Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

A friend of mine recently left his job at a major academic institution where he worked his way up from the ground floor into a middle management position before leaving for the upper ranks at a competitor’s on the west coast.  As a courtesy to the organization in which he had given so much, and so much given to him, he approached his superior's administrative assistant and asked if there was a formal “exit interview” that he was to partake in prior to his final day at the end of the week.

“Usually only people that want to complain ask for exit interviews,” the administrative assistant explained, “did you still want to speak with him?”

“ummm, well, no, not anymore,” my friend replied.

Wouldn’t an exit interview be the perfect opportunity to gain feedback into your organization’s weaknesses, customer service, and operating procedures?

Sure the employee may be salty that they are leaving, but what chance for feedback do you have otherwise once they’ve walked out the door?

You should search out that employee and simply ask, “what can we do better?” This is the only time they won’t be afraid to tell you exactly how it is.  You can sift through the salt and substance after, but once they’re gone, they’re gone, and hence so is the opportunity for your organization to improve.

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.

At the end of this next semester how will you introduce yourself?

Will your boss know you simply by the name on your driver’s license or as the leader of a new project? The staff nutrition expert? The master coach? The staff liaison to the health center, athletic training room or weight room?

If you want your colleagues and prospective employers to know your name you must be willing to bring your work to the world.  You must be willing to rename yourself as "the person who gets things done."  If you are not willing, well, that work will simply get outsourced to someone else who is.

Either or, the work will eventually get done.

You might as well have your name on it.

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.

Is just an excuse for not wanting to do the work required to get a project shipped.

If your boss truly won’t let you, it’s probably because you are asking the wrong questions.

If you want your boss to support you during a project which will ultimately reward you if it works, but punishes the boss if fails then of course you’re asking the wrong questions.

What exactly won’t your boss let you do?

Did you investigate it? Research it? Find a gap in your current operating procedures that is worth filling? Does it fit into your core principles? Values?

If the answer is yes, and your boss really won’t let you, then you might want to find another job where your boss supports the extraordinary work that you’re doing.

Unless of course, your happy with ordinary?

(rant inspired by Seth Godin and his most recent book, Linchpin)

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.

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.