All in

 

A common mantra among sports teams today is to declare that they are “all in.” What does that mean, exactly?

Does that mean that you will do anything to win? Cheat, lie, steal? Tennis can be a strange game. For the most part, players make their own calls. I watched a high school player recently that consistently called anything close as out. He was good. He didn’t have to cheat to win. But he cheated anyway.

Despite tons of public education, performance enhancing drugs are still a huge presence in sports today.

In my day, it was anabolic steroids. Little was known about them and long-term effects weren’t even considered. At 18, I wanted to play college football. My problem was that I was the same size then that I am now—5’11” and 200 pounds. Couldn’t gain an ounce regardless of what I did.

Before that, I had the same problem. I was 5’11” and 185 pounds as a high school sophomore. I remember my high school football coach telling me that if I would forget about other sports and focus on football, that I could get a college scholarship.

That’s all it took. I spent tons of time in the weight room. Worked hard. Ate everything in sight. The ladies in the cafeteria at school took care of me. The lunch rules were one plate per person but because my mom had worked with them for several years, I was allowed to come back for seconds anytime I wanted to.

All that and I by my senior year, I was 5’11” and 190 pounds. So much for my college prospects. An old family doc in my hometown offered to put me on this stuff called Dianabol, which promised to add muscle to your frame.

But then when he was out of the room, I read the little slip of paper that accompanied the drug which listed the side effects. I’m reading along and get to the part that said “impotence.” I may have been a country boy but I knew what that meant.

Huh-uh. Not doing that one. I knew even then that I wanted to be a father. Football wasn’t worth that to me. I had a friend in college that had played football but had a knee injury that ended his career. He then turned to bodybuilding.

A year later, he was a 6’3”, 240 pound monster. Planning a career in health care at the time, I was sort of the dormitory doctor. So this guy calls me into his room and asks me what I thought about the fact that his testicles (sorry—too much information, I know) were the size of pinto beans.

He not only was unable to father children, he had a heart attack in his 40’s.

Years later, medical professionals were still saying that steroids didn’t really add muscle to your body while the bodybuilders knew different. And slowly, we realized the terrible side effects. Not just impotence but heart problems, stroke, and early death.

Yet, that hasn’t stopped the use of performance enhancing drugs. Lance Armstrong was the most drug-tested athlete in sports and passed every one of those. I defended him up until the proof was undeniable. The NFL? Lance proved that drug tests could be beat.

All in? It doesn’t mean that you’ll do anything and everything to win. It means you are committed to doing the little things. It means you eat right, get plenty of sleep, and stay hydrated.

All in means that you put in the work. You don’t just show up for practice, you give it everything you have. All in means that you are coachable, that you are a good teammate, that you are always prepared.

All in means committed to being the best you.

Developing Mental Toughness

 

I got stopped at a soccer match recently by a regular reader, who commented on my recent column on Johannus Monday and asking how, as a parent, she might teach mental toughness.

Wow! I guess I didn’t go there. I pointed out that it was an essential ingredient to athletic success but I didn’t really put wheels on the concept. 

My elevator speech at that time was that as parents, we can help our children gain mental toughness by supporting them, encouraging them, and giving them opportunities. I also said that I planned to give it some thought and to expect to see more in this space the next week.

Well, here it is. First, what is mental toughness? For athletes, it’s the ability to move on after a failure. It’s self-confidence, even (maybe especially) when challenged. It’s fighting through when you’re not at your best.  It’s making a mistake but not letting that impact the next play, the next shot.

That’s what I was talking about when I was talking about working with our kickers. You miss one, you forget about it. You move on.

You’ve got to have self-confidence. I’ve used the phrase “quiet arrogance” in the past. I think most great athletes have that. I don’t think any of us really care for over-the-top arrogance. But we have to have confidence in ourselves, otherwise that last mistake impacts the next opportunity.

I can remember watching my daughter play volleyball back a few years ago. I could always tell during warmups if she was ready to play. She had this sort of “swagger” that I could see a mile away. It meant that she was ready.

It didn’t involve words and she certainly didn’t do anything to disrespect her opponents, but at that point she knew what she was capable of doing and ready to go do it.

OK, so how do you get that? How do you develop mental toughness?

First, you practice. And then you practice more. You practice to the point that you know what you’re capable of doing. You shoot a thousand free throws. You hit a ton of ground strokes. You spend your spare time at the driving range.

You become so good at a skill that you can always count on it during crunch time. You want to be the one to take the last shot because you’ve done it a million times.

You challenge yourself. You play better opponents. You step out of your comfort zone. You put yourself in situations where you are truly challenged. You challenge yourself with difficult and uncomfortable situations.

You never, ever make excuses. You don’t complain about the officials. You don’t whine that the sun was in your eyes. You own your mistakes and forgive the mistakes of others.

You build your support system. You find people that tell you what you’re doing wrong but who also believe in you. My tennis grandson and I meet after every match and first chat about all the good things that he’s done. Then, I will ask him what he did wrong. He knows. And then we talk about how to fix that.

I’m reminded about the 7 “C’s” of mental toughness: Competitiveness, courage, confidence, control, composure, consistency, and commitment.

You stay positive, never letting mistakes impact your game. You stay motivated and committed. And you never, ever give up.

 

Take 'em to the museum!

