Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

“Almost all the master coaches I met followed Wooden’s rule. They wanted to know about each student so they could customize their communications to fit the larger patterns in a student’s life.”

Famed football coach and quarterback specialist, Tom Martinez, has a vivid metaphor for this process.

“The way I look at it, everybody’s life is a bowl of whipped cream and shit, and my job is to even things out,” he said. “If a kid’s got a lot of shit in his life, I’m going to stir in some whipped cream.  If a kid’s life is pure whipped cream, then I’m going to stir in some shit.”

(Excerpt from, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle)

Looking at some of Tom's successes it's clear his recipe might just be working. 

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.

1. Choose your attitude

There is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself.

2. Play

“We can be very serious about our jobs without being very serious about ourselves” - Fish

3. Make their day

Find someone who needs a helping hand, a word of support, or a good ear – and make their day.

4. Be present

“talk to them as if they were a long lost friend”
  - Fish

So go ahead and throw a fish and have some fun at work tomorrow. Just be sure to wash your hands after.

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.

In a recent post by Seth Godin he challenges one’s normal approach to problem solving which is usually the “wait to be inspired then act” method and asks us to instead actively seek out inspiration.

Seth states, “Simple example: start a blog and post once a day on how your favorite company can improve its products or its service. Do it every day for a month, one new, actionable idea each and every day. Within a few weeks, you'll notice the change in the way you find, process and ship.”

My challenge to you is to take Seth’s example of blogging, but instead of blogging about your favorite company, write down one new actionable idea each and every day this coming month that will improve your department’s service to your student-athletes. It may be as simple as greeting each athlete or patient with a high five as they enter your office or as complex as a new pre-participation exam that actually screens them for risk factors that matter. Or how about an idea that will provide your staff with more opportunities to ship?

Once you’ve committed to writing down these ideas you’ll not only discover there are a number of easy ways to improve your services, but you’ll actually find yourself leading others to the trough of change.

Warning: you can lead a co-worker to water, but you can’t make them drink. But gosh darn it, seeing you drink first makes it a whole lot easier for others to drink the cool-aid.

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.

"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants"

- Albert Einstein

SAVE THE DATE

The Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group is proud to announce a speaking engagement with Dr. Shirley Sahrmann, June 3/4 2011 in Boston.  Complete details to follow.

A good friend from Australia sent me this clip about workplace motivation. Besides the awesome animation, it’s just under 11 minutes and worth every second of it. 

It may surprise you that monetary incentives are not the lead motivator in the workplace, but instead the three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction are:

Autonomy: desire to be self directed.
Mastery: our urge to become better.
Purpose: When profit motive becomes unmoored from purpose motive bad things happen (bad customer service, crappy products, etc).

How does this change your management strategy this week?

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 don’t know where I first heard this, but it has stuck with me ever since.  I probably was complaining about a project, or telling my boss it was too hard to get something done on time.

I was giving him my 2 cents.

What I should have been giving him was my full effort and my full investment of time and energy.

When it comes to delivering projects on time, or shipping, I want the finished project, “show me the money!”

I want a sustainable and impactful change, no barbershop talk, no excuses as to why it can’t be done.

I want your money – not your two cents. 

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.

Just in case you missed it, earlier this week 19 Oregon Football Players were hit with a “very weird” illness after a  workout session.  One doctor called it a compartment syndrome, I’m guessing this one smells a bit more like Exertional Rhabdomyolysis (RAB-DOE-MY-O-LIE-SIS) or Rhabdo. 

What is this strange animal you may ask? Simply stated, Rhabdo is a rapid breakdown and destruction of skeletal muscle resulting in the release of muscle fiber contents or myoglobin into the bloodstream. Symptoms include:muscle pain, weakness and swelling along with cola colored urine.

No problem right? That’s how you build big muscles, you tear um down first to then build them bigger and better! What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

Well, not exactly. You see, Rhabdo can ultimately lead to death via kidney failure.

So what causes Rhabdo?

The list includes but not limited to:

• muscle trauma or crush injury
• severe burns,
• physical torture or child abuse
• prolonged lying down on the ground (people who fall or are unconscious and are unable to get up for several hours)
• prolonged coma,
• severe muscle contractions from prolonged seizures
• cocaine use with related hyperthermia (increased body temperature),
• extreme physical activity (running a marathon),
• low circulating phosphate, potassium, or magnesium levels in the blood (electrolytes)
• prolonged drowning or hypothermia (low core body temperature)
• lack of blood perfusion to a limb

Pretty extreme stuff isn’t it?  Here is some more info: http://www.bsmpg.com/exertional-rhabdomyolysis

Other contributing factors include: initial fitness level at the beginning of a training program, extreme heat and levels of dehydration.

