Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

Agency by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Wed, Jun 15, 2011 @ 07:06 AM

Agency

A door is not responsible if it swings and hits you in the nose. Neither is the hand of the guy who punched you.

Philosphers and lawyers talk about agency. Responsibility comes with the capacity to act in the world. If you can decide, if you can act, you have agency.

Life without agency would be a nightmare. Trapped in a box, unable to do anything by choice, nothing but a puppet...

Why then, do organizations and individuals struggle so intently to avoid the responsibility that comes with agency? "It's not my job, my boss won't let me, there's a federal regulation, we're prohibited, it's our supplier, that's our policy..."

It's not something you can turn on or off. Either you have the capacity to act in the world. Or you don't.

 

Topics: basketball performance, basketball resources, basketball conference, basketball training programs, athletic training conference, boston hockey summit, Seth Godin

Success at "Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants" Seminar

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Mon, Jun 6, 2011 @ 07:06 AM

Thanks to everyone for attending this year's BSMPG summer seminar, Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants.  We welcomed over 170 of the top Performance Coaches, Athletic Trainers and Physical Therapists from across the country and the world to Boston for this two day event.  Attendees ventured from countries including England, Ireland, Wales, Holland, and Canada in order to attend what has truly become the nation's leading conference in advanced training and care for the athlete.

Stay tuned for more photos, updated speaker presentations and much more this coming week!

 

 

clare frank

Clare Frank demonstrates during her Intensive Track Breakout session.

 

BSMPG

Mike Curtis, Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Virginia and Ray Eady, Strength and Conditioning Coach at University of Wisconsin enjoy lunch during day one.

 

Shirley Sahrmann

Keynote Speakers from day two, Pete Viteritti and Shirley Sahrmann.

 

Topics: Ray Eady, Art Horne, basketball performance, basketball conference, BSMPG, athletic training conference, Mike Curtis, Shirley Sahrmann

Who Is Making You UnComfortable? by Seth Godiin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Wed, May 25, 2011 @ 08:05 AM

basketball resources

 

Who is making you uncomfortable?

 

Who looks you in the eye and says, "given your skills, you could do better..."

"You have enough leverage to really make a difference."

"What would happen if you doubled the amount you donated?"

"Could you set aside the fear and go faster?"

"I know you're holding back..."

It takes love and kindness and confidence to bring the truth to a friend you care about. If you're insulating yourself from these conversations, who benefits?

 

Topics: Art Horne, basketball performance, basketball conference, athletic training conference, boston hockey conference, Seth Godin

The Flip Side by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Fri, May 6, 2011 @ 07:05 AM

 basketball resources

 

The flip side

It's impossible to have a coin with only one side. You can't have heads without tails.

Innovation is like that. Initiative is like that. Art is like that.

You can't have success unless you're prepared to have failure.

As soon as you say, "failure is not an option," you've just said, "innovation is not an option."

 
 

Topics: Basketball Related, basketball performance, basketball conference, athletic training conference, athletic training, boston hockey conference

The Problem With Problems

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Mon, May 2, 2011 @ 07:05 AM

athletic training

 

If you look hard enough, everyone has problems. In the sports performance profession, problems provide easy targets for coaching, training, and interventions. Explicitly stated or not, problems make the physical therapist, athletic trainer, strength and conditioning coach, and sport psychology consultants’ jobs easy. The athlete that needs to be “fixed” provides a clear target for intervention. The athlete that is pretty well-rounded without any glaring weaknesses can be a lot more intimidating to help. Easy targets for coaches and trainers however may not be what is best for the athlete.

This is not the only problem with problems however. Athletes pride themselves on their strength and abilities to intimidate and dominate. Few embrace being weak and even fewer enjoy being stigmatized as someone with a “problem.” This reality can lead to hesitancy on the path towards improvement. So many performance specialists slip into the trap of highlighting athlete weaknesses in efforts to advance an athlete’s training régime. Not a compelling sales pitch to someone whose self-image is enshrouded in strength.

Perhaps this problem with problems is best illuminated when considering development of one’s mental game. Too often working on one’s mental game is neglected because sport psychology may be seen as being for the mentally weak or mentally unbalanced. These perceptions are fair. Psychology (and much of medicine) has spent much of its history labeling illness and treating problems. Upon reflection however, one would be hard pressed to suggest that an athlete that gets a bit anxious when taking a penalty shot, walking the back nine of a major golf tournament, or toeing the foul line for a game tying free throw has a “problem.” Distraction, doubt, and stress are normal in the quest towards high performance. A motivated athlete would be remiss not to make deliberate efforts to develop one’s mental game. Presenting this work on one’s game as fixing “problems” or healing a wounded psyche certainly stigmatizes a necessary part of player development.

