Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

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If you have never heard of Ray Eady, Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Wisconsin before, you will after this weekend.  Ray's one of the brightest basketball strength coaches in the business and his business is getting basketball athletes STRONG!  I was blessed to work with Ray earlier in his career and to say that Ray "gets it" as a strength coach is an understatement. 

His balance of assessment, movement development, injury prevention and of course serious strength development has made him one of the most sought after basketball strength coaches around.

Take a sneak peek at what Ray will be discussing as he joins the top basketball coaches from across the country including, Brendon Ziegler - Oregon State, Jonas Sahratian - UNC-Chapel Hill, George Mumford and Brian McCormick this weekend in Boston.

Click HERE to view Ray Eady's lecture at the 2011 BSMPG, "Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants" Seminar

Bar gymnastics

Some people I know work hard to lower the bar at work.

That was my strategy at gym class in high school. Not only did I do the minimum amount permitted, I worked hard to do just a little bit less than that. By the time the semester was over, the teacher was relieved if I even bothered to show up at all.

Most people seek to meet the bar. They figure out what's expected, and do that.

A few people, very few, work to relentlessly raise the bar. She's the one who overdelivers on projects, shows up ahead of schedule, instigates, suggests and pushes.

Raising the bar is exhausting, no doubt about it. I'm not sure the people who engage in this apparently reckless behavior would have it any other way, though. They get to experience a fundamentally different day, a different journey and a different reputation than everyone else.

Why now? What has changed that makes promoting bar gymnastics more than a selfish effort by the boss to get more labor out of the workforce?

Simple. This is the post-industrial era. Success is not about speeding up the assembly line as much as it relies on individuals able to create leaps forward. The person capable of doing that sort of work is in far higher demand than ever before.

From our family to yours - Happy Memorial Day.

Moving beyond teachers and bosses

We train kids to deal with teachers in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to work on. Figure out how to say back exactly what they want to hear, with the least amount of effort, and you are a 'good student.'

We train employees to deal with bosses in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to do. Figure out how to do exactly what they want, with the least amount of effort, and the last risk of failure and you are a 'good worker.'

The attitude of minimize is a matter of self-preservation. Raise the bar, the thinking goes, and the boss will work you harder and harder. Take initiative and you might fail, leading to a reprimand or termination (think about that word for a second... pretty frightening).

The linchpin, of course, can't abide the attitude of minimize. It leaves no room for real growth and certainly doesn't permit an individual to become irreplaceable.

If your boss is seen as a librarian, she becomes a resource, not a limit. If you view the people you work with as coaches, and your job as a platform, it can transform what you do each day, starting right now. "My boss won't let me," doesn't deserve to be in your vocabulary. Instead, it can become, "I don't want to do that because it's not worth the time/resources." (Or better, it can become, "go!")

The opportunity of our age is to get out of this boss as teacher as taskmaster as limiter mindset. We need more from you than that.

The $20,000 phone call

The agenda

The job of the CEO isn't to check things off the agenda. Her job is to set the agenda, to figure out what's next.

Now that more and more of us are supposed to be CEO of our own lives and careers, it might be time to rethink who's setting your agenda.

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.
 

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.

by Art Horne

So your basketball season ended earlier than you had wished.

Hey, there’s always next year right?

But what makes you think that next year will end any different than this year?  Sure, there’s always that touted incoming freshman that everyone is talking about, or that transfer from another school that is sure to help your team make that championship run.  But freshman always take time to mature and transfers have to sit out for a year per NCAA rules. So it looks like next year starts with you – and next year starts now!

In Geoff Colvin’s book, Talent is Overrated, he points to one of the greatest NFL players of all time as an example of an athlete that overcame a lack of “talent” (many would argue that Rice was clearly the most talented wide receivers of all time) by simply outworking his opponents in the off-season.

    
So what made Jerry Rice so good?

1. He spent very little time playing football

a. “Of all of the work Rice did to make himself a great player, practically none of it was playing football games.” (pg. 54)  It’s clear once you compare the amount of time in a game, and then more closely at the amount of time that Rice spent on the field that the time there paled in comparison to his other football “related” activities.  So what does Jerry Rice and football have to do with hoops?

b. Try this on for size – many athletes always look to play as an means to improve their game, but how many shots do you get during a summer pick-up game vs. time with a teammate (coaches can’t be with players in the summer) working on your left-hand hook shot?  You could probably count on one hand the number of times in an afternoon of summer pick-up games that you were able to execute a particular shot.  In contrast, a specific shot can be practiced and rehearsed over and over in preparation for real time execution.

c. Pick-up games are required? Great – stop using them to run slow, argue and BS – use it as your summer conditioning and insist that you guard the opposing team’s best player each and every time.  Defensive work is probably the one skill that is hardest to do (and probably impossible) on your own.  Use this time with others to work on skills that REQUIRE others, and dedicate the majority of your other free time to individual skill development.

