Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

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.

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.

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?

So my career in Dallas begins. I’m a software salesperson with Your Business Software in Dallas. $18k per year. The first retail software store in Dallas.

I have to sweep the floor and be there to open the store, but that’s not a bad thing. When I tell my future ex-girlfriends that I sell software and am in the computer biz, I’m not going to mention the sweeping the floor part. Plus, I had to wear a suit to work, and the 2-fer madness specials looked good at happy hour after work. Better yet, the store didn’t open till 9:30am, which meant if I had a fun night, I had at least a little time to sleep.
I bet right about now you are questioning where my focus was? Where was my commitment to being the future owner of the Dallas Mavericks? Please. I was stoked I had a good job. I was stoked it was in an industry that could turn into a career. At 24, I was just as stoked that the office was close to where the best happy hours were and that I might finally have more than 20 bucks to spend for a night on the town.

Since I’m talking about partying, I do have to say that my friends and I were very efficient in that area. Beyond living off bar food and happy hours, we literally would agree that none of us would bring more than 20 bucks for a weekend night out. This way we all could pace each other. At least that was the way it was supposed to work, and it did until we figured out the key to having a great night out on the cheap. They key was buying a bottle of cheap, cheap champagne. I can’t even spell the name, but it was a full bottle, and it cost 12 bucks. Tear the label off and as far as anyone knew it was Dom. Each of us would grab one, and sip on it all night. It was far cheaper than buying beers or mixed drinks all night, and we never had to buy a drink for a girl, we just gave them some champagne! Of course the next day was hell, but since when was I responsible enough to care about a hangover…

But I digress. Back to business. As fired up as I was about the job, I was scared. Why? Because I have never worked with an IBM PC in my life. Not a single time, and I’m going to be selling software for it. So what do I do? I do what everyone does: I rationalize. I tell myself that the people walking in the door know as little as I do, so if I just started doing what I told my boss I would do, read the manuals, I would be ahead of the curve. That’s what I did. Every night I would take home a different software manual, and I would read them. Of course the reading was captivating. Peachtree, PFS, DBase, Lotus, Accpac… I couldn’t put them down. Every night I would read some after getting home, no matter how late.

Of course it was easy on the weekends. After drinking that cheap champagne, I wasn’t getting out of bed till about 9pm, so I had tons of time to lie on the floor and read. It worked. Turns out not a lot of people ever bothered to RTFM (read the frickin’ manual), so people started really thinking I knew my stuff. As more people came in, because I knew all the different software packages we offered, I could offer honest comparisons and customers respected that.

Within about 6 months, I was building a clientele and because I had also spent time on the store’s computers learning how to install, configure and run the software, I started having customers ask me to install the software at their offices. That meant I got to charge for consulting help: 25 bucks an hour that I split with the store. That turned into a couple hundred extra bucks per month and growing. I was raking it in, enough that I could move from the Hotel (that was what we called our apartment) where the 6 of us lived, into a 3 bedroom apartment across the street, where instead of 6 of us, there were only 3. Finally, my own bedroom!

I was earning consulting fees. I was getting referrals. I was on the phone cold calling companies to get new business. I even worked out a deal with a local consultant who paid me referral fees, which lead to getting a $1500 check. It was the first time in my adult life that I was able to have more than 1k dollars in the bank.  That was a special moment believe or not, and what did I do to celebrate? Nope…I didn’t buy better champagne. I had these old ratty towels that had holes in them and could stand on their own in the corner, they were so nasty I needed a shower from drying off after a shower…I went out and bought 6 of the fluffiest, plushest towels I could find. I was moving on up in the world. I had the towels. Life was good. Business was good and getting better for me. I was building my customer base, really starting to understand all the technology, and really establishing myself as someone who understood the software. More importantly no, most importantly I realized that I loved working with PCs. I had never done it before. I didn’t know if this was going to be a job that worked for me, or that I would even like and it turns out I was lucky. I loved what I was doing. I was rolling so well, I was even partying less… during the week.

Then one day, about 9 months into my career as a salesperson/consultant, I had a prospect ask if I could come to his office to close a deal. 9am. No problem to me. Problem to my boss, Michael Humecki. Michael didn’t want me to go. I had to open the store. That was my job. We were a retail store, not an outbound sales company. It sounded stupid to me back then too, particularly since I had gone on outbound calls during the day before. I guess he thought I was at lunch.
Decision time. It’s always the little decisions that have the biggest impact. We all have to make that “make or break” call to follow orders or do what you know is right. I followed my first instinct: close the sale. I guess I could have rescheduled the appointment, but I rationalized that you never turn your back on a closed deal. So I called one of my coworkers to come in and open up, and closed the deal. Next day I came in check in hand from a new customer and Michael fired me.

