Your instincts are innate.
They help make decisions, quick, and without thinking.
This natural intuition helps you react to a certain person, situation, or stimuli for a reason. Trust that reasoning. Follow your first instincts more.
They will take you farther, quicker. T
hank your ancestors, trust your instincts.
Why haven’t you earned that starting spot?
Why did you start and fail to finish that good read?
Why were your grades better in the first semester than they are now?
Why are you afraid to speak up for what’s right when others may disagree?
How come your no longer a part of chess club?
Why that diet only last a week?
The thing that’s keeping you from doing what’s best for you, your team, your environment, your peers, is the resistence.
The resistence is a negative force. A pull that keeps us from doing our work.
The resistence will keep you from doing the work that creates long term gratification, change, or success. It wants you to quit, to forget, to stop before you even start.
The resistence can be beat. Know, it’s fueled by your fear. You fight your fears, you fight the resistence. You fight the resistence, it’s onto creating a better you, we, world.
I am currently reading “Flow –The Psychology of Optimal Performance” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In my continuing pursuit of knowledge that might help me improve as a coach (and person), I began this book with the hope that it would provide some valuable insights, into how to help my student athletes improve their own performance. I have not been disappointed. While it is not an easy book to read, and I am only halfway through it. I barely finish a page without feeling the need to make note of something. This morning, on page 140, Csikszentmihalyi says, of modern society “what is admired is success, achievement, the quality of performance rather than the quality of experience.” This reminded me about the importance of “the Journey” as compared to “the destination”. It also raises an old question about the definition of success. How do you define success? Are you only successful when you win, or make mountains of money, or become famous? John Wooden, perhaps the greatest philosopher/coach and teacher in American Sports History, often referred to his own Coach at Purdue University, Piggy Lambert, as having had the most influence over Wooden as both a player and a coach. After a season, when Lambert was asked if he had been successful that year, he replied “Ask me in 20 years , and we’ll see how successful these boys are. Then I will be able to tell you if I succeeded as a coach.” In Corey Winkoff’s Blog entry on November 3, 2016, he talked about how FLG’s Goal is to Build More Than Just Athletes. As a Lacrosse Club how much of our focus should be on winning games and tournaments and getting players recruited early? We should be more concerned with helping our players develop into the best players and people they can be and helping them find the college that is the right fit for them, academically, socially and athletically. When they are finished with college (and most likely not playing competitive lacrosse anymore), my hope is that they will all have grown up to be fine people, good parents, and productive and positive members of their communities. If they are able to become those things, then perhaps, the excellent training, we hope we provided, that models a good work ethic and attention to detail with focus on long term goals, played at least a small role in their development.
A debate worth mentioning. Power conferences are coming into discussion and into fruition throughout Long Island. The girls, well ahead of the guys game, have had a power conference for years in Nassau County with teams being split up based on ability. Nassau Boys B & C Leagues are broken up by ability as well. Counties across the east coast are joining the movement towards getting their conference or leagues to be split up based on ability.
Below we’ve listed some reasons why power conferences are good, or in some cases bad, for High School sports.
What do you think? Power conference or no power conference? That’s the question.
Julia Galef examines the motivation behind two different mindsets. On the one side, you have the soldier mindset – defending ones viewpoint at all costs. The other side, the scout mindset – the drive to see what’s really there.
She explains how scouts are motivated to find the truth, they are curious, and thinks it’s virtuous to test ones own beliefs. Scouts acknowledge when bits of information contradict a previously existing world view. Scouts are less likely to say one who changes their mind is weak. Simply put, a scout is the best version of oneself.
As an athlete, you should strive to be the best version of you. Athletes should work to build a successful mindset. A mindset that promotes curiosity, motivation, and greatness.
Which mindset do you possess?
Learn more about the motivation behind the scout and soldier mindsets in Julia’s TED Talk below!
FLG’s Scoring Academy Winter Session 1 starts tonight! Check out what we will be teaching to get our scoring academy going tonight:
Hope to see you tonight at FLG’s Scoring Academy Session 1…
FLG’s annual box lacrosse training program is rapidly approaching. In the box rinks on Long Island we look to replicate Canadian box lacrosse drills, techniques, and style of play. I was talking to a parent who has two kids coming to our box lacrosse training this winter. In conversation he asked me, “do the you teach player’s to use their opposite hands in the box rink?” After pondering how to answer that questions, I soon realized that’s a pretty loaded question. It had me wonder:
What should be our philosophy on using opposites hands in the rink?
Is there time to teach everything we do with the strong hand with the weak hand?
Is the box rink a good time to work on your opposite hand?
Why do Canadians typically play with 1 hand?
Below was my response:
In the box rink, we teach a variety of passing variations and shooting techniques. This includes, leaners, wristers, shovel passes, levers, behind-the-backs, one-handers, and much more. Some of these passing and shooting variations may be completely foreign to even some of the most advanced youth lacrosse players here on Long Island. Being that player’s are learning new technique for the first time, it takes time to develop these skills effectively even with their strong hand. Secondly, in the box rink, you are playing in tighter spaces. When you play in tight spaces, you have to make decisions, move the ball, and play that much faster. When you play faster, typically you don’t have time to switch hands. This takes time. The longer you take, the less effective you are in the rink. That being said, the box rink usually isn’t a time for players to work on their opposite hand. It’s a time to try new things with their strong hands. Develop in tight spacing using the skills and techniques taught with their strong hand. Get that much better at finishing the rock in tight with their strong hand. Now, there are always exceptions. Players who have experience playing that box-field hybrid game might want to develop new skills with their opposite hand. We will never prevent someone from trying new things with their opposite hands in the box rink.
Long story short, it depends on the level of the players, the age, the experience, and the situation whether or not we have player’s work on that weak hand.
