The Best Teammate

I’ve decided that nobody looks out the window on airplanes anymore.

I’ve been on an airplane a couple of times in the last month but I just realized that everyone keeps their windows shut. All the time.

On one of those flights, I was seated by the window, instead of the aisle, which is my usual place, a concession to my bum right knee now healthy because it has been replaced by a new one. I’ve always liked the window seat ause it allowed me to look at the landscape from above. I’ve seen tiny islands in the ocean, the Grand Canyon, New York skyscrapers…all from 20,000 feet.

I watch that little map tracker thing on the back of the seat in front of me, keeping up with where I am in relation to the ground below. That lets me try and figure out what I’m seeing below. I am fascinated by travel and intrigued by adventure, still a kid who wonders where those people inside that amazing flying machine are going.

I’ve been fortunate to get out and see a lot of the world. I’d like to think it has made me more tolerant, more accepting of a world that can be quite different from my rural roots.

I went bike riding on the Greenbelt with one of my grandsons last weekend, on a beautiful Sunny afternoon. We had done this before, but it was usually my idea.  This time it was his idea, and he knew where he wanted to go.

First, all the way to the bubbling spring at the Ft. Craig monument. But he’s there just to see the map that shows the location of Fort Black, which was out near Chilhowee View School and was founded by Joseph N. Black. Maybe a relative, maybe not. He likes that maybe it is.

Then back to the upper end where the trail makes a loop, above Pearson Springs Park. There we can find the tree and plaque placed there to honor my dad, Carl H. Black.

He wanted to know more about my dad. Was he big and strong? Was he smart? What was he like?

This is my little Social Chair, more like me than any of the others. When he walks into a room, he wants to get to know everybody there. On this day, he spoke to every single person we encountered. 

Because that’s who he is. He played basketball this year and got the “Best Teammate” award. How could we want more than that?

The world is a big, beautiful place. People are generally wonderful if you look for that in them, if you give them the space to be wonderful.

I want my grandchildren to know the world yet not become worldly. I want them to fly in an airplane and wonder about the people down there.

I never want them to stop looking for the good in people, to stop being kind to everyone they meet. If it’s in them, I never want them to stop walking into a room and wanting to know everyone’s story.

And I want them to always be the Best Teammate.

 

Best Exercise by Sport

I was in a discussion on sports performance and training programs this week when the conversation turned to the best exercises for different sports. 

In other words, if you play softball, what are the most important exercises for you to do? Or baseball, or football, or pretty much anything out there. It was a pretty high level discussion so there were a lot of really great ideas thrown about. 

I took notes but the discussion was fast and furious so I didn’t get everything but I did get the basics. For the most part, you can divide the discussion into two parts—performance and prevention. The two go hand in hand.

From a performance perspective, prevention of injuries can be huge. If you’re injured, you can’t perform, you can’t practice, you can’t work on those things that translate to performance.

Let’s start with baseball/softball. You might think that they’re about the same thing but there are some important differences.

With any sport that involves throwing, those muscles that rotate the trunk, mostly what we think about when we consider our core muscles, are the single most important thing to consider from a performance standpoint.

And throwing is not just baseball and softball. Think about the volleyball serve or spike—those are both basically a throwing motion. Quarterbacks, discus throwers, shot putters, the tennis serve…all those involve a throwing motion and require strong trunk rotators to be effective.

For baseball pitchers, the hips are key.  The lead leg needs to have really good hip external rotation motion and really good trail leg hip internal rotation strength. In a huge study done by a friend of mine, these two factors were the best predictors of pitching success, not the shoulder nor the trunk.

In preventing injuries in the throwing athlete, the single most important exercises are those strengthen the “decelerators” of the arm. Think about the back of the shoulder and the muscles that pull back on your shoulder blade. Those are often neglected and that’s when you see me with an injury.

Swimmer’s Shoulder is a very real entity and is related to that same thing. So much of what swimmers do develops the front of the shoulder and ignores the back of the shoulder. It is absolutely necessary for swimmers to work on muscular balance at the shoulders.

Basketball and soccer players change direction a lot so their injuries tend to be more at the lower leg and ankle. Dynamic strengthening of those muscles that stabilize the ankle are essential.  Think planting your foot and suddenly changing direction—that’s where the importance of strong ankles comes into play. Same thing for running backs and receivers on a football team.

Working on sudden changes of direction in the gym can get you ready for practice and games. Hopping from one side to the other, plyometrics off of a box, jumping onto an unstable surface, all those will help develop the strength necessary for performance and prevention.

