Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

The problem with right now is that right now is just too late.

Right now happened 3 months ago.
Right now was waking up 30 minutes early each morning to work on your fundamentals skills.
Right now was taking 300 hook shots in the lane each day before practice even started.
Right now was back in June when you decided sleep was more important than the continuing education course you missed at the national convention.

Seldom does opportunity present itself at the very same time as right now.

The nice thing about right now however, is that it’s exactly the right time to start preparing for 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.

 

 

I've never once heard after a lost basketball game an athlete use the word "I".

"I" is just too tough to swallow.

It's always the ref's blown call, the coach's bad substitution or a teammates ill advised shot, but never "I".

It's not because the actual word is difficult to say, it's just that it's much easier to look outward, look at other people's mistakes and other peoples shortcomings.

"U" is just a lot easier to say than "I".

Yes, maybe it was someone elses mistake, and yes maybe the ref should have given you that call, or maybe, just maybe, you're just making excuses.

"I" is tough to swallow. But continuing to lose by making the same mistakes tastes a whole lot worse - on the basketball court and in life.  Confronting the brutal facts, no matter what situation you may be in is always the first step to creating a better "U".

 

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.

 

A physician friend of mine challenged me the other day about a recent post regarding omelet’s and rehab.  He thought it was a nice piece but mentioned that it may not apply to all aspects of medicine – “there are just too many variables that have to be considered” he said.

Like what? I asked him

“Take for example the common ACL reconstruction – allograft, autograft, hamstring, patellar tendon, etc.  Each graft is the central part of that surgery and thus an egg, yet each one is different” he explained.

Wrong

“Those are peppers and mushrooms,” I told him.

The key to each and every ACL surgery is the tunnel angle and placement, not the graft choice.

You may choose a bone-tendon-bone graft for example after a previously failed surgery or for those athletes that play a contact sport – but you certainly wouldn’t for someone that performed physical labor like installing carpet where they spent the majority of each day on their knees would you? Graft choice is the pepper in your omelet – mind you a very big piece of this omelet, but a pepper none the less.  Perfect tunnel placement and angle on the other hand, is a must in any successful ACL reconstruction – it’s the egg in the omelet. Get it wrong and you’ll be cleaning up that sticky yellow yolk for years to come.

There are a few things that must take place in every surgery, just like in any rehabilitation and performance programming that make it a successful operation; without that key ingredient your patient will always walk, or well limp, back through your door sometime down the road.

 

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.

Congrats to the University of Pittsburgh and Strength and Conditioning Coach Tim Beltz for winning the 2010 2K Sports Classic this past weekend at Madison Square Garden over the University of Texas 68-66.

Watch Tim discuss how he assesses and prepares his basketball team each year for the rigors of Big East play and how his strength programming has this team in the national spot light again.

Watch Tim's full presentation along with presentations from basketball's best strength coaches including Keith D'Amelio from the University of Stanford, Mike Curtis from the University of Virginia, Amanda Kimball from the University of Connecticut and many more by purchasing the 2010 BSMPG Basketball Conference Video.

 

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, describes the Hedgehog concept as “an operating model that reflects understanding of three intersecting circles: what you can be the best in the world at, what you are deeply passionate about, and what best drives your economic or resource engine.”

“But Art, Jim Collin’s research and the businesses described in Good to Great include the likes of Wells Fargo and Walgreens, his theory and concepts have nothing to do with patient care or performance training.”

I’ve heard this more than once and each time I attempt to get a friend to read this book it’s usually handed back either partially read or not read at all.   At first look, to compare these operating systems to Sports Medicine or Sports Performance may be a stretch, but the three questions that Collins’ research asks can certainly be asked when examining your own operating system and how you handle your business each day.

What can you be the best in the world at?

- Is it patient education, practicing and applying evidence based medicine or simply a seamless referral system for student-athlete mental health issues?
- By asking and challenging your staff what you can be the best in the world at automatically sets the bar much higher than before and thus only those actions in line with this new standard should be accepted and rewarded.

