimidating? Reach out to an assistant coach or teammate you trust. Someone else intimately involved in the ongoings of your team is a much better resource than consulting with a parent or friend outside of the team because they will always have a biased opinion towards you. Also, be mindful to only speak positively about others! Use these conversations more like an informal interview to get the other person’s take on how they would recommend the best way to deal with this particular difficult person.
Therapy! I’m not joking. Emotions are challenging, and learning how to cope with them in a healthy way is an extremely powerful tool! It’s unfortunate that our society views therapy as taboo, we can all benefit from it, even if we think our mental health is on point.
#2: Be Very Careful with Who You Choose to Listen To
Not everyone has good advice, especially if they have no experience in your situation. For example, if you are wanting financial advice, you wouldn’t ask someone who is broke and living in their car. The same goes for sports. If you are wanting advice on how to best get through a certain situation, you wouldn’t ask someone who has never played or coached the game.
This is a mistake I see a lot of players making!
Even when players ask me for help, I still encourage them to specifically address issues with someone directly involved on their team.
As we subscribe to human nature, it’s much easier to go to people who we know are going to tell us what we want to hear, and comfort us through our difficult experience while we vent and rage about someone not in the room.
The more difficult and courageous act is to go directly to the person you want to vent and rage about, and confront them directly in a positive and productive way.
#3: Don’t Blame, Including Yourself
Eventually, if a person endures enough negativity from another, a self-destructive unraveling of confidence can ensue. We want to avoid this at all costs! Not only are we allowing another person to vampire suck our own power away from us, but we kill our chances of rising out of this situation more quickly.
Whatever is happening, try to take yourself out of being the focal point or victim. Do your best to view things from as unemotional perspective as possible and reframe the situation to something that is happening for you not to you. Under this perspective, the situation is now a gift and opportunity to help you grow, rather than something you need to beat yourself up about.
Likewise, don’t blame anyone else for your situation, including that difficult coach or teammate you see as being the cause! Instead, work on taking ownership for the way you chose to respond.
Remember, This person is Happening For You
Reclaiming your control in a situation is the byproduct of recognizing how you are letting someone affect you, and what steps you can take to courageously reclaim your power.
Take ownership for your thoughts, behavior, and actions, and I bet you will see a tremendous difference in your interactions with the person you originally deemed as difficult. Shoot, you may even become friends!
3 Common Mistakes Players Make With Their Shooting Mechanics
As the third hardest skill to learn in sports, learning to shoot the basketball takes hours of time, refinement, repetition, and disciplined habits in order to get good at it. That said, it's very easy to develop bad habits! Here’s three common mistakes I see as a player development coach, and how to fix them.
As the third hardest skill to learn in sports, learning to shoot the basketball takes hours of time, refinement, repetition, and disciplined habits in order to get good at it. That said, it's very easy to develop bad habits!
Mistake #1: Awkward Stance
Players most often have a stance that is too wide (vs too narrow). This can cause a valgus stress on your knees which can eventually lead to knee pain. It is also inefficient because when your stance is wider than your hips on any vertical movement (jumping on a rebound, shot, etc.), your body leaks power horizontally and you aren’t able to get as much power from your legs into your shot. This can in turn lead to weird compensations with your upper body!
Thus, start refining your shot by first tackling the broken parts of your stance instead of starting from the top down.
Focus on
Hip width stance
Toes slightly angled away from your shooting hand
Legs bent in an athletic position
Ball straight out from your belly button
Drill: Line (or) Cone Hop Overs
Drill: 180 Degree Shots
Mistake #2: Pausing on Your Shot
Some coaches or players refer to this is having a “hitch”. It’s kind of like when you’re listening to your favorite song and your friend in the backseat starts singing along off key and the entire song is now ruined. Simply put, pauses in your shot destroy the rhythm.
As a strength and conditioning specialist as well as a player development coach, I often relate this in my mind to a hang clean or hang snatch.
In a hang snatch, for someone to lift a significant amount of weight over their head safely and efficiently, the entire body must work together synergistically. Weight lifters refer to this as “triple extension”, but this same term can be applied to a basketball players shot. If a part of the chain (ankles, knees, hips) or also in our case, arms, moves independently of the other moving parts, it’s just not as efficient.
Focus on
Your legs and the ball moving up at the exact same time
Pretend the ball and your hips are connected by a string
Drill: Tap & Shoot
Mistake #3: Too Low of a Follow Through
Having too low of a follow through results in a flat shot. If you’re shooting in the gym alone, you’ll know your shot is flat if it’s constantly hitting the front of the rim. Before fixing this, make sure you have worked on the other two mistakes first! A high, perfect follow through is a result of the rest of the process being on point.
