Player Development in the Old Days

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One of the things about sports that interest me the most is how players develop. There is, of course, a wide variety of ways development occurs, and players take different paths at different ages. There isn’t, and never has been, a blanket approach to the way kids improve in athletics.

I spend a lot of time thinking about development and trying to make it happen with the players I coach. But I am far from an expert in the field. I am, however, fully versed and have expert-level knowledge in one area of player development. And that is how kids developed back in the Good Old Days. [Read more…]

Reaction Time is Trained by Experiences

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So I have this great book that I pull out every once in a while. It’s called Sports Illustrated; Fifty Years of Great Writing.

I picked it up the other day and opened it o an old article about Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees Hall of Fame catcher and world-famous malaprop philosopher. Famous quotes attributed to Berra are somewhere between idiotic and genius. “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded” … “Be careful if you don’t know where your going. You might not get there,” and “The Future ain’t what it used to be.” [Read more…]

Be Specific When Setting Goals

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You know what’s interesting? Watch a group of 12- and 13-year-old female soccer players go through a goal-setting session.

There was roughly 50 of them in a conference room which was not built with acoustical quality to match the high-pitch decibel level girls can reach. Once they quieted down, however, they were (mostly) all business. [Read more…]