Tag: Proactive Coaching

WYC 105 – Championship Culture Part 1 – Matt Lisle talks Core Covenants and The Hitting Vault

Coach Lisle currently works with numerous MLB, professional and college players and is a former collegiate hitting coach.

Lisle’s knowledge is deeply rooted in all aspects of the game, but his passion and knowledge for hitting has proven to be a game changer for all the hitters he works with. Many know of Coach Lisle through his large social media following where his followers get encouragement, instruction, tips and insights on the game. His positive coaching approach has been a great motivator for players, parents and his peers. Coach Lisle has instilled his philosophy of teaching and sharing in the creation of The Hitting Vault, where their goal is to help every baseball and softball hitter unlock their power.

Websites: TheHittingVault.com & coachlisle.com

Twitter: @CoachLisle

Facebook: /coachlisle

Listen Now:

Listen on iTunes: iTunes link

Listen on Stitcher: Stitcher link

Listen on Google Play Music: Google Play link

Quote

‘Good is the enemy of great’

Coaching your own kids

  • Matt coached his son along with his Dad as the assistant. His dad is very laid back while Matt is very technical, so Matt enjoyed watching how hard the kids played for his dad because of how much he enjoyed them and kept things fun.

Cringe Moment

  • Matt began coaching at a very early age (23 years old as head coach), so initially he was trying too hard to be ‘cool’ and be friends with the coach. Then he swung to the opposite extreme and became too shut-off. Eventually he found the balance of caring for the kids while not trying to impress them.

Teaching Skills

  • The challenge is to take complicated actions and teach them in words they understand with as few words as possible. Feel it instead of think it.
  • Every kid should have a bat/ball so they are following along with you. Matt also uses a 120″ screen and shows what the pros look like so they can see more examples of what great looks like.
  • Good analogy – Cars –  Your body is the engine of the car, it’s where the power comes from, your bat is the steering wheel.

Self-confidence and peak mental performance

  • The parents and coaches influence confidence more than the kids themselves.
  • Allow the players to fail and let know it does not affect how you feel about them. When they make mistakes, instill trust in them. Give them permission to fail and encourage aggressive play and mistakes are OK.

Championship Culture – Core values

  • Core covenants – This is what we’re all about
  • 2 rules on this team:

1 – Don’t be late

2 – Don’t let your teammates down

  • Captain’s meetings every Friday morning to train their captains

Rewards

  • Don’t reward average
  • Get excited and celebrate exceptional effort and performance

Best Teambuilder

  • Team Olympics – Team handball can be a great game

Connecting with and Impacting Kids

  • Treat each athlete like one of your own kids and try to instill love and guidance in their lives

The One that got away

  • Matt’s team in 2012 coached a great team. They were undefeated going into the last game of the season, and the coach of the other team in the last game was Matt’s dad. They lost 2-1. Matt had not started his best pitcher because they had pretty easily beat this team earlier in the year.

Best borrowed/stolen idea

Favorite coaching book/quote

  • Quote: ‘Good is the enemy of great’

The Hitting Vault

Parting Advice

  • Love your athletes the way you love your children

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Today’s Sponsors

Established in 1995, Upward Sports is the world’s largest Christian youth sports provider. Approximately 100,000 leaders and coaches deliver Upward Sports programming to half a million young athletes around the country.

Upward Sports promotes the discovery of Jesus through sports, by providing a fun, encouraging environment in which young athletes can learn technical skills and a love of the game. We use sports like basketball, volleyball, soccer and flag football to help young athletes develop mentally, athletically, spiritually, and socially. We are about the whole athlete—that’s our 360 Progression.

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Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch – Part 2: Who are we?