Focus on
Bringing the ball directly above your forehead
Extending your elbow under then through the ball
Keep the ball off your palm
Freeze your guide hand at your release point (right above your forehead)
Drill: Extension Shots
Build Your Bunnies! Two Week Jump Rope Workout
Jump rope is one of the best low impact ways to improve bounce, foot speed, and improve stamina. It is a common misconception that jump roping is hard on a person’s body. Because most people run heel to toe, jumping rope is actually easier on our joints because it forces us onto our mid-foot and our joints stay stacked over one another the entire time. In turn, this can assist in becoming a mid-foot runner, which is exceedingly better for your body than being a heel-striker.
Jump rope is one of the best low impact ways to improve bounce, foot speed, and improve stamina. It is a common misconception that jump roping is hard on a person’s body. Because most people run heel to toe, jumping rope is actually easier on our joints because it forces us onto our mid-foot and our joints stay stacked over one another the entire time. In turn, this can assist in becoming a mid-foot runner, which is exceedingly better for your body than being a heel-striker.
Reap the benefits of this two week program by using it as a warm up to whatever training you have planned that day.
Week 1
Day 1
5 Rounds (5 Minutes)
20 Seconds Single Unders
20 Seconds Skip Steps
20 Seconds Two Feet Alternating
Day 2
4 Rounds (6 Minutes)
30 Seconds Single Unders
30 Seconds Skip Steps
30 Seconds Two Feet Alternating
Day 3
2 Rounds (2 Minutes)
20 Seconds Single Unders
20 Seconds Skip Steps
20 Seconds Two Feet Alternating
3 Rounds (4 Minutes)
20 Seconds Scissor Hops
20 Seconds Two Feet Alternating
20 Seconds Lateral Hops
20 Seconds Two Feet Alternating
Week 2
Day 1
3 Rounds (3 Minutes)
20 Seconds Single Unders
10 Seconds Double Unders
20 Seconds Skip Steps
10 Seconds Double Unders
3 Rounds (4 Minutes)
20 Seconds Scissor Hops
20 Seconds Two Feet Alternating
20 Seconds Lateral Hops
20 Seconds Two Feet Alternating
Day 2
2 Rounds (3 Minutes)
30 Seconds Single Unders
15 Seconds Double Unders
30 Seconds Skip Steps
15 Seconds Double Unders
4 Rounds (4 Minutes)
30 Seconds Three Step (right)
30 Seconds Three Step (left)
Day 3
2 Rounds (3 Minutes)
30 Seconds Single Unders
15 Seconds Double Unders
30 Seconds Skip Steps
15 Seconds Double Unders
4 Rounds (4 Minutes)
30 Seconds Three Step (right)
30 Seconds Three Step (left)
1 Rounds (1 Minute)
30 Seconds Double Unders
30 Seconds Skip Steps
30 Seconds Double Unders
Make sure to super charge the benefits of this workout by also using the following mobility hacks to keep all the tissues of your lower leg happy. Click the image below for videos and descriptions of all three!
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The Free Super-Supplement: Sleep
Believe it or not, there is a free super-supplement accessible to everyone that can prolong lifespan, significantly improve athletic and academic performance, improve mood and energy levels throughout the day, speed recovery, and slow aging. What is it? Sleep.
Believe it or not, there is a free super-supplement accessible to everyone that has colossal positive effects on every aspect of your life. What is it? Sleep.
Before we dive in to the why’s and z’s of sleep, I’d like to ask you to do something a little strange: put your tongue to the rough of your mouth, and now imagine right above here is a ticking clock. There is actually a group of neurons here, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) that controls your biological clock.
This biological clock is known as your circadian rhythm and is defined as the physical, mental, and behavioral changes your body undergoes during a 24 hour period.
Now, this is very important for us to understand because of the alarming impact this can have either positively or negatively on our daily energy levels, athletic performance, overall quality of life, and aging.
SUPER-CHARGE PERFORMANCE
A study done on the Stanford Men’s Basketball team published in 2011 revealed incredible findings about how sleep directly impacted athletic performance of the eleven players who participated. Important to note, because the study was done between January and March, all of the participants self-identified as being in “peak shape” as they were in-season.
The findings of this study were incredible.
Participants were required to increase their sleep duration per night, but not exceed 10 hours per night. This ended up averaging to 8.5 hours per night for 5 - 7 weeks, which resulted in the players dropping nearly a full second of a 282ft sprint (baseline to baseline, baseline to half court), and improving their free throw percentage and 3 point percentage both by 9%.