The problem with problems is not unique to the mental game however. Coaches and trainers that spend majority of their time reminding an athlete of his weaknesses rarely lead the athlete to commitment or excellence. It can be argued that the coach’s ego needs are fulfilled as the athlete with inadequacies cannot thrive without them. Yet the truth is, all athletes have one problem or another and regardless of these things they strive quite successfully. The most successful performance coach does not challenge the athlete’s desire of strong perceptions of self, but rather builds upon them… encouraging a normal human being to strive towards super-normal. Muscle imbalances are not a problem, but rather an opportunity to train for higher performance. Distracting performance anxiety is not a problem, but rather an opportunity to find a next level of mental fortitude. Poor cardio is not a problem, rather an opportunity to develop wire to wire dominance.

Injury that takes you out of practice for a while, depression that inhibits performance in the classroom and on the playing field, and clinical nutrition issues that sap wellness and energy are problems that need to be treated as such. A heavily problem-focused practice however loses athlete enthusiasm and misplaces the focus of training. Challenges to injury resistance, mental fortitude, and conditioning are opportunities for performance specialists to ply their crafts at the highest level. They are opportunities for the athlete to embrace the appropriate coaching and training necessary for finding one’s optimal potential.
Dr. Adam Naylor, CC-AASP. is the Director of the Boston University Athletic Enhancement Center (www.bu.edu/aec).  He has serves as a mental conditioning and player development resource for players at all stages of their sports career.  He can be reached contacted at adam@telos-spc.com.  Follow Dr. Naylor on Twitter @ahnaylor.

Topics: Basketball Related, Art Horne, Adam Naylor, basketball performance, basketball training programs, athletic training conference

Success and Motivation by Mark Cuban - Part 5

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Fri, Apr 29, 2011 @ 07:04 AM

basketball resources

Continued from Part 4

In basketball you have to shoot 50pct. If you make an extra 10 shots per hundred, you are an All-Star. In baseball you have to get a hit 30 pct of the time. If you get an extra 10 hits per hundred at bats, you are on the cover of every magazine, lead off every SportsCenter and make the Hall of Fame.

In Business, the odds are a little different. You don’t have to break the Mendoza line (hitting .200). In fact, it doesnt matter how many times you strike out. In business, to be a success, you only have to be right once.

One single solitary time and you are set for life. That’s the beauty of the business world.

I like to tell the story of how I started my first business at age 12, selling garbage bags. No one ever has asked if I was any good or made money at it. I was, and I did…enough to buy some tennis shoes  .
I like to tell the story of how I started up a bar, Motley’s Pub when I wasn’t even of legal drinking age the summer before my senior year at Indiana University. No one really asks me how it turned out. It was great until we got busted for letting a 16-year-old win a wet t-shirt contest (I swear I checked her ID, and it was good!).
No one really asks me about my adventures working for Mellon Bank, or Tronics 2000, or trying to start a business selling powdered milk (it was cheaper by the gallon, and I thought it tasted good). They don’t ask me about working as a bartender at night at Elans when I first got to Dallas, or getting fired from my job at Your Business Software for wanting to close a sale rather than sweeping the floor and opening up the store.
No ever asked me about what it was like when I started MicroSolutions and how I used to count the months I was in business, hoping to outlast my previous endeavors and make this one a success.

With every effort, I learned a lot. With every mistake and failure, not only mine, but of those around me, I learned what not to do. I also got to study the success of those I did business with as well. I had more than a healthy dose of fear, and an unlimited amount of hope, and more importantly, no limit on time and effort.

Fortunately, things turned out well for me with MicroSolutions. I sold it after 7 years and made enough money to take time off and have a whole lot of fun.  Back then I can remember vividly people telling me how lucky I was to sell my business at the right time.
Then when I took that money and started trading technology stocks that were in the areas that MIcroSolutions focused on. I remember vividly being told how lucky I was to have expertise in such a hot area, as technology stocks started to trade up.
Of course, no one wanted to comment on how lucky I was to spend time reading software manuals, or Cisco Router manuals, or sitting in my house testing and comparing new technologies, but that’s a topic for another blog post.

The point of all this is that it doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and either should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because…

All that matters in business is that you get it right once.

Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.
 

