Today is literally the last week day of summer break. There has been a lot of stuff going on at school in preparation for pre-season practices, but it has technically been summer break. Monday that ends with football practice starting. Summer goes by fast but so will this upcoming school year. There's a lot to look forward to. It's going to be a great year!
Here are five reads for Friday.
There's been a lot going on in the swimming world over the last week. The World Championships have been in Russia, and I always like to find out how Winnetka's own Connor Dwyer is doing. He had an exciting swim off for a place in the 200 IM Final which he won! But in following the world champs usually there's a new story that grabs my attention. This year it was Katie Ledecky and her range as a swimmer winning both 1500m and 200m events within an hour. That's like Usain Bolt winning the 200m dash and the 5000m run. Obviously an amazing accomplishment that few people in the world could do in any type of races, but what I learned from her and we can all try to apply is her mental approach to managing expectations. Very healthy. Just get out there do your best and move on. It's swimming. It's running. It's sports. It is amazing to see what the human spirit can accomplish but lets not get crazy about it.
Katie Ledecky Sets a Record, the Returns to the Pool -- NYT 8-4-15
One of the best things I did this summer was listen to a podcast featuring Maria Popova of the blog Brainpickings. I might write about why at another time, but the interview got me to review her writings and one of her posts from June especially resonated with me. It was a review of Pico Iyer's book on the Dalai Lama -- The Open Road: The Global Journey of The Fourteenth Dalai Lama. As all of our lives schedules get crazier and I feel -- maybe you do too - - at the end of the day that maybe I should've done one or two more tasks, the Dalai Lama's practice seems instructive "life is a joyful participation in a world of sorrows." The Dalai Lama's belief that we are all interconnected is especially important to me as an athletic director because I see athletics at schools as trending towards being more and more separated from other areas of schools -- academics, arts and service. When we do school well at North Shore, our student/athletes/artists, coaches, teachers, parents seem all connected. I think that goes back to the founding progressive beliefs of the school and glad to see the Dalai Lama agrees.
The Dalia Lama's Daily Routine and Information Diet -- Brain Pickings
Connecting seems to be the theme for this week. After thinking about what the Dalai Lama said, I returned to Steve Magness's blog the science of running and his recent post Curiosity and Connection -- why "the boring" stuff" in training is the most important. The nice thing about working at a progressive school is the opportunity to be creative and try paths that sometimes end in dead-ends. However, one thing that I worry about is in pursuit of the creative and the innovative we (maybe only me) neglect basic knowledge. It turns out that creative thinking and basic knowledge need to be developed in tandem. You can't have great creative thinking without a tremendous amount of basic knowledge. This is an interesting piece from a sports coach who gets it. In our community, we lose an occasional athlete who wants to try the latest and greatest training toy at one of the local sports palaces. What is interesting to me about these toys and their bells an d whistles is they certainly help motivation for some kids. But the true champions dedicate themselves to perfecting the basics. A lesson I believe that is true for every discipline.
How do we get better? One of the things about sports is there are a lot of performance indicators. Scores, batting averages, era's, PR's are all stats that review performance. It is a lot tougher in the world of work to get the same thing. Here are some interesting thoughts on how business is changing on the performance review. The best part I like is "no surprises."
Changing the Way You Offer Feedback to Your Team -- Tim Elmore
Finally, I loved this piece from Coach Gambetta reflecting on his father who was a gardner and how he understood the differences between various plants and their needs. Great coaches are the same way. We are coaching people not just athletes. We are all different and the art is figuring out how to get a garden to flourish despite our differences.
Growing the Athlete -- Functional Path Training
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