Who are we? Establishing Program & Team Cornerstones
10 years ago one of my good friends Byron shared something life-changing in our adult Sunday school class. He shared a family crest he had developed with his family. It was pretty simple artistically speaking, but eternally powerful. His family had brainstormed and created 4 or 5 values that represented ‘Who we are.’ This provided the foundation for making decisions in the future – they just bounced them against their cornerstones. My family has adopted this same philosophy. We have an annual session where we brainstorm about who we are. I’ve attached the latest rendition of what we came up with. We keep it fun and sometimes even silly, so please understand the ‘Dog-botherers’ comment is an inside family joke and we love animals. 🙂
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Now we all know that if you try to focus on 10 or 20 things you will focus on nothing. So we then decide as a group on 4 or 5 of these values that will be our cornerstones.
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The more I talk to great coaches, the more I see this same type of process happening in great programs and teams. It starts with the coaches establishing the cornerstones of the program. But equally important is getting the buy-in from the team, so doing this type of brainstorming session with your team captains every year will establish your identity as a team. Here are some of the great ways I’ve seen this implemented:
  • Andres Montana – Learned from Bruce Brown at Proactive Coaching – Gather the coaches and 3 captains in preseason and define your Core Covenants – who are you going to be that season. Brainstorm by throwing words up on a board, then narrow it down to 2 or 3 that are going to define your team. Then you can order the livestrong-type bracelets that have those words on it. Check out Proactive Coaching’s guide to creating Core Covanants: First Steps to Building Successful Teams
  • Ken Stuursma’s program core covenants – from Raising a modern day knight:
    1. Accept responsibility
    2. Lead courageously
    3. Reject passivity
    4. Expect a greater reward
  • Chris Stricker’s program core covenants: CALI – Commitment, Accountability, Love, Integrity
  • Drew Maddux has Manhood Mondays – every Monday during the season they have different coaches and players create a shield with 4 parts to share with the team
    1. Tell a childhood story that defined them
    2. Tell a recent story that defines them
    3. How does the public view them
    4. Who their private self is
  • Rob Elwood’s team have 2 cornerstones:
    1. Gratitude – We thank our parents, the referees, our coaches, our teammates
    2. Be organized, everything has a place
  • John O’Sullivan – Great teams don’t have rules – great teams have standards.  Rules are meant to be broken – standards are expectations that the team agrees upon and holds each other accountable to.
In his book Inside-out Coaching Joe Ehrmann shares the goal: ‘Be a transformational coach rather than a transactional coach.’ It starts with your cornerstones.
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Achieving Peak Mental Performance – Factor #7: Let ’em struggle

The Growth Mindset – 7 Key Factors to Achieve Peak Mental Performance​​​​​​​
Factor #7 – Creating the mindset of an expert – by letting ’em struggle
One of my favorite movies is My Cousin Vinny (OK I know I’m dating myself a bit.) Vinny struggles in the courtroom because he has no experience. That is until the topic switches to something that he and his foot-stomping ‘my biological clock is ticking’ fiancé are experts in – cars. Then the entire mood shifts. Vinny’s demeanor changes from someone who is overmatched and overwhelmed to a confident and brash attorney.
Athletes can have the same type of overmatched and overwhelmed feeling in a game since they probably aren’t experts at their sport yet. So how can you help switch their mindset so they feel like they are an expert? This is where I rely on experts such as Daniel Coyle in The Talent Code and Carol Dweck in Mindset. Coyle debunks the 10,000 hour rule myth, citing:
‘The real goal: finding ways to constantly reach past the edge of your current ability.
The real lesson of 10K is not about quantity; it’s about quality. It’s about getting the maximum possible gain in the shortest amount of time — and to get that, you don’t focus on the time, but on the gain. You put your focus on improving the practice, which happens two ways: through better methods or increased intensity.
To be clear:
1. Certain kinds of learning — deep, or deliberate practice — are transformative.
2. That transformation is a construction process.
3. That construction process depends on your intensive reaching and repeating in the sweet spot on the edge of your ability.’
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Did you catch that: intensive reaching and repeating in the sweet spot on the edge of your ability.’
Building a mentally strong athlete means you have to let them struggle. Not a struggle of despair and stress of trying to accomplish the impossible, but rather a struggle of trying to accomplish a task that is just out of reach of their current ability. And here is where Dweck’s research ties in – the only way they are going to be able to reach that next level is by problem solving. Trial and error. Failures turned into successes.
So to be a master coach – you have to be constantly evaluating where your team and each athlete is at, and figure out how to stretch them into that ‘sweet spot on the edge of their ability.’ Here a few practical ways some of the coaches I have interviewed do this:
  • Construct developmental stages that kids graduate from.
    • Melody Shuman, founder of a martial arts school called Skillz Connect, identifies 7 or 8 skills appropriate for the age. She uses the Goldilocks concept to define these skills – Not too hot, not too cold, but just the right level that is a slight challenge, but attainable. Then she will focus on one of these in each practice. They have a test at the end of the practice, and if they pass they get their ‘stripe’ for that skill.
    • After they have passed the test for each of the skills, they graduate to the next level. Moving up a level is a big recognition and there is a group celebration.
    • Spend the time listening to 2 great podcasts on this subject:
  • Lee Miller from Elite Hoops Basketball calls it ‘Living by numbers’ – They have created 15 core drills that can be measured numerically. They keep track of the results, then they focus on improvement.
  • Fear of failure- Great analogy – Olaniyi Sobomehin, former Saints’ running back and founder of I’mNotYou.com, said his son hates to lose and might quit in the middle of a race. So he used the analogy of how obsessed his son is with Mario Kart to beat a level – when he fails to complete a level – he doesn’t quit, he keeps pushing reset until he eventually will beat the level.  So use this analogy to show your athlete the type of passion you need to accomplish something – quitting is the only way you will fail.
  • Scott Rosberg from Proactive Coaching reinforced that as a coach, be sure to use the words: ‘Look what you’ve become!’ or ‘Look what you were able to figure out’ – instead of taking any credit yourself.
There may be no bigger confidence builder than overcoming an obstacle and solving a problem. So let ’em struggle, then celebrate like crazy when they figure it out.
I hope you have learned as much from this series as I have in doing the research on it. If you missed any of the previous factors check them out here:
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WYC 075 – Proactive Coaching – Scott Rosberg talks Coaching with Character