That is an unbelievable improvement in performance over less than two months! With results like that, if sleep could be bottled and sold it would be one of the leading sales supplements in the world!
“These improvements following sleep extension suggest that peak performance can only occur when an athlete’s overall sleep and sleep habits are optimal.”
On top of the significant improvements in their sprinting and shooting, the players also reported less daytime sleepiness, better mood, and had better scores on a reaction test.
Academically, another study published in 2019 involving collegiate athletes across the nation, shockingly revealed that “The presence of sleep difficulty was associated with a 47% increased likelihood of a B average, compared to an A. Also, sleep difficulty was associated with a 118% increased likelihood of a C average and a 111% increased likelihood of a D/F average.”
Studies have also linked lack of sleep to an increased likelihood of concussions. This could be a result of lack of sleep affecting coordination and decision making. In general, the risk of injury as an athlete goes up 1.7x if you are getting less than 8 hours of sleep.
Over-Worked, Under-Rested
In our culture, we are often programmed to believe that in order to be successful we need to work harder, and to do so, sleep less. This lack of respect for sleep has directed our culture to a strange dichotomy regarding hard work that reduces our overall quality of life and lifespan.
When you don’t sleep well, you utilize only a fraction of what you’re capable of, and underperforming, like your lack of sleep, becomes your norm. Many of us then compensate with pharmaceuticals or caffeine (which, though delicious in the form of a cup of coffee, is still a drug), to keep ourselves functioning.
With drug use, there are of course side effects, which makes dosing sleep like medicine even more appealing, because there are no side effects.
You inject more sleep in your life you end up better protected against depression, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease. Furthermore, if you’re trying to lose weight, optimal sleep is a mandatory supplement to be taking.
Read on for six clutch ways to boost your energy starting today.
Move Over Sandman, Summon a Sleepicorn
ENERGY HACK #1: LIGHT IT UP
Light, specifically sunlight, helps our bodies release day time hormones and neurotransmitters that help regulate our biological clock. Our sleep cycles, or circadian timing system, is highly impacted by the amount of light we get during the day. Too little daylight exposure, and too much artificial light exposure during the day, results in poor sleep at night.
“Many of us are not aware that we are light deprived and suffering from the effects of light deprivation. Because of our eye’s extraordinary ability to adapt to changes in brightness, we tend to not be aware of how little light we actually receive when indoors. Typical indoor lighting is 100x less bright than outdoor light on a sunny day. Even a cloudy day delivers 10x more brightness than ordinary indoor lighting.”
Serotonin in particular is a powerful neurotransmitter known to make us feel happy and is a major player in sleep.
Production of serotonin is influenced by our diet, activity levels, and you guessed it, sunlight exposure. Sunlight exposure also promotes vitamin D production in our bodies, which shares the burden with serotonin or our mood, immune health, energy levels, and sleep health.
Daily Do: within the first 30 - 60 minutes of waking, if possible, get sunlight exposure to your eyes.
On a clear day, you want to get sunlight exposure to your eyes for about 5 minutes (no sunglasses). Obviously, avoid staring directly into the sun and burning your retinas.
On cloudy days, you especially need to get outside and view sunlight. You’ll want to get about 10 minutes of sunlight exposure to your eyes on these days. Rainy, or very densely cloud covered, you want to get as much as 20 - 30 minutes of sunlight exposure. As you may expect, it doesn’t count if it’s through a window or windshield.
If we don’t have access to sunlight (even through clouds), turn on artificial lights, but once the sun has risen you want to get outside and view the sunlight. Artificial light does not, unfortunately, replace the sunlight. Contrarily, artificial lights specifically from our devices are enough to disrupt our sleep by messing up our circadian rhythym.
“Light viewing early in the day is the most powerful stimulus for wakefulness throughout the day and it has a powerful positive impact on your ability to fall and stay asleep throughout the night.”
Energy Hack #2: Be Consistent AF
The quality and depth of your sleep is greatly enhanced by keeping a consistent sleep schedule, even on the weekends. Your “money time”, as Shawn Stevenson, author of Sleep Smarter, likes to refer to it as, is between 10pm and 2am.
This is when the secretion of human growth hormone (HGH), melatonin, and other hormones are at their peak. And trust me, you want as much of the “youth” hormone, as HGH is commonly referred to, as possible due to its restorative, anti-aging properties.