It just makes sense that if you’re a soccer player that heads the ball that you need strong neck muscles. Don’t forget that the foundation that those neck muscles depend are on the rest of the spine (core strength).

Training for performance is not all bench press and hamstring stretching. It’s more about focusing on what you need for your body to do in space—controlling motion and reacting to outside forces. 

Headaches: Not to be ignored

Headaches are something I know well. Beginning in my early teen years, I had frequent and often severe headaches. Somewhere along the way, those evolved into migraines.

My 20’s and 30’s were marred by frequent and sometimes debilitating headaches. Being self-employed for most of that time, I had to work. No choice. 

There were days when I would hide in a dark room, come out long enough to see a patient, and then retreat to my darkened sanctuary. For years, you would never find me far away from Excedrin. I always (always) had several in my pocket.

I tried other medicines. I saw several specialists. Nothing stopped my headaches. I learned to deal with them. Most of the time, they would hit in the middle of the night. My routine became to get up, take an Excedrin, get in a very hot shower, get out, eat something, take 2 more Excedrin, and go back to bed.

That usually helped enough that I could eventually get back to sleep.

Here’s the problem with headaches—they’re invisible. There is no outward sign that someone has a headache. More than once, I was told that they were “all in my head.”

Yeah…they were. My left temple to be exact. Almost always.

About the time I turned 45, my headaches began to subside. Some decided it must be male menopause. Maybe. We know that men undergo hormonal changes about that age too. Certainly not as drastic as women but still there.

I’m just thankful that I very rarely have those really bad headaches any more. I still have headaches from time to time but milder and far less frequent. I still always have Excedrin within reach but I haven’t emptied the hot water heater from my hot showers in a long time.

What about headaches in athletics? What does it mean?

A lot of people get “exertional” headaches. A really hard physical effort that results later in a headache. We see those often in sports. It is likely that those have to do with blood vessels dilating and constricting in your head and usually respond to anti-inflammatories.

Still, no headache needs to be ignored. Especially in a teenager or an athlete. If headaches are severe, persistent, or frequent, athletes should see a sports physician, and in Blount County, that is Dr. Ben England at ETMG.

And don’t forget hydration. Being dehydrated can also lead to or at least contribute to headaches.  Not to mention the sports performance side of hydration.

If a headache happens after a blow to the head, it cannot be ignored. Any blow to the head that results in symptoms (headache, dizziness, blurred vision, confusion) is a concussion until proven differently.

We don’t play around with those things. I have a friend that had a concussion in a car wreck that was still having headaches from that concussion two years later.

The long term effects of improper care following a concussion can be catastrophic. It used to be that if you got your “bell rung” that once you were coherent, you were back in the game.

Not so, anymore. That’s because we know better. We know what can happen. That means that if you have a headache after being hit in the head, it is incredibly important not to get hit in the head again. It’s that simple.

New Beginnings

One morning early this week, I fell in behind a U-Haul truck pulling a car, going somewhere. I can only imagine where. A new town. A new home. A new job. Somewhere.

I remember those days. In 1977, my U-Haul truck was filled with all we owned and parked outside the MidSouth Coliseum in Memphis where I was graduating. We walked out of graduation and drove to our new home in Maryville.

We made a couple more of those U-Haul truck moves, to Bluefield, West Virginia then back home to Maryville to stay. Each time, the trip was filled with change and adventure.

Now this is how my brain works—I wondered how that could become a column, a lesson for this space.

And I thought about high school juniors at the end of their season. The next time they are in games, it will be their senior season. They will be the leaders. This will be the year that they always dreamed of.

The best of those start immediately. I can remember when you worked out in the summer before school started in the fall and that was about it. Not anymore.

When the season is over, take a day, maybe two. At most a week. And then get started in preparation for the next go-round. That’s where success is bred.

It’s a new journey. A new adventure. Just like that U-Haul truck headed out.

A new opportunity to get things right. I can remember retired MHS football coach David Ellis telling his young charges in the last week of the season, usually the week of the state championship game, that they had one more chance to get it right.

They would then go through the same drills that they had been doing for weeks, months even. It was still all about footwork and execution.

What a lot of people don’t see is all the time and effort that happens when people aren’t looking. The practices. The many hours in the weight room. Early mornings on the track. A thousand free throws in an empty gym.