The BSMPG family would like to with the over 20,000 runners in this year's Boston Marathon the very best of luck!

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.

"How much can I get away with?"

There are two ways to parse that question.

The usual way is, "How little can I do and not get caught?" Variations include, "Can we do less service? Cut our costs? Put less cereal in the box? Charge more?" In short: "How little can I get away with?"

The other way, the more effective way: "How much can we afford to give away? How much service can we pile on top of what we're selling without seeming like we're out of our minds? How big a portion can we give and still stay in business? How fast can we get this order filled?"

In an era in which the middle is rapdily emptying out, both edges are competitive. Hint: The overdelivery edge is an easier place to make a name for yourself.

While many athletic trainers and strength coaches look to the summer as a time to relax, a few view this time to L-EARN. 

It’s not by accident that the most successful professionals that I know across both disciplines often spend their summers L-EARNing. 

They’re also the ones that EARN the most money.

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 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 7-9

7. Commercial Gym Choice: Lifting Slow

Nearly 100% of all exercises you’ll see are performed slow and steady, (well, except for the guy on the seated calf raise machine that’s popping his heels up and down like a jack rabbit!)  That’s fine if your goal is to move slow, but most of us still want to kick butt on the weekend playing tennis, changing direction on the soccer pitch or simply running down their friends in a game of ultimate Frisbee.  Like the treadmill, it never hurts to crank it up a notch and vary the speed or tempo of your core lifts.

Opposite: enter heavy stuff moving fast. Now if you really want to scare people at your local commercial gym start performing an Olympic lifts or a variation thereof.

8. Commercial Gym Choice: Only Training in the Sagittal plane – besides the cable cross-over exercise I saw, every exercise was sagittal plane dominant, not to mention each and every piece of cardio equipment (treadmill, bike, elliptical and stair climber) was all set in the sagittal plane.

“Well how is anyone suppose to design a machine that can exercise in multiple planes? – it’s just not possible!”

That’s my point (well, not this point, but another point – go run around outside, play tag, racketball, sprint, whatever – just do it in multiple planes, multiple speeds and multiple directions.

Opposite: I think I covered that in the above – but for this day it was simply finishing off with a lunge series in all directions (Gary Gray made this famous with his lunge matrix)

9. Commercial Gym Choice: Only Bench for upper body strength.

I know that bench is king when it comes to developing upper body strength but it certainly doesn't have to be the only exercise.  There is nothing worse (besides bicep curls in the squat rack) then watching a group of guys standing around another group of guys waiting for them to finish their bench routine so they can start theirs. 

Opposite: Push-ups and push-up variations.  I'm a huge push-up fan so this was easy for me to incorporate into my workout (not to mention there wasn't an available bench in site anyways).  Push-ups only require gravity, and well, that can be found pretty much everywhere.  Put your hands in various positions - close together, far apart, one ahead of the other, feet up, on a buso-ball - just start pushing.
Read a great article on push-ups by Ray Eady, Strength and Conditioning Coach from University of Wisconsin by clicking HERE.

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 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. 

1. Commercial Gym Choice: Laying down and lumbar flexion

I think this exercise choice can be summed up best when I heard one kid ask another,”Are you sure this is suppose to hurt like this?”

Opposite Choice: anything not involving lumbar flexion including front bridges and McGill’s Big Three.

(ahhh, sweet back relief)

2. Commercial Gym Choice: Slow Paced Jog

What’s the definition of crazy? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  I’ve never understood why people continue to jog at a slow pace for hours on end and then act surprised when they haven’t lost any weight or end up injured.

Opposite Choice: it was a nasty Boston day with snow and sleet so elected to stay inside and join the herd of runners on the treadmills except choosing to ramp both speed and incline upwards while jumping on and off in 30:30 second sprint intervals. 

 
3. Commercial Gym Choice: Partial Body Weight Movement

During the aforementioned sprint rest intervals I couldn’t help but notice on the woman on the treadmill beside me. Her treadmill was set to the highest incline possible with both hands on the front rail holding on for dear life!  I’ve never seen anything like it before – it was as if she was in a hurricane and the rail at the front was her lifeline! Not to be outdone, the guy on the stair climber just down from her had the reverse-extended-elbow lock on each hand rail suspending his body weight overtop of the moving stairs below.  If you choose to utilize any type of “cardiovascular” equipment be sure to move your own body weight and not have the machine help you out.

(ok, so she's not hanging on for dear life, but why is she hanging on at all? Is it that hard to walk?)

Opposite: I was still sprinting without holding on so I figured this one was covered.

More 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.