2. He designed his practice to work on his specific needs

a. “He (Rice) had to run precise patterns; he had to evade the defenders, sometimes two or three, who were assigned to cover him; he had to outjump them to catch the ball and outmuscle them when they tried to strip it away; then he had to outrun tacklers. So he focused his practice work on exactly those requirements.” (pg. 55)

b. Most athletes won’t admit that they are not good at a particular skill.  It was the ref or some other outside force that kept the ball from dropping in the hoop, time and time and time again.  Before working on those specific skills players must be brutally honest with themselves and admit that they don’t have a complete skill set to compete at the highest level.  Sure you may be able to windmill dunk or you have a killer back-to-the-basket post move, but is your skill set complete or evolved to the point where you can make the leap to the next level?

c. A quick look at your shooting percentage at the end of the basketball season will clearly demonstrate whether you have earned the right to shoot from beyond the arc.  Still think you have what it takes to play in the NBA? Grab two rebounders and shoot uncontested 3-pointers up to a hundred – if you didn’t make 75 then you need to swallow your pride, find a coach and ask him how you can improve you stroke.  NBA 2-guards make 75/100 and elite shooters like Ray Allen make 80-85.

 
d. You’d have to play an entire days worth of pick-up games before you have an opportunity to make 75 3-pointers – very little time should be dedicated to actually playing the game if you are looking to improve a specific skill.

3. While supported by others, he did much of the work on his own

a. The collegiate basketball season starts Oct 15th with official practices and ends with the national championship the first week of April (if you’re lucky). That leaves 7 months of individual work that can be accomplished before team practices begin again.  More than half the year can be dedicated to individual work and skill development.

4. It wasn’t fun

a. Basketball athletes rarely ever work on skills that they’re not good at simply because failure really isn’t that much fun. Imagine being a decent shooter, say 35% from three-land?  It’s not bad, but to make it to the next level a minor tweak or change may be necessary to get your percentage above the 40% range.  So you make a few adjustments and begin shooting from beyond the arc with your new and improved shooting technique – do you think you’ll shoot better or worse for the first week?

The answer is worse.

Not to mention now going through this process during a “friendly” game of pick-up with your boys reminding you that you missed again your last trip down the court.

b. Rarely will athletes work through this “learning” period, especially when they’ve experienced “success” with their previous form.  If you’re going to work on a skill that you’re not great at you must first be prepared for failure – lock in and accept that it won’t be fun this summer (fun comes next season when you’re making it rain from beyond the arc!)

So looking at just one football star clearly doesn’t constitute a scientific study of any kind, and still the question remains, why are some people simply more successful at sports than others, or at any skill for that matter?

Consider a study conducted in the early nineties examining a music academy in Berlin to discover why some violinist were better than others.

The Role Of Deliberate Practice In the Acquisition of Expert Performance by Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Romer. Psychological Review. 1993, Vol. 100. No. 3. 363-406.

 
Summary points:

1. Practice Makes Perfect: When asked to rate the relevance of music-related activities and non-music-related activities to their progress towards becoming the very best, solitary practice was far and away number one.

2. The More The Merrier: Although they all knew that this practice was essential, they didn’t all do it.  The two top groups, (the best and the better violinists) practiced by themselves about 24 hours a week on average. The third group (the good violinists) practiced by themselves only 9 hours a week.

3. Solitary Practice Is Essential: Each violinist recognized that the most important activity, the solitary practice was neither easy nor fun!

“When they rated activities by effort required, solo practice ranked way harder than playing music for fun, alone or with others, and harder than even the most effortful everyday activity, child care.  As for pleasure, practice ranked far below playing for fun and even below formal group performance, which you might reasonably guess would be the most stressful and least fun activity.”

4. No Outside Help Needed:  Although solo practice does not require outside help – no coach or instructor is needed – and thus completely in the control of the individual and almost limitless, only those that chose to practice more became excellent at their skill.

“Solo practice is unusual among music-related activities in that it’s largely within the individual’s control.   Most other activities – taking lessons, attending classes, giving performances – require other people’s involvement and are therefore constrained.  But with 168 hours in a week, a person can practice by himself or herself just about without limit.  In fact, no one in the study came anywhere near spending every available hour on practice.
So all the violinists understood that practicing by themselves was the most important thing they could do to get better. Though they didn’t consider it easy or fun, they all had virtually unlimited time in which to do it. On those dimensions, they were all the same. The difference was that some chose to practice more, and those violinists were a great deal better.” P. 59

Summary:

As much as you’d like to believe it, practice, deliberate and focused practice isn’t much fun.  You’ll experience failure many more times than success if you are truly working on skills that need improving.  Whether it was Jerry Rice running stadium stairs or world class violinists practicing for hours on end, both learned to love the process of getting better and realized that failure in the moment (games or recitals) when it matters the most, is far less fun than any amount of practice.

“There are two pains in life, the pain of preparation and the pain of regret.”

Are you doing a good job?

One way to approach your work:

"I come in on time, even a little early. I do what the boss asks, a bit faster than she expects. I stay on time and on budget, and I'm hardworking and loyal."

The other way: "What aren't they asking me to do that I can do, learn from, make an impact, and possibly fail (yet survive)? What's not on my agenda that I can fight to put there? Who can I frighten, what can I learn, how can I go faster, what sort of legacy am I creating?"

You might very well be doing a good job. But that doesn't mean you're a linchpin, the one we'll miss. For that, you have to stop thinking about the job and start thinking about your platform, your point of view and your mission.

It's entirely possible you work somewhere that gives you no option but to merely do a job. If that's actually true, I wonder why someone with your potential would stay...

In the post-industrial revolution, the very nature of a job is outmoded. Doing a good job is no guarantee of security, advancement or delight.