If we habitually stay up late (past 10 or 11pm) then we are robbing ourselves of the super-supplements golden powers. A sign that you are not benefitting from money time is if you feel fatigued in the morning even after a “good nights rest”. This further expresses the importance of hormone production our bodies experience during these hours for nighttime recovery translating to energy throughout the next day!
This is absolutely terrible news for overnight shift workers and a main reason why it has been classified as a group 2A carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. This is the same group that fried foods, lead exposure, chronic salon or barbershop chemical exposure, and red meat consumption are in.
This is a terrible and ironic reality, as many shift workers are on the job protecting the health of others - doctors, nurses, law enforcement officers - at the expense of their own. Though true money time may not be available for shift workers, keeping your sleep schedule as consistent as possible (even if that looks very strange on a day to day basis), will still make your biological clock happier than catching z’s at random opportunities.
Daily Do: Keep your bedtime and wake time as consistent as possible. On weekends, avoid sleeping in beyond an hour past your normal wake up time, even if that means getting less sleep than normal.
Athlete Bonus Fact: Have trouble sleeping before a big game or event? Good news is that if you bank a couple weeks of normal and optimal sleep before this one night of bad sleep, your performance won’t be that affected.
Energy Hack #3: Collect That Sweat
Time to stack two free super-supplements on top of each other by focusing on a routine to get the medicine of movement in your day on the regular. One mechanism that exercise provides our body is the increase in core temperature, which is an excellent way to stimulate wakefulness and energy early in the day. This in turn comes full circle and translates to sleepiness at night!
With strength training, the wonderful byproduct of muscle is a reservoir of anti-aging hormones. This is no exaggeration, other variables aside, you can stay younger longer if you have more muscle on your body.
Ironically, when you workout you are breaking down your body, so that money time regenerative sleep we discussed earlier is the frosting on the cake.
Daily Do: Evidence indicates that morning workouts are ideal for getting the best sleep at night, so if you can, get your workout in around 7am and watch the rest of your day unfurl like a sleepicorn farting a rainbow.
Energy Hack #4: Eat Early, Not Late
What you eat and when you eat are two equally important considerations in optimizing your sleep and energy. If you eat early in the day, you trigger an increase in metabolism and body temperature that make you more alert.
On the other hand, eating too close to bed, specifically food with high amounts of sugar, can cause sleep disturbances, including nightmares!
Certain foods, and this is likely highly individual as there is still quite a bit of research being done in this area, can wake you up during our lightest form of sleep, REM sleep, where we dream more.
Energy Hack #5: Time Caffeine Strategically
Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman highly recommends that you wait 90 - 120 minutes after waking to consume caffeine (cringe!) because it minimizes the afternoon crash or dip in energy later in the day. Sub out your caffeine with a glass of water with a sprinkle of natural salt and you will feel better all day long.
Furthermore, consume your final caffeine dose earlier than 6 hours before bed. A study done at by Drake et al., exposed a hidden harmful misnomer of consuming caffeine within this window. Through analysis of brain activity from headband sleep monitors, the study revealed that participants lost a full hour of sleep, even though subjectively they thought they slept normally. Thus, even if you fall and stay asleep fine, caffeine can still negatively affect the architecture of your sleep.
Energy Hack #6: Stop with the blue light
In Sleep Smarter, Stevenson says that “Avoiding screen time at night is likely the number one thing you can do to improve your sleep quality immediately.”
The artificial blue light emanating from our devices confuses our body’s biological clock by making it think it’s daytime. In a nutshell, the bluelight makes it harder to fall asleep, creates shorter REM sleep, and results in feeling less energized the following day.
SUMMON YOUR INNER SLEEPICORN!
If you are suffering from poor energy, attacking your sleep habits is one of the quickest, and potentially easiest ways to set yourself on the right path. It’s free, painless, and produces near immediate benefits.
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3 Next Level Mobility Hacks for Knee & Ankle Pain
Maintenance on our calf muscles as well as all of their surrounding tissues and overall biomechanical system, is critically important to maintaining and improving athletic performance as well as mitigating injury.
Since Dahmer is trending as a top show on Netflix right now, it seems appropriate to note that if we were to eat a human calf, it would be a grisly, chewy, nasty, meal.
Cringey to think about in that respect, yet so true because the calf muscle undergoes an extreme number of loading cycles during an average day. The typical active human takes 10,000 steps daily, and the average athlete will take many more than that, usually under more intense conditions of force output like jumping, cutting, and sprinting.
That said, maintenance on our calf muscles as well as all of their surrounding tissues and overall biomechanical system, is critically important to maintaining and improving athletic performance as well as mitigating injury.