Topics: basketball performance, basketball resources, basketball conference, boston hockey conference, Mark Cuban

Success and Motivation by Mark Cuban - Part 4

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Wed, Apr 27, 2011 @ 07:04 AM

basketball resources

 

Continued from Part 3

You never quite know in business if what you are doing is the right or wrong thing. Unfortunately, by the time you know the answer, someone has beaten you to it and you are out of business. I used to tell myself that it was ok to make little mistakes, just don’t make the big ones. I would continuously search for new ideas. I read every book and magazine I could. Heck, 3 bucks for a magazine, 20 bucks for a book. One good idea that lead to a customer or solution and it paid for itself many times over. Some of the ideas i read were good, some not. In doing all the reading I learned a valuable lesson.
Everything I read was public. Anyone could buy the same books and magazines. The same information was available to anyone who wanted it. Turns out most people didn’t want it.
I remember going into customers or talking to people in the industry and tossing out tidbits about software or hardware. Features that worked, bugs in the software. All things I had read. I expected the ongoing response of “Oh yeah, I read that too in such-and-such.” That’s not what happened. They hadn’t read it then, and they haven’t started reading yet.

Most people won’t put in the time to get a knowledge advantage. Sure, there were folks that worked hard at picking up every bit of information that they could, but we were few and far between. To this day, I feel like if I put in enough time consuming all the information available, particularly with the net making it so readily available, I can get an advantage in any technology business. Of course my wife hates that I read more than 3 hours almost every day, but it gives me a level of comfort and confidence in my businesses. AT MicroSolutions it gave me a huge advantage. A guy with little computer background could compete with far more experienced guys just because I put in the time to learn all I could.

I learned from magazines and books, but I also learned from watching what some of the up and coming technology companies of the day were doing. Its funny how the companies that I thought were brilliant then, are still racking it up today.
Every week a company called PCs Limited used to take a full-page ad in a weekly trade magazine called PC Week. The ad would feature PC peripherals that the company would sell. Hard Drives. Memory. Floppy Drives. Graphics Cards. Whatever could be added to a PC was there. What made the ad so special was that each and every week the prices got lower. If a drive was 2,000 dollars last week, it was $ 1940 this week. For the first time in any industry that I knew of, we were seeing vendors pass on price savings to customers.

The PC Limited ads became the “market price” for peripherals. I looked for the ad every week. In fact, I became a customer. I was in Dallas. They were in Austin.  I remember driving down to pick up some hard drives that I was going to put into my customers PCs. I had no idea up to that point, but it turns out that they had just moved from the owner’s dorm room into a little office/warehouse space. I was so impressed by this young kid (I was a wise old 25 at the time), that I actually wrote a letter thanking him for the great job he was doing, and…I’m embarassed to say now, I told him that if he kept up what he was doing he was destined for far bigger and better things.  I kept on doing business with PCs Limited, and Michael Dell kept on doing what he was doing. I dont think he really needed my encouragement, but i have since told him that I thought his weekly full page ads with ever declining prices, changed the PC industry and were the first of many genius moves on his part.

Michael wasn’t the only smart one in those days.

One of the PC industry’s annual rituals was the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas. Every November, it was the only 3 days I knew I would get away and get a break from the office. It was work during the day. Visiting all the new technology booths. Trying to get better pricing from vendors. Trying to find out where the best parties were. If you could believe it, back in those days, the number one party was the Microsoft party. I sold some Microsoft products, so I could get in.
One particular year, I was on my way to having a memorable night. I had met some very, very attractive women (I swear they were). Got them some tickets to come with me to the big party. All is good. I’m having fun. They are having fun. Then we see him. Bill G. As in Bill Gates dancing up a storm. I’m a Bill Gates fan, so I wont describe his dancing, but he was definitely having fun.
At that point in time, Microsoft had gone public and Bill Gates was Bill Gates. If you were in the business you knew him or knew of him. The girls I was with were in the business. Long story short, I went to the bar to get some drinks for all us, I come back, they aren’t there. Come to find out the next day, Bill stole my girls. As I would learn later in life, money does make you extremely handsome. 

Bill G also taught me a few things about business. Put aside how he killed IBM at their own game by licensing PC DOS to anyone that wanted it. What MicroSoft did to knock Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect off their thrones was literally business at its best.
At that point in time, software was expensive. WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 both sold for $495 and their publishers were proud of that fact. In order to be able to sell Lotus 1-2-3, you had to go to special training to become authorized. How crazy does that sound now going to a special class to be able to sell a spreadsheet. WordPerfect wasn’t quite as bad, but they had their own idiosyncrasies as well. Meanwhile, Microsoft was on the outside looking in. Excel, Word, Powerpoint were all far down the list of top sellers until lightning struck.  Microsoft decided to go against industry protocol and package those 3 programs as a suite and offer them as an upgrade to competitors’ products for the low, low price of 99 dollars. Of course you needed to have and use Windows for it to work, but in a time when people were buying new PCs with every dramatic increase in power and decrease in price, it was a natural move for us at MicroSolutions to sell the bundle. It made the effective price of the PC and software together far, far lower. We loved it. It also taught me several big lessons.

