Author: Vernon Gambetta

I really enjoyed reading all the responses on yesterdays post, still not sure what mental toughness really is though. Some of you described the characteristics of champion performers. One thing that I observe continually is that the best have a growth mindset; they are willing to take risk and change to get better. The also ran has a fixed mindset focusing on what they can’t do and making excuses. One thing I am sure of is that mindless punishment workouts and stupid “mental toughness” drills don’t work. Last year I saw a DI basketball strength coach present on mental toughness training. I found it almost embarrassing. It was series of mindless exercises designed to hurt, culminating is a player doing wall sits with 400 pounds of sandbags piles on him with the rest of the team screaming encouragement. What does that achieve? To paraphrase the country western song – work you finger to the bone and you get bony fingers. It is imperative that we as coaches design our training to put the athlete in pressure situations at various points in training and practice and then to use those as teachable moments. We had a great example yesterday at Volleyball training. We did a team challenge on the Dumbbell Complex. Each girl paired up with a partner and determined the weight of the dumbbell they could use on each of the four exercises. The goal was achieve the highest total weight for five sets done with a one to one work to rest ratio. I was very interesting to see how a couple of kids would do who have been labeled as not as tough would perform. It was amazing to see them rise to the occasion. There was not a lot of screaming and yelling, there was intense concentration and game like effort. It was pressure and they responded. They chose more weight than I would have chosen for them and they all did it. As a team with 12 athletes we lifted 6 tons of weight! This was a giant leap toward Lakeland and the State Championship next November. It was the culmination of a training phase. Now after two weeks of active rest they will start in the summer program with a lot more emphasis on volleyball. We will see if they are “mentally tough, “ I think they know how to train, know how to take risks now and they understand the difference between mindless work and mindful work. They know they are the strongest volleyball team in the state. What more could you ask?

Sorry for not posting last week. I was only home in Sarasota two days so I barely had time to get the workouts in with Volleyball and prepare for the next weekend. It has been hectic but very satisfying time of travel. I have one more trip this weekend to speak to the Collegiate Swim coaches and then I have a week break. I am doing my best to keep the airlines solvent. I have flown 29,000 plus miles on Delta since January 1 and another 4,000 on Southwest. My comment on that is that if you have to fly, fly Southwest, it is the way to go, they get it. Just like good coaches they understand it is about the customer. Then why do I fly Delta, because they do not fly out of Sarasota and Delta does. With Delta you get to the gate, click your brain to the power saving mode and accept the fact that they will find a way to screw it up. Delta and the NY Mets have a lot in common (Delta used to be a corporate sponsor of the Mets – Birds of a feather flock together). They both could screw up a good dream. This past weekend I was at the Second NC State basketball Symposium, it was smaller than last year, but I thought much better. I met a lot of nice people and got to catch up with friends. The high point for me was the presentation by Bob Medina, the strength and conditioning coach of the Portland Trailblazers. The title was NBA 101. He presented it like a class to coaches on a day in the life of the conditioning coach in the NBA. His story was spot on, and compelling.  This talk could have been about any professional sport. Bob made the statement that in the NBA that if you wanted to you could be pissed off every day because of the nature of the league and the structure. I was impressed with how he has worked to create a system of accountability and motivation, it was impressive. The audience was composed of many younger coaches with stars in their eyes, I hope they were really listening to what Bob said. It is not all that it appears to be. I think it is interesting that Bob started out as a high school coach, then coached at UNLV before the pro’s. What I saw at this symposium and a phenomenon I see in my travels is twenty something’s who have been a GA or an intern with a top DI program getting a job at another DI program with no real coaching experience. I really think everyone should have to teach and coach middle school or high school to find out if you can teach, communicate and organize. It seems the younger generation wants to be at the top and not pay their dues. I think you really learn to coach when you have to dig and rake the long jump pit, when you have to line the track, when you have to teach five classes then coach. That is reality, but I sense there are fewer young people who want to get their hands dirty and really coach. Sport science is fine and  all the internships at palatial facilities are great but can you coach? This is all basic stuff. I want to thank Bob for getting the my motor running and the wheels turning.

Tim wrote to me in response to yesterdays post: “Vern do you subscribe to the theory that you coach all athletes the same. I recently attended a one day learning seminar with some highly sought after coaches and they were preaching, it doesn't matter if you have a soccer athlete, baseball, hockey and a football athlete all in the same group you just train them, a push is a push a pull is a pull a jump is a jump…” I absolutely and positively disagree. That might work when you are running a commercial training center and you have to put a bunch of different athletes together to make it profitable, but that is not coaching, that is CROWD CONTROL. Each sport has unique demands, each position in the sport has specific demands, each individual brings something different to the sport and you also need to address injury prevention. In strength training I do pulling movements, pushing movements, squatting movements and rotational movements with every sport. The mode and method varies from sport to sport and individual. For example now with my volleyball team we have 12 players starting to squat with a bar (Well into the third year of training), but they are not all going the same depth. Four athletes are using the Hexlite Bar for their leg work, because I do not want to load their spine. Some of the freshmen are using sandbags and some are using bodyweight. Yes it is confusing, but to me that is coaching. It is not confusing to them, because each day the goal and objective is communicated to each athlete verbally and in writing. It would be too easy to fit everyone into the same box and let the survivors prevail. I want all the athletes I work with to get the best from me and to thrive not survive.

This was in Seth Godin’s blog today; he calls it the Houdini Technique: Make easy things look difficult. Make difficult things look easy. This is exactly what the training gurus do. They take simple things and make them complex and take very difficult movement skills and trivialize them. It continues to amaze me how people keep buying into this rubbish. Training the athlete is a straight forward process. It is based on principles of adaptation and sound pedagogy. You cannot force adaptation, nor can you make the body do things it is not ready to whether the limitation is from growth and development or training age. Everything takes time. My mantra has always been simplicity yields complexity. The human body has an inherent wisdom. As coaches, therapists and trainers we must learn to tap into that wisdom. Training is not magic, it is not smoke and mirrors. It is sound, directed work with a purpose that is designed to fit the individual athlete. Ask yourself if the athletes you are coaching are surviving or thriving?