Scar Balls
The biggest issue with mobility I see as a coach is that most of us neglect it, possibly because we don’t know how to utilize these tools effectively or we’re just being lazy bums. Hence the purpose of this post, may it help you heal any pre-existing naggy injury, or prevent disaster from striking all together.
As the master of mobilization techniques, Dr. Kelly Starrett, says in his book Becoming a Supple Leopard:
“Your calves are prone to sliding surface restrictions. Left untreated that stiffness aggregates into intramuscular adhesions and knotted up scar balls that compromise mechanics and increase potential for injury.”
Scar balls doesn’t sound particularly comfortable and this becomes very evident when employing the following mobilization techniques to optimize performance and save your unedible lower legs from injury.
Key note: if you don’t use these, or other, mobility hacks on a regular basis, they will give you little benefit. It’s kind of like when your dentist sternly eyes you over the brims of their glasses after you tell them you’ve only been flossing your teeth once or twice a week. As the saying goes, “Floss the teeth you want to keep!” which becomes a good way to think about mobility as well, do it often or else.
Mobility Hack #1: Anterior Tib Smash
Your first few times doing this particular mobilization, you may want to throw the lacrosse ball through the wall or be tempted to only smash your tib for a few seconds, but I promise if you hang out on there for at least a minute, it will get noticeably better, especially if you can apply this prescription a few times a week and not just a few times a year.
This mobilization is a great way to prevent or reduce ankle and knee pain.
Perform for at least 2 minutes on each side.
Mobility Hack #2: Calf Bone Saw
Drape your ankle over a foam roller and then cross your opposite leg over the top of your ankle. Use your top leg to saw back and forth across the leg on the foam roller to really dig into your heel cord, soleus, and gastrocnemius.
Perform this mobilization for at least 10 seconds of sawing in 5 different spots up the length of your calf starting at your heel cord and ending at the biggest part of your gastrocnemius.
Mobility Hack #3: Elevated Banded Ankle Distraction
This is a far better way to improve flexibility of the calf and range of motion in the ankle than old school stretching against a wall because it’s actually quite difficult to elicit change in the tissues when just hanging out in a static position. In Becoming a Supple Leopard, Dr. Starrett compares this to hanging onto a piece of steel cable hoping it will stretch.
The second reason, is that this particular mobilization targets more than the muscle. It is also addresses the ankle capsule and our fascia, or the connective tissue that encapsulates our muscles.
Fast forward to the end of the below video for the Elevated Banded Ankle Distraction.
Perform this mobilization for at least 15 to 20 repetitions on each side.
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The Hard Work Dichotomy
Training human resiliency is a delicate balance between finding a person’s limits consistently, while also staying within healthy mental and physical boundaries. This can feel like a walk on a tightrope, because we all know that to improve we must stretch outside of our comfort zone, but how much is enough and how much is too much?
Training human resilience is a delicate balance between finding a person’s limits consistently, while also staying within healthy mental and physical boundaries. This can feel like a walk on a tightrope, because we all know that to improve we must stretch outside of our comfort zones, but what is enough and how much is too much?
Mentally transport yourself to the hallways of every American educational institution you’ve ever been in, and the attempts made to motivate it’s young prisoners with a cringey barrage of cliche "hard work” posters that now also unfortunately saturate all corners of cyber-space.
“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Or my personal favorite,
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.”
This is not necessarily bad advice, however at large it is actually quite unhelpful. What needs to be emphasized, taught, and inspired is how to work hard and how to be a master learner.
Is there a Perfect Level of HARD WORK?
Admittedly, yes, you already know you have to work harder than the average person to achieve above average things, not exactly rocket science.
Neither you nor I know of any Chief Netflix Binge Watchers who are also Chief Executive Officers. Again, we’ve been conditioned to understand this our entire lives (remember the posters?).
So, if we all understand that hard work gets us the things we want in life, and we are all capable of working hard, then why do so many of us still struggle to do so? Contrarily, why do so many of us struggle to not over work?
It’s very easy to identify when someone is lazy, but the different ranges of what “hard work” looks like makes it ambiguous to define, and the outliers that exist can sometimes trick us; for example, there are a lot of lazy, successful people. There are also a lot of people who work really hard for very little return on their efforts. Either of those situations can make us feel like we lost the genetic lottery.
Click for some reel talk (get it?)
Then there is our personal favorite in American hustle culture, and it is those who work so hard, who are constantly redlining, stressed, and on the brink of a mental breakdown. These folks can often be found with blood shot eyes and a 20 ounce Starbucks coffee in their hand shouting “I’ll sleep when I’m dead!” and heading back to the office with one eye involuntarily twitching, because if you’re not exhausted, you’re not trying hard enough.