 

You would think that by now I would have heard it all. After all, I’m old as dirt and have been around since helmets without facemasks. But I haven’t.  Heard it all, that is.

Just this week, the parent of a 10 year old told me about the coach (the sport and the genders will remain unnamed, to protect the innocent) that promised that if their child played for them and dedicated themselves to only that sport, that a college scholarship was guaranteed.

Wait a minute! Really? This coach actually said that? This parent wasn’t bragging or even asking for advice on that situation. They just wanted to know what they could do to prevent injuries over the next several years, until, I guess, that scholarship paper was signed.

My initial reaction was “you’re kidding” which quickly became “wait, what?” Am I hearing this correctly? Are you really serious?

In defense of this parent, I’m convinced they only wanted what was best for their child. I believe that was why they brought it up. At least, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

My first answer is to get your kid a library card. There are about 1000 academic scholarships for every 1 athletic scholarship.  Your chances of securing a college scholarship are incredibly higher on the academic side than on the athletic side.

My next message, shouted loudly, is don’t let your kid specialize in one sport. Play everything. You’ve heard me on that one before, but let me quote a professional that is probably the world’s premier sports orthopedist.

Dr. Jim Andrews has said in many forums “specialization…means not only an increase in risk factors for traumatic injuries, but a sky-high increase in overuse injuries.”

Dr. Andrews literally invented the procedure most often used these days to repair a torn ACL, but as he approached his retirement from surgery (recently celebrated), he moved his focus to the challenges of youth sports, and particularly the dangers of playing only one sport. 

I can’t say it better than Dr. Andrews, so I’ll quote him here verbatim: “The culture of youth sports pretty much dominates parents’ thinking and coaches’ thinking. And it’s hard to crack into that culture to kind of get them to understand that sometimes, they’re doing more harm than good with the pressure they put on these young kids to specialize and play year-round and play two leagues at the same time.”

Keep in mind, this is the doctor for the superstars. Tiger Woods. Michael Jordan. He saved Drew Brees’ career. Yet his focus late in his career turned to the youngest athletes.

What is his general advice?  Let your child play multiple sports to physically develop properly. He points to a recent Super Bowl game where a survey revealed that 90% of the football players on the field played more than one sport in high school.

“All these kids need to be an athlete first,” Andrews has been quoted as saying. “But the coaches and the systems are telling the parents as you probably know that if your kid doesn’t sign up to play youth baseball year-round, they can’t play with the elite league.”

So my advice is let your kid grow up well rounded. Take them to the lake to ski. Climb mountains. Swim, paddle, and definitely play all the sports they have time for. And never forget that you are better off buying books and visiting museums than you are playing travel ball.

Mental Toughness

 

I recently interviewed UT tennis player Johannus Monday for a podcast that I do. Often called “Joe” by friends and fans, Johannus is tall, powerful lefty whose game is spectacular to watch. I became acquainted with him primarily through my tennis-playing grandson. 

A three-time All-American, he is currently #7 in the country in singles and #8 in doubles.  He played in Wimbledon last year in England, which is where he is from, an opportunity that he called “the best moment of my life.”

In my interview with him, I asked Johannus what it took to compete at the highest level. His answer surprised me.I expected it to be the classical mantra of hard work, persistence, dedication, attention to details. Nope. That wasn’t what he shared at all.

He said that at the top of the game, everyone has the skills. Everyone has the ground strokes. Everyone can serve and volley.  Everyone understands the basics of the game.

Everybody is fit and works hard in the weight room. They all spend hours and hours on the court practicing. What he said was that what separates good from great is the mental aspect. Being mentally strong is the difference.

He recalls that when he arrived at UT, he was sent to a sports psychologist to work on mental training. He recalls being placed in an ice tub and going through mental exercises to control his body’s response to the cold.

We sometimes call it “mental toughness.” It’s a complicated beast that requires a level of mental discipline that eludes a lot of athletes.

I’ve seen the down side of this happen too many times. A play goes awry or someone misses a shot they should have met. Or strikes out. Some players will allow that to blow their mind and they simply don’t recover.

Mental toughness means you move on, not letting the last play affect the next one.  Having self-confidence helps. Mental self-manipulation helps.

When I was still on the MHS football sidelines, I spent a lot of time with our kickers. I was sort of their unofficial “coach,” although I did very little coaching with them.

I was responsible for their conditioning and making sure that they knew the practice schedule. Oh, I might remind them to keep their head down or to visualize a successful kick, but that was about it. I spent a lot of time with the kickers, so I always got to know them quite well.

Then, during a game, it was part of my job to keep their head in the game.  Most of that was just to tell them “the last one doesn’t count—the next one does,” if they ever missed a kick. Understanding their headspace from all the practice time we spent together helped.

Your last mistake doesn’t matter. It’s what you do next. That seems a good lesson for life as well. We all make mistakes.

But knowing that’s what you need to do and doing it can be two very different things. You have to figure out your own psyche to know how to do that successfully.  A simple “get over it” doesn’t work.

I’ve heard many coaches tell their team to expect some adversity during the course of the game. A fumble. A turnover. A call you might disagree with. Your ability to put that behind you and move on is the key to athletic success when they’re keeping score.

Self-analysis helps but sometimes you need someone that you know and trust to tell you that it’s OK to move on. That it’s what you do next that really counts.