Always ask yourself how someone could preempt your products or service. How can they put you out of business? Is it price? Is it service? Is it ease of use? No product is perfect and if there are good competitors in your market, they will figure out how to abuse you. It’s always better if you are honest with yourself and anticipate where the problems will come from.

The 2nd lesson is to always run your business like you are going to be competing with Microsoft. They may not be your direct competitor. They may be a vendor. They may be a direct competitor and a vendor. Whatever they may be to your business, if you are in the technology business, you have to anticipate that you will in some way have to compete with Microsoft at some point. I ask myself every week what I would do if they entered any of my businesses. If you are ready to compete with Microsoft, you are ready to compete with anyone else.

Watching the best taught me how to run my businesses. Along the way I taught myself a few things those come next blog.

Topics: Basketball Related, basketball performance, basketball conference, athletic training conference, boston hockey summit

A Slow News Day by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Fri, Apr 22, 2011 @ 07:04 AM

athletic training

 

A slow news day

I think you can learn a lot about an organization (and a person's career) when you watch what they do on a slow news day, a day when there's no crisis, not a lot of incoming tasks, very little drama.

Sure, when we're reacting (or responding) and it's all hands on deck, things seem as if they're really moving.

But what about in the lulls? At the moments when we can initiate, launch new ventures, try new things and expose ourselves to failure? Do we take the opportunity or do we just sit and wait for the next crisis?

If you have ten minutes unscheduled and the phone isn't ringing, what do you do? What do you start?

 

Topics: Basketball Related, basketball performance, basketball conference, basketball training programs, athletic training conference, boston hockey summit, boston hockey conference, Seth Godin

Andrew Bynum's Breakthrough

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Wed, Apr 6, 2011 @ 07:04 AM

 

athletic training resources

 

Leave it to Tex Winter, who while on the Lakers' staff was one of Andrew Bynum's harshest critics, to have the explanation for why Bynum has turned his career and this entire Lakers season around.

Winter espoused a theory that has always stuck with Phil Jackson's longtime mental-health consultant, George Mumford, during their years together building up all those Bulls' and Lakers' brains to win all those NBA championships.

According to "The Readiness Principle," as Mumford calls Winter's idea: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

 

Click HERE to read the complete story of Andrew Bynum's breakthrought and how George Mumford, speaker at the 2001 BSMPG Basketball conference helped pave the way.

 

Topics: Basketball Related, Art Horne, basketball performance, basketball resources, basketball conference, basketball training programs, athletic training conference, George Mumford

Do The Opposite - Part II

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Tue, Feb 15, 2011 @ 06:02 AM

I once heard Mike Boyle say if you ever want to get fit, simply go to your nearest commercial gym and do the exact opposite of what everyone is doing.  I decided to put his theory to the test at our general student fitness facility this past week. 

Number 4-6

 

4. Commercial Gym Choice: Bicep Curls in the Squat Rack

 

athletic training resources

Squat Racks are for squatting – not barbell curls!  Why must everyone feel the need to curl inside of a squat rack? I know, the weight is soo heavy that if you were ever to fail you’d have the safety bars there – gotcha.


Opposite: This one is easy – I squatted.
Side note: apparently squatting in a rack designated for arm curls is not appreciated at commercial gyms – if you choose to squat – avoid eye contact with the gym members; you’re interrupting their bicep time.

basketball resources


5. Commercial Gym Choice: All Show – No Go.
If one thing became clearly evident during my squat time, it was the need to exercise and only exercise those muscles that can be seen in the mirror.  A quick survey of those around me included: cable cross-over, more bicep curls, overhead DB press, seated bench press and leg extensions. 

athletic training conference


Opposite:  decided to superset some scapular stabilization work with the squatting then finish up in the squat rack with some dead-lifts. (I know I’m not squatting in a squat rack but figured it was better than bicep curls – still getting weird looks)

boston hockey summit

 


6.  Commercial Gym Choice: All Push – No Pull

If there is one exercise, ok, the one other than bicep curls that seems to dominate commercial gyms it’s the bench press.  I’m not sure why no one likes pulling, I guess it’s because there is not enough mirrors in the gym – maybe if gyms put in mirrors like at department stores where you try on clothes and can see all angles people would start emphasizing other body parts in their training?

boston hockey conference


Opposite: Pull-ups (not lat machine pull downs), inverted body rows and bent over DB rows.

It’s not by accident that I added three pulling exercises to contrast the one dominant pushing exercise that is most popular.  3:1 ratio seems to clean up a lot of dysfunction and sure makes your shoulders feel a lot better.

 

basketball resources

 

7-9 tomorrow....

 

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

Topics: Art Horne, basketball performance, basketball conference, boston hockey summit, athletic training