If you’re having trouble getting motivated, here’s a solution – be honest. Be honest with yourself and find the true answer about what’s blocking your potential. I’ve coached and taught thousands who have struggled with motivation, who have struggled with getting cut from what they wanted, victims of a harsh Darwinism reality that naturally selects the fit and sets back the weak. What you’re working toward has a struggle – fitness, job, business…whatever you’re working toward has a struggle. If you’re struggling, study the struggle and determine if it’s natural or unnatural. They’re two different concepts.
The natural struggle is a progression of resistance and hardships inherent to making it to the elusive concept of the ‘top.’ The natural struggle has is a training ground with one mission – to make you stronger. The unnatural struggle is different – it’s there to weaken you. The natural struggle will bring out your best. The unnatural struggle will bring out your worst. Your job is to figure out which one you’re going through.
Every rep wasted is unrecoverable.
Reps are single opportunity to get better. They are steps that have to be climbed to get what you hunting for. Every rep you wasted is a blown opportunity, a wasted chance to achieve what you set out to achieve. The miracle of reps is transformation. Lasting change. If you want to get built to last, don’t look for short-term magic solutions. The secret to physical and intellectual change is one rep at a time. The secret to changing your team is one rep at a time. The secret to turning around a losing culture is one rep at a time. Building a business, career, or dream is done one rep at a time. Reps are disposable but not recoverable. Every rep you waste is an unrecoverable chance to change.
If you’re not spilling your guts, don’t expect your team or your staff or your kids or anyone you’re leading to do what you want them to. All the motivational quotes, posters, DVDs, t-shirts won’t work out if you create a culture of losing through laziness and lethargy. Don’t complain when they don’t train if you don’t train.
Where you end up in the standings is evidence of what you tolerate and what you don’t. If you’re business, career, or team is stuck in last place, investigate what you tolerate. Do inventory on your pain tolerance. If you’re putting up with half-assed mediocrity, raise the bar.
If you wait for others to live up to your lofty expectations on their own, you’re not dealing with reality and you will be sadly let down, all the way to last place. The average definition of work ethic is a joke. If you want to call yourself a true leader, define true work ethic, teach it, show it, repeat it. If you haven’t got what it takes to be a leader, give up the title.
You are a target for the offensive as long as you are in the game. You will attract insults simply by doing what others are not doing. Insults are the only ammunition of the bitter.
For as long as you’re in the game, you will be target practice for those unwilling or incapable of getting in the game. It’s the nature of the beast. The bitter fill up their time with target practice, firing insults because they have nothing meaningful to offer. The game is too tough for them so they take the path of least resistance – target practice. If insults get to you, you are letting your critics win the game by default. Those who find fault for the singular purpose of discouraging carry no weight. Only corrective feedback matters. You an easily identify corrective feedback by the source – those who have your best interests.There’s the key – where the interest is invested. Critics invest target practice for their self-interest. Mentors direct corrective feedback for your interest. Confusing the two is disastrous. Taking meaningless criticism to heart will side-track you. So will not listening to corrective feedback from thos who matter.
Beware of vicarious living. Vicarious living is substitution for real-life. Watching others live their life while you watch yours pass by. Vicarious living is an addiction that is guaranteed to lead to deep regrets when it hits you that you could have done it yourself.
The solution for vicarious living starts with a commitment today to start living the life the same life that you vicariously experience. Live what you feel vicariously. The feeling is much more powerful when you do it yourself. Break the cycle. Break the chain. Instead of living vicariously become the vicariously-lived; be the person that others watch and learn from.
I can’t take seriously any sport or league that is governed by ancient rules that can force a team to willingly allow an opponent to score uncontested game-winning points in “world championship” game.
I’ll preface this by emphasizing I am not a fan of any NFL team. I am a fan only of the football team I coach. Yesterday in Super Bowl 46, the New England Patriots made the right call by allowing the New York Giants to score an uncontested touchdown because under the current set of archaic rules, they had no other choice. Deciding a Super Bowl hat way is an embarrassment. The NFL has made radical rule changes during the past 30 years. Here’s some more recommended changes:
1. One-point for field goals inside the red zone, same value as the PAT. Or ban field goals altogether inside the 20, forcing teams to actually play the sport that fans pay exorbitant prices to watch, instead of turning football into kickball.
2. Adopt the CFL time clock rules: (i) 20-second play clock (ii) at the 3-minute warning (yes 3-minute warning), clock stops automatically at end of each play and re-starts on ref’s whistle.
Awarding 3 points to a chip shot field goal is absurd. Counter-intuitive. Field goals are not created equal. Three points for all field goals is an unbalanced reward – same return for different investment makes no sense. A 50-yarder having the same value as a chip shot defies logic. So does a chip-shot having 50% value of a touchdown.
The current NFL time clock rules make the game BORING – snail-paced action and ridiculous running out the clock to end games. The CFL clock rules would make the game far more entertaining and make endings memorable for the right reasons.
To all the purists who find these recommendations absurd, check the rule changes during the past 3 decades. Without them, we’d still be seeing glorified rugby scrum with forearm blocking and pass coverage muggings all over the field.
No competition can be called a competition when unearned-points become a strategy. Super Embarrassment to decide a “world championship” with unearned points.