It didn’t used to be that way. Back in the dark ages, when I was a teenager, a few of us lifted weights but most depended on farm work to get strong. Shoveling grain and lifting bales of hay. We called it “country strong” and it worked pretty well.

But anybody that thinks we were bigger, stronger, faster, and better trained back then is merely foolish. Kids today have better training, better nutrition, and greater opportunities than we ever had.

Take my tennis playing grandson for example. I played a lot of tennis growing up but there weren’t even public courts in my hometown. The owners of the two private courts in town allowed us to play in their backyards.

All we had to do is keep the noise down and sweep the courts from time to time. We could only dream of an actual tennis lesson. We were our own teachers.

My tennis player has played all winter, going to Knoxville for practice in indoor courts there. He has the benefit of excellent coaches and a granddad that will take him out a couple of times a week just to hit a hopper of balls.

Others have travel teams and position coaches and opportunities that we never even dreamed of. They are on a journey that hopefully leads to happiness and success. Just like those folks in that U-Haul truck.

Parents parent/Coaches coach

Sometimes I get an idea just out of the blue and build a column from that. It can be a single word or phrase. Sometimes people suggest topics (always welcome). Sometimes I struggle to decide on a topic. After 35 years, that should be no surprise.

And then sometimes it falls in my lap. Such was the case this week. I was sitting in the stands at a game when it all came together. All I had to do was sit down at the keyboard and let it out.

Despite my best efforts, I do repeat myself. I’ve talked about movement and exercise many times. I don’t seem to be able to shut up about concussions and dealing with the heat. And I talk about being the parent to an athlete a lot. I’m back there this week.

I want to get to the point of this column right away—There are two purposes for youth sports: Movement education and developing active lifestyles.

We need to teach children how to move. How to run. How to throw. To develop athleticism. To learn the joy of moving their body. We need sports to make movement fun.

We know with certainty that active children become active adults. We know with certainty that an active lifestyle takes care of many of the chronic health problems that plague us. Obesity. Heart disease. Diabetes. And on.

Let me make this very, very clear—the purpose of youth sports is not to win championships. Let me repeat that.  The purpose of youth sports is not to win championships. It should always be to help children grow.

I find the thought of an undefeated season in youth sports disgusting. If it is a local league, then it means that most of the talent is on one team. It usually means that one or more teams in that league never wins.

If it is a travel league, then you’re not pursuing good enough competition.

Don’t get me wrong, keeping score is important.  Trying to win is necessary, not for the trophy but for what it should mean. It should mean that you work harder, are better prepared. Winning by a large margin helps no one.

The genesis of this column actually started last weekend, watching youth sports. I’ll be vague to protect the good folks in this story. And let me say that there are far more good folks in youth sports than bad.

Take Joey Winders for example. Still coaching youth sports after all these years. But, more profoundly, he can be found on Saturdays refereeing Parks & Rec basketball. Alongside his son. Could Joey find a better way to spend his Saturdays? Probably. That he chooses refereeing the most basic of sports speaks to his commitment.

Then a parent in the stand yells at him for a (correct) call that he makes. And then does it again. I’m sitting behind that parent and silently seething. They just don’t get it. I didn’t say anything. Until now.

Or the coach that plays their bench players the bare minimum required by the league. Or not at all. Or the coach that coaches a Saturday morning game of 8 year olds like they’re playing for the NBA championship.

Those people have so completely lost the “why” of youth sports as to be pitied. And vilified.

Folks, no one knows who will be the next Lebron James or Patrick Mahones at age 10. No one knows for sure that their kid will be a star. No one. No coach. No parent. No one.

Coach, your job is to promote movement and active lifestyle in everyone on your team. Every. Single. One. The end of the bench needs your coaching more than the most gifted. Your job is player development—not win championships

Parent, your job is to provide your child with opportunities for movement, to work with them at home, and to support them. Always.

Do you remember what it was like?

How good is your memory? Mine? Eh, it’s OK. I’m terrible with names but I can tell you what surgery you had on your shoulder 20 years ago. I can remember football scores from games that I played in 50 years ago but might forget milk at the grocery store unless I have a list.

I used to ask my kids what they had for lunch at school. More often than not, they couldn’t remember. Sure, as we get older, remembering things seems harder. So, it’s not just an old person thing.

I preach a lot in this space. It’s definitely my pulpit and I take the responsibility seriously. My target for a lot of sermons is the parent of young athletes. I try not to be self-righteous about it—goodness knows I made every mistake in the book.