In my 20+ years in athletics I have seen this represented in various teammates and players I’ve coached:
The lazy player who never works out, eats fast food, but looks absolutely yoked.
The less talented or less athletic player who is often injured because they are constantly pushing themselves to the edge just to keep up.
The entitled player who thinks they can do the bare minimum and be the best player on the court/field/ice.
The obsessed superstar that can also be found with the 20 ounce Starbucks in their hand and their gym bag in the other.
Social Media Disilluisonment
If there is one thing social media is elite at, it’s making things look better than they actually are… to a toxic degree. The saddest part is, we don’t even realize that it’s poisoning our perceptions of reality, especially Generation Alpha (born between 2010 and now) and Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012).
When consuming social media, ruthlessly rude little self-deprecating demons can really go wild if you let them. We start to compare our own status to people who we desire to be like, yet who are only showing 2% of their own reality.
I wish I could be as carefree as @yolo1lifehappyhippy.
I should be working as hard as @hustleandgrind365.
The fame, wealth and success of @10xlife is something I will probably never have.
You get the idea.
If we aren’t careful, we can fall into this trap so easily. That’s why so many people end up deleting social media all together, I mean, I’ve done it.
Social media is a great way to repeatedly feed ourselves the wrong message and remain perpetually unsatisfied with the work we are doing. Is it enough? Shouldn’t I be doing more? @hustleandgrind365 is!
“It’s easy to convince yourself that things need to be hard, that if you’re not red lining, you’re not trying hard enough. This leads us to look for paths of most resistance, often creating unnecessary hardship in the process. But what happens if we frame things in terms of elegance instead of strain, sometimes we find incredible results with ease instead of stress, sometimes we solve the problem by completely reframing it.”
Alternatively, social media can be a powerful tool for accessing positive and productive information if we use it properly by following accounts that we recognize as healthy sources of information for our own unique needs.
My favorite accounts: @brendonburchard | @tacticnutrition | @drewhanlen
I’d be remise not to mention my own @makeyourselfak
the Wisdom to Know the Difference
Though I am not a religious person, there is a powerful prayer you most likely have heard before. I love this, and used to recite it before every basketball game, it goes:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
If you don’t jive with the word “God”, simply take it out or replace it with whatever higher power you believe in. This simple statement gives us a powerful mantra on navigating life and it’s many obstacles.
Mindset ReCalibration
Now the difficult part, don’t click to another tab or app, especially instagram. For your own self-respect, actually answer this question, and if you’re feeling real saucy, do it again in a week.
If I were living the greatest version of my life that I could possibly imagine, what would it look like?
Oof, deep huh? Grab a piece of paper and write as much or as little on this answer as you’d like.
Now, answer this one:
What are the biggest differences between that version of myself, and the version I’m currently living? What do I need to have serenity with, and what can I impart courage to change?
Remember, keep those rude little self-deprecating demons locked away while doing this exercise. In reality, there will always be a gap between those two versions, but knowing what your most “exceptional” life looks like compared to what your current life is allows you to refocus, reset, and attack some habits that you know need changing.
CONSISTENCY OVER INTENSITY
So friend, welcome to where the real dichotomy presents itself. As humans, our brains are programmed to want to be comfortable, it’s called homeostasis. On the same note, because we are human and have the ability to think about our thoughts (HA! in your face other mammals), we know that comfort is not the key to getting what we want. Period. Mic Drop. Underline and highlight that.
If we are comfortable, we simply are not growing, we are either staying the same or getting worse.
The most important, defining quality of working hard is not intensity, it’s consistency.
You know why? Because when you’re pursuing worthwhile things, it will never get easier. There will always be another stair to climb, another problem, another obstacle. And now the true dichotomy, if you work too damn hard, you end up where the lazy live, in burnt-out-ville on the couch.
So, instead of going balls to the wall, or wishing and waiting for things to be easier, learn how to handle hard better. And guess what, handling hard better boils down to your ability to be consistent. To be reliable. To respect yourself and the journey you’re on.
LET’S WRAP THINGS UP WITH SOME EXAMPLES
Consistency looks like: getting out of bed at the same time every day Monday - Sunday, and going to bed at the same time even when you don’t want to, but because you know you need a certain number of hours of sleep to function like a boss.
Intensity looks like: getting 4 hours of sleep on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, being exhausted Thursday and sleeping in, and then making a half ass effort Friday, and using the weekend to be a total sloth because “you deserve it” after the long week you’ve had.
Consistency looks like: writing out daily target goals to optimize your time and productivity.
