Hello! Wow, its been a long time since I wrote anything! I'm back again!
The other day I had a thought about what it takes to be a great athlete/coach. It was much more consideration into my coaching career and a former athlete. This is my philosophy of being the best athlete/coach you can be using my 5 P's.
1. Purpose- When you walk into the gym, you should have a purpose. Everyone has a purpose, otherwise you wouldn't come to practice. Your purpose shouldn't be "because I have to come to practice". If you had to come then you hinder your productivity of your practice. Make sure that every time you walk through those doors, have a purpose. Your purpose is that you want to! You purpose should be your expectation and goals on what you like to achieve. Coming to practice without a purpose is like coming in with a bad attitude that will hinder your success. So come to practice with an awesome attitude and have a purpose.
"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing."
- Thomas A. Edison
2. Passion- Passion is about for the love of it. I love tumbling and I love it with a passion. Everyday I breathe, I sweat, I dream, and I bleed tumbling. I love the aggressiveness and the challenges that tumbling offers me. No one can't take that away from me. I would expect my athletes to have that same passion as me. I want them to love it as much as I do. As a coach, I put in just as much more passion into coaching as much as I put in as an athlete.
"Follow your passion, be prepared to work hard and sacrifice, and, above all, don't let anyone limit your dreams." - Donovan Bailey
3. Prepare: Nothing is more important than preparing. Preparing comes in many factors. You can prepare physically and mentally. When I'm talking physical preparation, I'm talking warming up, stretching, strength and conditioning, and drills for skills. This physical preparation is also knowing the 7 body shapes that I talked about earlier in the blog. Mentally preparing is focusing on the task and being mentally strong. You need to be mentally tough knowing you got this. I'm not going to pretend to be a sport psychologist but my friend Dr. Allison Arnold is a great person to talk about mental toughness. You can learn more about her at http://www.docaliarnold.com/.
"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail"
- Benjamin Franklin
4. Practice- Practice is everything including your fundamental drills, skills, and routines. Your practice should meet the same standards as your purpose. Remember you are the result of what you do. If you practice going through movements rather than making the effort to do it, you may want to reevaluate your purpose.
The amount and type of practice leading to expertise requires not only the time in which the person spent in the gym but most importantly is how they spent their time in the gym. According to extensive study of experts, the specific type of intense practice a person needs to achieve expertise in any field is deliberate practice. This type of practice requires the person to receive optimal instruction, as well as engages in intense work like practice. As the person reaches expertise, he or she begins to need personalize training or supervision of the practice regime. It's important to make sure that we have good quality program protocols to learn things correctly otherwise, according to hundreds of studies among Basketball players, it takes about and average of 3,000- 5,000 reps to break a bad habit. However, I would expect the numbers to go higher has the complexity of the movement in tumbling is more complex.
I say this from time and time again. You don't deserve what you want. You don't deserve what you desire. You only deserve what you do.
"You need to put what you learn into practice and do it over and over again until it's a habit. I always say, 'Seeing is not believing. Doing is believing.' There is a lot to learn about fitness, nutrition and emotions, but once you do, you can master them instead of them mastering you." -Brett Hoebel
5. Progress- Practice to progress not for perfection. You may ask why not perfection. I always believe that perfectionist are very dangerous. Perfectionist get hard on themselves and they lack self confidence that can lead into much frustration later down the road. I have experience working with a few perfectionist. Perfectionist have a hard time believing that if they focus on process, they will have the outcome they desire. They think that they must strive for perfection in order to achieve. Anything less is failure. It become very difficult to get them to "buy in" to focus on the process. I want mastery and excellence, not perfection. Besides what is perfection? no one really have an answer, not for performance. Perfection is an abstract thought. There's really no guide to know if you ever received perfection.
Don't push so hard trying to be perfect. Progress for excellence on your own terms by evauluating your purpose and your practice. Progress shows improvement, growth, and learning. This way you only get the outcome you desire. Practice to progress for mastery!
"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." - Francis of Assisi