But I think I learned from those mistakes and now I’m recycling some of those lessons on behalf of grandchildren. The runners. The soccer players. The lone basketball player. The one that will be a football player. And the tennis player.

One of the things that helped me along the way and still helps me now is that I remember what it was like to be 15. And 16. And 17.

I can tell you the play that MHS ran against my Loudon Redskins to win the football game 35-28 in 1970. I can tell you who ran that touchdown and what defense we were in. I can tell you the name of half of that team because my coach, Gary Dutton, had coached them in Junior High.

I can tell you what it felt like after that game. I can remember the fatigue as I walked off. I remember how disappointed I was to lose that game. I wanted to win it so much for Coach Dutton.

I remember the effort that it took to compete at that level. I can remember the smell of the locker room. I can hear the banter in practice. I can recall the taste of the sports drink that we got during practice (one small cup, half-way through practice).

I can remember walking on the field for a game. I remember the bus rides. I remember the taste of the ham and cheese sandwiches that were waiting for us when we returned from a road game. Theyff were so cold and so good.

Do you remember what it felt like? Do you remember the practices? Do you remember what it felt like to lose a game? Did you have a parent that would tell you what you did wrong as soon as you got home?

I didn’t have that. My mom was the president of my fan club, always in the stands with Sammy Alexander watching Ricky and I play alongside each other after years of being great friends.

My dad was disabled with heart problems. Back then, you were told to avoid stressful situations so he never got to see me play football beyond pee-wee’s. He would listen to the high school broadcasts though. And he would never ever criticize me for doing something that he was never able to do.

He had to drop out of school after the 6^th grade and go to work in a factory to support his family. Imagine that. Seems bizarre today. It IS bizarre today. He was just proud of me. My mom would tell me about coming home after games and finding him sitting by the radio crying—such was the level of pride he had.

My message today is pretty simple: Parents, try and remember what it was like when you were growing up. Try and remember what you WANTED to hear from your parents. And then go out and be that parent. They don’t need another coach.

Hope Never Dies

One of my all-time favorite movies is Shawshank Redemption. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s timeless—as good today as when it was released.

I’ll not get into the details, but near the end of the movie, Morgan Freeman’s character Red is reading a letter from his buddy Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins. At the end of the letter is the take home message from the movie:  “Hope never dies.”

Hope never dies…I love that phrase.

When the days are the darkest, when the path is hardest, we hang on to the hope of better days, of easier paths. Hope sustains us. Hope keeps us going. Sometimes hope is all we have left.

If your team makes the playoffs, you soon realize that only one team finishes the season with a win. Maybe your season didn’t end up like you wanted it to. It’s OK.

I watched from a distance as probably the best volleyball team in MHS history lost in the state tournament. Were they disappointed? Sure. Can they look back on all they accomplished and realize that their body of work was incredible? I hope so.

I would definitely be considered “old school,” if for no other reason than the number of candles on my birthday cake. I remember a lot of cliches from back in the day. “2^nd place is 1^st loser.” Another one that had broad acceptance: “Winners win, losers lose.”

To me, phrases like those reduce sports to a totally irrelevant role. In other words, the life lessons that can be learned from sports participation are worth nothing with that mindset.

If you read my column often enough, you know that I do not agree with that at all. Sports participation is valuable, even essential. Life lessons are there to be learned regardless of the score of any game.

Let’s look at that for a moment. The opportunities to learn from playing a game or being on a team are everywhere. The opportunity to learn how to be a good teammate. How to be a leader. How to work toward a goal.

And what it takes to be successful. Is the scoreboard important? Sure it is. It gives our games structure and focus. The scoreboard gives us a goal to work toward. But is the scoreboard an appropriate measuring stick for our success? No, not at all.

I had a discussion with a grandchild recently. This one asked “do you think I will be a success when I’m an adult?” Of course! “Do you think I’ll own a Lamborghini?”

Oh my. Success has nothing to do with material goods. Are you happy? Are you in a good relationship? Is your day filled with opportunities to be of service to others? Does your life have meaning?

Those are the things that you should use to judge a successful life. Not how big your house is or what car you drive.

Same with sports. Are you learning those lessons? Are you enjoying the challenges that keeping score in a game provides you?

Our success comes from working hard and learning the value of hard work. It comes from being our best selves. If you work hard, prepare well, give it your all, and still come out on the short end of the scoreboard, you are still successful. You are still a winner, regardless of the score.

Hope never dies…unless you let it.