Intensity looks like: trying to do all the things, all at once, all the time, and then ironically, getting very little actually done, or done well.
Consistency looks like: showing up to practice 30 minutes early daily to get in the world’s most efficient warm up, and then it pay huge dividends months later because that 30 minutes x 5 days a week x 12 weeks = 1800 minutes or 30 hours of quality work.
Intensity looks like: showing up for extra workouts randomly once or twice a week (60 minutes x 1.5 times per week x 12 weeks) = 1080 minutes or 18 hours of work. That’s almost half. And let’s not count the time lost between driving to and from the gym and all that extra laundry.
Consistency looks like: meal prepping on Sunday and Wednesday so you can eat budget friendly clean food all through the week.
Intensity looks like: making one extravagant, delicious, healthy meal for one night, and then deciding that you can never keep that up because between all the effort to decide what to do, go to the grocery store, cook, and then clean up, that eating healthy is too hard.
Don’t get me wrong, there are times where intensity is totally appropriate, but when it comes to wrapping your mind around what it means to have a strong work ethic, intensity shouldn’t be the main part of the picture, consistency should.
Be consistent. Do the work.
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The Story Behind Make Yourself
From bench warmer to pro, this is the story of one small town Alaskan hooper whose life was changed by basketball, and why Make Yourself was created to pay it forward to other athletes.
The amazing Alaskan coaches and participants of the Varsity Prep Camp, 2022
I believe every single person on this planet has the innate ability to make themselves into whoever they want to be.
I feel so strongly about this, because I was once a nobody from a small town on the remote island of Kodiak, Alaska. Like many other kids, it was my dream as a little girl to some day play college basketball, and maybe even professional basketball. At the time, I was one of the best players in my community, but that didn’t mean much at all as I transitioned from a small town high school to college basketball for the University of Alaska Anchorage.
My first year at UAA, I wasn't prepared for the drastic change in level, so I red-shirted.
This means I practiced every day with the team but did not play or travel, and therefore retained that year of eligibility. This was a developmental year through and through. My second year, excited to see all the work from the year prior translate to playing substantial minutes on the court, I was met right away with a bad bout of mono that hospitalized me at the beginning of the year, and wasn’t able to recover quickly enough to come in to the year and make an impact. I played limited minutes the entire season, only being put into the game when we were up by at least 25 points.
At the end of that year, having put in extra time on my own, having gave everything at every practice that I could, having done my best to have a great attitude and be a good teammate; my coach looked me in the eye and told me “If you do not get better, you will not play more than 5 minutes a game next year.”
What an icy, verbal dagger straight to the heart.
Instead of, “This is what you need to work on to get better” or, “Hey we see how hard you’re working; keep at it, it will pay off.”
Getting good is a lonely journey. Many hours alone were spent in the gym.
She was essentially telling me, "Quit. You are not good enough."
As I left her office, I felt devastated. By the time I got to my car in the parking lot, I was angry. By the time I got home, I was ordering a heavy basketball, an agility ladder, and looking up YouTube videos so I could coach myself on how to get better.
That summer, with a chip on my shoulder, I spent an obscene amount of hours in the gym, at the track, in the weight-room, and not eating chocolate. The result? Complete physical and mental transformation.
I avoided the parties all my friends and boyfriend were inviting me to. I stopped eating my favorite summer junk food, because I wanted to lean up.
And most importantly, every day I woke up and reminded myself, that I was going to be the only person who could prove everyone wrong.
I became obsessed with lonely journey of improving myself.
I went to open gyms at 6am with a bunch of older guys, because there were no other options in Kodiak. I would then put a rock in the door, and go back when I knew no one was going to be around, and work on my skills. I would go to the track, and run till it felt like my lungs were bleeding. I went to the local gym to lift weights and get stronger. I read books on how to strengthen my mind, and allowed the mentors in the pages to help my confidence expand since my own coach wasn’t willing to help me.
Senior season with the Seawolves 2 years later… 20+ point game against a Division I opponent at the Great Alaska Shootout. Remember when games were played at the Sullivan Arena?
The next fall came around, and my teammates and coaches were shocked.
The relentless summer of work that I had put in had paid off, and I found myself not just in the starting line up, but as one of the leading scorers and rebounders on the team. Fast forward three years of college and I eventually earned a contract to play professionally in Germany for two years and another to play in Australia. Part of me couldn’t believe it.
Had it not been for the two years of failure and adversity, and my summer of obsessively improving my mindset and habits, I would not have made it.
Playing on my third pro contract with the Logan Thunder in Brisbane, Australia.