Scott Rosberg has been a coach (basketball, soccer, & football) at the high school level for 30 years, an English teacher for 18 years, and an athletic director for 12 years.  He has published seven booklets on coaching and youth/school athletics, two books of inspirational messages and quotes for seniors and graduates, and a newsletter for athletic directors and coaches.  He also speaks to schools, teams, and businesses on a variety of team-building, leadership, and coaching topics.  Scott has a blog and a variety of other materials about coaching and athletic topics on his website.

Scott is also a member of the Proactive Coaching speaking team.  Proactive Coaching is dedicated to helping organizations create character and education-based team cultures, while providing a blueprint for team leadership. They help develop confident, tough-minded, fearless competitors and train coaches and leaders for excellence and significance.

Websites:  coachwithcharacter.com; proactivecoaching.info

Twitter: @scottrosberg@ProactiveCoach

Facebook: /coachwithcharacter ;  /proactivecoach

Listen Now:

Listen in ITunes: Itunes link

Listen in Stitcher: Stitcher link

Quote

‘Look what you’ve become!’

‘You get what you reward, and it perpetuates itself’

My Cringe Moments

  • Using bad language when coaching
  • Once, when mad in practice, Scott yelled ‘There is nothing fun about this!’ – in retrospect he realizes the irony of that statement, considering the #1 reason kids play sports is to have fun.
  • Another practice Scott once had them do conditioning during a lightning storm

My ‘Ah-Ha’ Moments

  • Learning from Proactive Coaching about creating a culture. 75+% of teams let their culture happen ‘by accident.’  Instead – create Core Covenants – that are the standards for what your team is going to be. Involve the captains when creating these. Check out Proactive Coaching’s guide to creating Core Covanants: First Steps to Building Successful Teams
  • From a parenting point of view – Kids least favorite part of sports is the post-game analysis from their parents on the ride home from games
  • From a coaching point of view – Are your post-game talks too long? Are you over-analzing the game in your post-game talk?

Mental Toughness/Achieving Peak Performance

  • ‘This is a relationship business.’ How do I react when one of my players makes a mistake? The 3 C’s of Trust:
    • Competence
    • Caring
    • Character
  • ‘Focus on the process not the outcome.’ When Lebron James was struggling with free throws a few years ago- he went to a shooting coach, and the coach asked him what he was thinking about when he went to the line. Lebron said he thought about making it. The coach said- ‘Don’t think about making it, think about your process.’
  • The key to confidence is preparation
  • Create a mistake-recovery ritual

HUGE IDEA:

  • Use these words: ‘Look what you’ve become!’ or ‘Look what you were able to figure out’ – instead of taking any credit yourself

Culture – Discipline/Rewards/Teambuilding

  • Have standards not rules. Kids can rise to standards.
  • Discipline is focused attention and focused effort
  • ‘You get what you reward, and it perpetuates itself’

HUGE IDEA

  • Positive Conditioning – The winners get to run!
    • You have to put all your attention/effort into recognizing the kids who are earning the right to run.
    • For poor effort: ‘You guys just lost your chance to become better. You lost your chance to condition.’
  • Year-end Award Banquet – Instead of MVP – reward the MVT – Most Valuable Teammate. Or even better – have 6 awards: Most Improved, one for each of your 4 core covenants, and one for who best exemplified all 4 core covenants. And the same kid can earn multiple awards.

Favorite coaching book/quote

  • ‘Success is a peace of mind that is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.’ – John Wooden

Coach With Character

  • Senior Salute booklet – great $5 gift for you players in the post-season award banquet – includes a place inside the front cover to write a personal note
  • Website has blog, booklets: coachwithcharacter.com

Parting Advice

  • ‘We’re here to try to provide kids the opportunity to have a positive athletic experience’

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WYC 074 – Championship basketball – Andres Montana talks about the power of trust and believing in kids

Coach Montana has been at St. Cecilia Academy since 2012 as the varsity girls head coach at St. Cecilia Academy. Coach Montana played high school basketball at Marist (GA), where he helped lead the team to a 32-0 season his senior year, winning the state championship, and being ranked 6th nationally by USA Today. He has been coaching vasity basketball since 1997, since 2003 as head coach. In 2007 and 2008, Montana’s teams were state runner-up. Those same years he was named GISA Coach of the Year. Coach Montana has been serving St. Cecilia as the Vice Principal of Students since 2012. Coach Montana also coaches for Upward Stars Nashville. He and his wife, Shannon, have 8 beautiful children.

