Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

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.

I asked a friend at work the other day to help me solve a problem that has been affecting our department.

"Sorry" he said, "that's above my pay grade."

If you continue to refuse to take on responsibilities that are above your pay grade, when do you ever get the chance to ever move into that pay grade?

Wouldn't it make more sense to work more now than you get paid, so you can eventually get paid more than you work?

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.

Training = Rehab - Rehab = Training DVD set now available by Charlie Weingroff.

Training=Rehab, Rehab=Training is a 12+ hour, 6-disc set shot on-location over a weekend at an Equinox Fitness Club in New York City.  It documents Dr. Weingroff’s continuing efforts to reinvent and redefine the language between the rehabilitation and performance enhancement training landscapes.  And while there are plenty of examples for those who just want the exercises, these DVDs are more about designing your own blueprints based on common rules that medical professionals and personal trainers should honor.

If you weren’t there, this puts you in the room for the entirety of an extraordinary voyage with one of the most influential and outspoken voices in the industry.  Training=Rehab, Rehab=Training will surely be an educational milestone and a must-have in the collection for every physical therapist, strength coach and personal trainer.

Catch Charlie in Boston this coming June 3rd/4th at the BSMPG Basketball Specific Training Symposium along with Shirley Sahrmann, Tom Myers and Clare Frank.

BSMPG is proud to announce that Pete Viteritti will join Dr. Shirley Sahrmann, Tom Myers, and Clare Frank as featured speakers in Boston June 3rd and 4th, 2011.

Peter Viteritti is a Diplomate of the American Chiropractic Board of Sports Physicians who maintains private practices in two multidisciplinary centers. As a sports chiropractic consultant to several collegiate athletic programs, he integrates patient centered, functional examinations and advanced manual procedures with traditional medical care. 

He has been privileged to serve on the sports medicine staff at various national and international sporting events.  In addition, he instructed on the post-graduate faculty of five chiropractic colleges throughout the country and has been a featured speaker at both national and international sports medicine symposiums.
www.chirosportsmed.net

BSMPG is announcing a limited time sale of our 2010 Basketball and Hockey Training DVD’s!

You can get all of the presentations delivered to your doorstep just in time for Christmas or give these DVD’s as a stocking stuffer to an aspiring coach looking to take their team training to the next level.  Watch a clip of Matt Nichol, former Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs present “Training Energy Systems for Hockey” by clicking HERE.

From November 23-December 1st, the 5-DVD Basketball set will be on sale for $99.00 and the 4-DVD Hockey set will be on sale for only $75.00!

Basketball - DVD includes presentations from strength coaches from University of Stanford, University of Virginia, University of Pittsburgh and many more!

Hockey - DVD includes presentations from Anaheim Ducks Strength Coach, legendary USA Gold Medal strength coach Jack Blatherwick, corrective exercise specialist Bill Hartman and many more!
Don’t miss this one time sale!

** orders placed after December 10th cannot be guaranteed to arrive prior to Christmas. 

Are you kidding me? I feel great!

When I arrived at Boston University as a Graduate Assistant a very long time ago I was fortunate to work alongside and for Mark Laursen.  For those that don’t know Mark, his ability to instantly put you at ease while placing the biggest smile on your face has become legendary.

Each day I would walk into work and ask Mark how he was doing, and every day he answered the very same way, “are you kidding me? I feel great!”  It was hard not to smile upon hearing how happy he was and how genuinely happy he was to see you.

It didn’t matter if an athlete was recovering from knee surgery or simply passing by the Athletic Training Room, Mark’s infectious and upbeat mood crept into each and everyone’s facial muscles.

Mark knew how very important it was to smile at work.

Your passion, your energy and the way you show you care matters!

You have a choice on how you feel today….

Choose wisely : )

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.

BSMPG is proud to announce that Dr. Clare Frank will join Dr. Shirley Sahrmann and Tom Myers as featured speakers in Boston June 3rd and 4th, 2011.