What are you deeply passionate about?

- I found this to be the easiest question to ask and answer. Each one of your staff members is particularly interested and passionate about a segment of your operating system. Once you have identified which one, allow them to develop this area to its fullest.
- If your strength staff is deeply passionate about squatting and teaching the squat (I image they are or they wouldn’t be in the field) allow them to create an in-service and teach the sports medicine staff the finer points of the squat. Your athletes will thank you for the consistency of teaching cues and progression from rehab to high end performance.

What best drives your economic or resource engine?

- If you’re at most schools, athletic departments are actually a huge drain on the finances of the university.  Does your department spend frivolously on specialty items that have little impact on your athletes or only impacts a small sector of your athlete population?
- In the Sports Performance area, what exercises produce the greatest impact on your athlete’s performance profile (VJ, sprint times, etc)? Should you spend your valuable time perfecting and encouraging the squat or are you spending time having your athletes lay on their back performing hollowing exercises to train the TA?

The challenge now is to examine your operating system with honest eyes. This is often the most difficult part of the process since most believe they are already doing their very best – if resistance is met, ask dumb questions or invite an alien to your next staff meeting, that usually does the trick.

 

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.

My friend at a PT clinic told me a story of her co-worker who brings in cookies for the staff and patients every Monday morning – she’s the most popular person in the clinic each Monday,  even though she also has the lowest number of patients and the greatest number of requests for referrals to other PT’s within the clinic.  Her customer service just doesn’t match her ability to make cookies and when you’re dealing with patients who have a frozen shoulder or debilitating back pain, well, customer service and patient care just means a little bit more than cookies.

So before you decide between making a batch of cookies or researching the best way to approach chronic tendonopathy, remember this:

Making cookies always goes over well at work and may even score you a few points with co-workers and your boss. But unless your customer service matches your Betty Crocker apron you’ll soon be in need of more than just cookies to win over your customers.  Because your customers, even though your cookies tasted good, know your service is salty.

 

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.

A friend of mine and I were discussing the roles and responsibilities of athletic trainers the other day when he brought up a story about his time in graduate school.  He recounted the days where a fellow staff member’s (a full-time Certified Athletic Trainer with a Master’s Degree no less) only job during the fall semester was to drive from practice to practice filling up water coolers and bottles.

No patient care. No injury evaluation. No Assessment. No Prevention Strategies.

Just Water.

I shared a very different story with him about water service.

I remember a few summers ago when I traveled with our Men’s Basketball Team to Canada to play the defending Canadian national champions (six National Championships in the last seven years) - University of Carleton.   It was our first day on campus and we were preparing to practice when I noticed our hosts didn’t put out any water on the sideline for our team (Carleton was practicing down court and finishing up their practice time).  I approached their athletic therapist asking if I could obtain a cooler of water and some cups for practice – a standard practice I would assume across both Canadian and American Colleges.
Just as the words dripped from my mouth I looked a bit closer at the Carleton area and saw about 20 various bottles ranging from gallon sized water containers to reused Gatorade bottles lining their bench.  Each and every player had brought their own water to practice.  From that moment forward my view on water changed forever.

That was the day I stopped catering.

I’m not saying water isn’t important.  On the contrary.  In fact, I think it’s so important that I encourage each and every student-athlete to carry a water bottle with them at all times.  You can’t expect to just hydrate during practice can you? And if you can carry a water bottle with you all day – because that’s how important it is, then you can also bring it to practice can’t you?

I was actually scolded by a fellow athletic trainer when I brought up the idea of athletes bringing their own water to practice.

“What if they forgot their bottle one day? What would they do then?”

My response was simple.

What extraordinary patient care are you not delivering because you are so busy delivering and catering water?

If the defending national champions in Canada can bring their own water to practice I think our student-athletes can fill up a bottle and bring some H2O to practice too.

It only takes one time that you forget and you’ll never leave that bottle at home again.

 

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.