Websites: stcecilia.edu; upwardstarsnashville.org

Twitter: @StCeciliaAca@UpwardStarsTN

Facebook: /St-Cecilia-Academy/103813402991323; /upwardstarsnashville

Listen Now:

Listen in ITunes: Itunes link

Listen in Stitcher: Stitcher link

Quote

Nothing has worked better to build kids’ confidence than to truthfully tell a child ‘I believe in you’

Coaching your own kids

  • Coach Montana has 8 kids- he was recently coaching one of them, the team was down 2 and the team got a steal and his son had a chance to tie the game. Instead he pulled up for a 3 to win the game, it didn’t go in. His son was very upset, but coach was so proud of him for ‘Trusting his instincts’ and having the courage to take the shot – these are the types of life lessons he wants to teach his kids/players. He put his arm around his son and told him how proud he was for taking that courageous shot.

My Cringe & ‘Ah-Ha’ Moments

  • Being a passionate coach, early on it was easy to yell at players. Coach has learned there are more effective ways and times to communicate.
  • Coach one time was frustrated with another team ‘acting like thugs’ and was upset and threw his dry-erase marker – and it went all the way down the court and hit the opposing coach in the foot. He went on to get to know the other coach and they have since become good friends. One thing he learned from the other coach was that he always believed so much in his own kids that it helped them play better than they actually were. For example he called one of his player who had weird form ‘the shooter’ and it led to that player playing extremely confidently and making a lot of shots.

Teaching Skills

  • Coach Montana learned (from previous WYC guest Kevin Furtado)- to use the term ‘Tough Ball’ instead of ‘triple threat’ – Young kids instinctually catch the ball and turn their back to the basket and dribble with their strong hand away from the basket with their head down. So one of the first things to teach is for the kids to face the basket, with two hands on the ball, and their head up – willing to face their opponent.
  • They also echo the coach’s commands – ‘Tough ball’, ‘Rip’, ‘Sweep’ – This echoing becomes fun for the kids and gets them all involved, and increases the energy level in the practice.
  • Lay-up drills – they will do without the ball first – for right-handed they say ‘right-hand, right-knee’ as they are jumping and simulating doing a right-handed layup without the ball.

Mental Toughness/Achieving Peak Performance

  • One key is to have one-on-one conversations to understand where the kid’s confidence is at. Not by asking them directly – but by asking questions and seeing how confidently they answer them.
  • Nothing has worked better to build kids’ confidence than to truthfully tell a child ‘I believe in you’

Culture – Discipline/Rewards/Teambuilding

  • Culture will create itself if you don’t create it
  • Learned from Bruce Brown at Proactive Coaching – Gather the coaches and 3 captains in preseason and define your Core Covenants – who are you going to be that season. Brainstorm by throwing words up on a board, then narrow it down to 2 or 3 that are going to define your team. Then you can order the livestrong-type bracelets that have those words on it.
  • Work with the captains for discipline – it starts with them!
  • Post-game shout-outs by the players – complimenting other players is huge.

Connecting with and Impacting Kids

  • Coach Montana had a kid Franko who struggled to grow into his body. He stuck with it and the coaches kept believing in him – his senior year he ended up making a left-handed layup as time expired to win a game – it wasn’t the designed play but the play broke down and he had the confidence to create on his own.

The One that Got Away

  • In a state championship game – they got the ball with 2 seconds left and down 3 – they called timeout and set up a play – but unfortunately they thought the ball was on the sideline, and when they got out on the court the ref told them it was on the baseline. Lessons learned: Confirm with the official where the ball is; Have a generic play you can run from anywhere by just using the name of the play

Best stolen idea

  • Two end-of-game lead-protection strategies: a four-corner offense with a back-door cut built in; and a sidelines inbound play that is very effective

Favorite coaching book/quote

  • Anything by John Wooden
  • ‘Failure to prepare is preparing to fail’- John Wooden
  • ‘All things work for good for those that love God’ – from the Bible

Parting Advice

  • Give them the book ‘Coaching Basketball Successfully‘ by Morgan Wootten
  • You have the freedom to be whatever kind of coach you want to – take that seriously, establish your own core covenants, and think outside the box on how you can positively impact the kids you coach.

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