It was not an easy road, and I didn't have too many people to help me… so I had to help myself.
This is why I now love coaching and mentoring young athletes.
I understand what it’s like to not know how to do something, and how to figure it out when your back is up against the wall.
I know what it’s like to have a soft mindset, and transform it into an unstoppable mindset. I know how it feels to commit to making myself into who I want to be, and realize how much of that has to be done with a mindset very few people will be able to relate to.
Ultimately, I believe if I could overcome almost career ending adversity and eventually reach some of the highest levels in my sport, anyone can do it. And I want to help show them - YOU - how.
Our most recent camp in Kodiak this past summer. The full circle effect is a great feeling. Beyond grateful to use my experiences to help the younger generations in not just Kodiak, but all across Alaska!
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Books for the Athlete Mindset
Here's a list of highly recommended reads to help an athlete’s mindset.
Athletics provides such an incredibly unique classroom to work on life skills like self-confidence, ability to communicate well, ability to cultivate healthy relationships, being a team player, how to maintain composure under pressure, how to overcome adversity, how to exercise daily discipline, and so much more.
The following books are an athlete’s secret weapon to unlocking greatness within themselves! Coaches, parents, and people of all walks of life can, of course, also benefit.
The power of the mind is not to be underestimated, invest in yours, and you will greatly reap the rewards both in your sport and life.
1. Mind Gym: An athlete's guide to inner excellence by Gary Mack
This book was my bible as a collegiate and professional basketball player. Written by sports psychologist, Gary Mack, who interviews multiple athletes and eloquently uses their stories and his extensive knowledge to help the reader develop strategies to overcome mental barriers that hold them back in their sport. This is not only a read for the athlete, but coaches and parents as would benefit as well!
"The desire to succeed needs to be stronger than the fear of failure."
2. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
This biography written about former Olympic track athlete Louis Zamperini, is one of the most incredible stories on human resilience and toughness. A troubled child, Louis' brother helps him get his life on track by channeling his extra energy into running.
He qualifies to compete in the Olympics, and then World War II breaks out and he is enlisted in the military as part of a B27 bomber flight crew. His plane goes down, and he survives not only floating on a raft in the Pacific for well over a month, but the cruelty of a Japanese war camp as well.
“I think the hardest thing in life is to forgive. Hate is self destructive. If you hate somebody, you're not hurting the person you hate, you're hurting yourself. It's a healing, actually, it's a real healing...forgiveness.”
3. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
This is an absolute timeless classic that, the more I read, I realize many “self-help” books have been based off. Skip the copy cats and go straight to the source of genius by picking up this book.
Topping the charts as a #1 National Bestseller, it has sold 25 million copies since it’s publication in 1988. Covey passed away in 2012, but his works continue to give a principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems.
"Our problems and pain are universal and increasing, and the solutions to the problems are and always will be based upon universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society throughout history."
4. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, author, and Holocaust survivor. This book recounts his experiences from his time in a concentration camp in quite possibly the most logical first person narrative ever written on unimaginable suffering. It is humbling, perspective-changing, inspiring, and all together a must read, particularly if you are going through a difficult time in your life.
"In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
5. Adversity Advantage: Turning everyday struggles into everyday greatness by Paul Stoltz & Erik Weihenmayer
Like mind gym, this one saved me in college. I would go as far as to reread parts of it before games! Erik Weihenmayer became blind at age 13, but refused to let this control his life. Instead, he ultimately became the first blind person to climb the 7 Summits (the tallest peaks on all 7 continents).
His book, co-authored by Paul Stoltz, is an inspirational read about overcoming life's many adversities and using them to your advantage. If a legally blind man can climb Everest, do our excuses that hold us back carry that much weight anymore?
"Even minor setbacks provide powerful opportunities for elevating behavior. If you eliminate adversity, you miss out on life's deepest riches, highest gifts, and most potent lessons."
6. Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss
This is an interesting read, because it is just a series of interviews with very successful people. Though clunky in the traditional reading sense, this is an absolute gold mine of knowledge.
“Make yourself proud. I think we spend too much of our time trying to please everyone. And we forget that it’s all already within. Your instinct, your inner child, your soul, all of those who know what’s good for you and the world.”
7. Winning by Tim Grover
Warning, this book is intense. The author trained Kobe Bryant, and you don’t get to the level of training someone whose MO was “mamba mentality” without also having a mamba mentality.
For those still working on building up your confidence, table this one till you feel ready to take your mindset to the next level.
“If you can tolerate fear and doubt and loneliness… Winning would like a word with you.”