Coaching football has taught me the secret exercise for fat loss – wind sprints. Intervals of sprinting mixed with jogging or walking. Running as fast as you can several time in a row with minimal rest. Wind sprints have become fashionable by other names like HIIT but wind sprints have been around forever. It’s not a new invention. Add strength training and proper food to wind sprints and you’ll get a transformation – physically and mentally.
I have seen my football players transform themselves with wind sprints and the weight room. Not small changes…transformation. I use a warp-speed no –huddle offense – one play every 8 seconds. It’s the equivalent of a 3-hour workout with 8-seconds rest. It takes intense training but every player on every one of my teams has achieved it. The majority of my players are not genetically gifted, naturally talented athletes. The majority started like all of us – the farthest thing from an athlete. The transformation included wind sprints – during practice and after practice.
Players start every season with the same attitude toward wind sprints – running has the same appeal as root canal. The announcement that starts formal sprint time is met with the same repulsion, like they’ve been asked to give up money. About 98% will not do sprints on their own. They need a coach yelling at them to do it. About 2% willing run sprints without having to be yelled at. But then it changes. We run sprints during practice to simulate the 8-second no-huddle. At fat peels off, as stamina grows, as they get leaner and meaner, everyone buys into sprints and lifting. It’s the feeling that becomes addictive. The feeling of being lean and mean.
Sprints never have been a secret but they’re one of the the secrets to fat loss. Anyone who has experienced football practice knew about the secret long ago. Football training is life-altering – weight room and running are detoxifiers, mentally and physically. A cleanse that rids the body and mind of built-up toxins. If you take out the full-equipment full-contact part of football practice, the rest of football training can be done by anyone. There’s nothing like it.
Coaching football has taught me the secret exercise for fat loss – wind sprints. Intervals of sprinting mixed with jogging or walking. Running as fast as you can several times in a row with minimal rest. Wind sprints have become fashionable by other names like HIIT but wind sprints have been around forever. It’s not a new invention. Add strength training and proper food to wind sprints and you’ll get a transformation – physically and mentally.
I have seen my football players transform themselves with wind sprints and the weight room. Not small changes…transformation. I use a warp-speed no –huddle offense – one play every 8 seconds. It’s the equivalent of a 3-hour workout with 8-seconds rest. It takes intense training but every player on every one of my teams has achieved it. The majority of my players are not genetically gifted, naturally talented athletes. The majority started like all of us – the farthest thing from an athlete. The transformation included wind sprints – during practice and after practice.
Players start every season with the same attitude toward wind sprints – running has the same appeal as root canal. The announcement that starts formal sprint time is met with the same repulsion, like they’ve been asked to give up money. About 98% will not do sprints on their own. They need a coach yelling at them to do it. About 2% willing run sprints without having to be yelled at. But then it changes. We run sprints during practice to simulate the 8-second no-huddle. At fat peels off, as stamina grows, as they get leaner and meaner, everyone buys into sprints and lifting. It’s the feeling that becomes addictive. The feeling of being lean and mean.
Sprints never have been a secret but they’re one of the the secrets to fat loss. Anyone who has experienced football practice knew about the secret long ago. Football training is life-altering – weight room and running are detoxifiers, mentally and physically. A cleanse that rids the body and mind of built-up toxins. If you take out the full-equipment full-contact part of football practice, the rest of football training can be done by anyone. There’s nothing like it.
I’m blessed to coach football where I do. I don’t have to concern myself with recruiting NCAA-style.
There’s nothing more unappealing than the thought of courting high school graduates for months, begging them to choose your college. The attitudes of student-athletes have deteriorated enough without treating 18-year olds like royalty to please choose your school. Like a high-priced dating service. The number of prima donna rookies I’ve coached who believe that they are indispensible has skyrocketed in the past ten years. The growing hysteria about National Signing Day is one of the causes. Making high school grads believe they are saviours for university programs is one of the top reasons why athletes have the messed-up notion they are socially elite. It’s wrong. The money spent by NCAA football programs on recruiting is a travesty. Check the cost of tuition for the average student. University education costs a fortune while football coaches spend millions and get paid millions in their never-ending courtship of teenagers. There needs to be a spending cap on recruiting. The savings should go toward lowering tuition.
I just read an article that an NCAA D1 football coaching staff erupted in wild celebration when a high school player announced he chose their team. Wow. Unbelievable. Embarrassing. Imagine grown men cheering wildly that a high school grad picked you. Skewed reality. It’s not real-life. Many top university coaches have never had to work outside the sidelines of the artificial, insular environment of post-secondary academics. If they did, their attitude toward recruiting would change dramatically.
I’ve coached football for 40 seasons. Loved it as much as anyone else. Loved my teams. But football is not the most important thing in my life. Never has been, never will be. I never have and never will recruit players to my team. All my recruiting is done by word-of-mouth, voluntarily without inducement. I will talk to any recruit, answer their questions, give them all the information needed for them to make a decision but I never have and never will plead for them to choose my team. My recruiting policy is simple – OPEN-ADMISSION. That’s my mission. I take anyone who wants the opportunity to work, get better, and try to get to the next level. I don’t recruit elite players to make my job easier. My coaching objective is to develop any player, especially the lost causes. No guarantees, no hardcore recruiting in the traditional sense. Whether you choose my team or not has zero impact on my happiness. No wild celebrations either way. Those who choose my team will be guaranteed one thing – equal opportunity. That’s it. No red carpet treatment for any rookie. Earn it. Just like in real life.