Now I wasn’t in Oregon this week, nor do I have any additional information regarding the type of training these young men were doing and for the purpose of this rant it doesn’t matter.  My only goal is to provide a basis for conversation between your Sports Medicine and Performance Departments on how to recognize the onset of Rhabdo, and better yet avoid it all together.  And although there’s plenty of football and hockey dads out there that pay good money to coaches around the country to make their kids puke during workouts, I hope that a culture of “superdiscipline” and common sense instead becomes the standard conditioning test this fall.

Now drop and give me 500!

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.

On line resources define Evidence Based Medicine as the following:

ev•i•dence-based med•i•cine

noun

Definition:
 
treatment based on reliable evidence: the use of clinical methods and decision-making that have been thoroughly tested by properly controlled, peer-reviewed medical research.

Now that we got that out of the way we can move forward with your definition?

The same?

You sure?

No other phrase has infiltrated both sports medicine and strength and conditioning more in the past decade, and for good reason. It guides clinical practice and allows us to allocate resources, time, and personnel towards obtaining best practice.  The problem is not with evidence based medicine but with individuals providing “their own definition” in defense of the work they are conducting.

So the next time your co-worker starts ultra-sounding an entire thigh simply ask them what their definition of evidence based medicine is.  Hint: we are not allowed to each have our own definition.

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 business friend of mine is always talking about gaps in the market and turning a profit.  Always looking to fill only those gaps that have a market and thus place only resources where they are best utilized.  In discussing our department and without knowing anything about Sports Performance, the first question he asked me was this,

“Is there a gap in the market? And is there a market in the gap?”

A classic example of a gap in the market was the introduction of the Segway.  At the time, and still to this day, there was no machine that enabled a person to stand upright and zip around at a running speed with little or no effort. A clear example of a gap in the market. 

The problem that the makers of the Segway ran into was that they never followed up the first question with the second and asked themselves, “Is there a market in the gap?”

Besides a few mall rent-a-cops, the Segway basically was a flop – no market in the gap despite the massive gap in the market.

If you follow the NBA, you’ve no doubt heard the story of Kevin Durant’s failed bench press attempt at the NBA combine his rookie year.  Kevin Durant can’t bench 185 lbs; some would say a clear a gap in his physique (market).  What many failed to see though, was that there was absolutely no need to fill this gap in Kevin’s physique.  Developing Kevin’s physique so that he could bench press 225 lbs, although fulfilling your ego, will not make him play any better… and hence no market in that gap. When examining your athletes both in rehab and performance the question we need to ask when addressing these programs is simple.

Is there a market in their gap? And if not, we need to start putting our resources into gaps that are marketable.

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.

There's an employee outside of my department that I've known for some years.  For pretty much the entire time I have known them they have been telling people they were planning on leaving for greener pastures soon enough.  This has been going on for about five years now, but for some reason they have been unable to find a situation that better suits their needs.  In the interim, let's just say that they have not been the model of ownership.  Sure, they do their job, but along the way they also complain about their responsibilities, their poor compensation, and the state of their department in general to anyone willing to listen.  They also fail to understand why it is that they are still stuck in a less than ideal circumstance and are unable to find another job.  Hmmm, baffling.

You may recognize it, but the title of this post is taken from a quote by entrepreneur Shawn Carter who you may know better as Jay-Z.  Over the years Carter has continually reinvented himself and excelled in every avenue that he's explored.  He has gone from being a successful artist to owning a record label, his own major clothing line, a chain of upscale sports bars, and an ever increasing number of other ventures.  Carter continually excels because he has the drive to succeed, but also because he understands that his name is a brand.  In today's age many artists, athletes and other celebrities continually make poor decisions that ultimately paint their names in a negative light and simultaneously limit their future potential.  While many of these people do not fully understand that their name is their brand, Carter grasps the notion that while he is marketing all of his businesses, more importantly he is marketing himself. 

What does this have to do with you?  Let's forget about the effect your actions have on your workplace for a minute and focus on the effect they have on you.  Every decision you make, every meeting you attend, and every conversation you have impacts the way that supervisors, employees, and co-workers perceive you.  When you complain about your surroundings, belittle your fellow employees or put forth a mediocre effort you are definitely influencing your image, but is that really the image you want to put forth?  Your brand is what ultimately makes the difference between advancing in your profession and continuing to work in a position that is less than your ideal circumstance.  You are your own business and you should be marketing yourself accordingly.  Shawn Carter knows it.  Why don't you?

Shaun Bossio is the Assistant Business Manager and ProShop Manager at Boston University FitRec.
He can be reached at sbossio@bu.edu