Dr Frank was born and raised in Malaysia where she found her passion in sports. She started competing at the age of 10 and went on to win several state and national competitions in badminton.  Shortly after representing Malaysia in the International Women’s Uber Cup Championships, she left for the United States to pursue her education as a physiotherapist. While at Northern Illinois University, she earned All American honors and the distinguished Broderick Award in Badminton.  Her experience in competitive, elite sports and training has set the backdrop for her keen interest in the neuromuscular system and its relationship with musculoskeletal pain syndromes and dysfunction.

Dr. Frank received her physical therapy degree from Northern Illinois University. She completed the Kaiser Permanente Orthopedic Residency program in 1993 while working on her Master of Science degree in Physical Therapy  & Biokinesiology at University of Southern California. She then went on to receive her post-professional doctorate degree from Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, California in 2003.  She is a board certified specialist in Orthopedic Physical Therapy (OCS) and a fellow in the American Academy of Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy (FAAOMPT).
 
Her clinical career has been greatly influenced by Shirley Sahrmann PT, PhD, and the Prague School of Manual Medicine faculty, namely, the late Vladimir Janda MD, Karel Lewit MD, and Pavel Kolar PT, PhD. Dr. Frank practices at a private clinic in Los Angeles, California. She has been instrumental in setting up the Movement Science Fellowship at Kaiser Permanente, Los Angeles and is one of the primary clinical instructors for the program. She is also a certified instructor for Bands, Balls & Balance, Janda's Approach to Musculoskeletal Pain Syndromes and Kolar's Approach to Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization.  Dr Frank also serves as an adjunct lecturer at Western University of Health Sciences and Azusa Pacific University. She has presented at both state and national conferences and has recently published a book on "Assessment and Treatment of Muscle Imbalancels:  The Janda Approach" .  She currently teaches in the U.S. and internationally.

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.

The NBA has been in the news recently because of the impending lockout coming next summer.  With the current collective bargaining agreement set to expire, the time has come to reevaluate how the league works.  The problem (at least from the owners’ and league’s perspective) is that despite the fact that the league makes upwards of $2 billion a year, the owners as a whole are projected to lose $340 to $350 million this upcoming season.  Of course, there are still a number of profitable franchises in the NBA, but owners that play in small markets, paid above-market price for their teams in the last ten years, or both (yikes) are playing with a serious disadvantage as opposed to owners in Boston, Los Angeles and other major markets.  So what is a small market team to do?  Sell the team at a loss?  Attempt to move to a larger market?  If you are Clay Bennett, owner of the former Seattle Supersonics and current Oklahoma City Thunder, then the answer is the latter.  When times got tough, Bennett said goodbye to the city that had been the Sonics’ home since 1967 for greener pastures.  However, if you are like most small market teams with an investment in and appreciation for their city, you think outside the box.  For instance, this year a number of small market teams that only sell out a handful of games each year have begun charging increased prices for tickets to those more popular games.  Simple, but it is also as effective as it is untraditional.   It’s something that scalpers have been doing for years, so why can’t it work for the franchises themselves? 

In any environment, thinking outside the box is often the key to strategic growth.  I know what you’re thinking, “Shaun, thinking outside the box is a phrase I have heard for years.  This is nothing new.”  That’s a fair argument, but think about this for a second;  how often in your office environment do you and your coworkers choose the path of least resistance over a new way of doing things?  I am willing to bet that the phrase “that’s how we have always done things” is used a lot whenever somebody brings up a new idea.  Everybody talks about innovation, but how innovative is your office really?  True innovation is fostered on a regular basis to help small businesses play on a more level playing field, to help organizations recover from a downturn in the economy, or even to help the most successful corporations stay on top.  After all, how do you think they got there in the first place?  So take a while to evaluate what you and your business does on a daily basis to stay competitive.  Figure out what tasks are non-essential, which ones take more man hours than they should, and if there are more efficient ways of doing certain things. 

Hint: there usually are. 

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.