Here are a few articles that every player and coach can benefit
from. The first is from Dr. Rick McGuire, it's about managing your focus during competition.
We have posted some work by McGuire before and we are still big
fans of his work.Click Here
The second article is by on of McGuire’s
students and it is about goal setting. This is a great read for an athlete and
his comments are really on point. We strive to get 1% better with each skill we
perform at each practice. The article by Rich has a similar theme and it
explains the benefits of this approach nicely. Click Here
Lastly, on the subject of perspective, here is a video clip about making mistakes. All too often coaches find that their efforts aimed at improving results, teaching productive work habits, and advancing learning becomes derailed by defensiveness. This defensiveness is often rooted in the athletes fear of "being wrong". "Being wrong" is the moment you realize you have been making a mistake. For some, the only thing worse than knowing they were wrong, is realizing everyone else is aware of their error as well. Many players have been socialized to have a "fixed mindset" and their perception of mistakes becomes destructive to learning. One of the goals of our staff is to help players learn to love corrections and to see the opportunity for change once our errors are understood. We will all make mistakes and our focus must be on improvement. To keep making progress at a high rate we must be willing to face our messy reality and learn from our mistakes, for as the saying goes " to error is human". I hope that this clip will improve some perspectives and allow players to open up to the potential for change that exist in learning when we were wrong.
