"Most young big men are rather lacking when it comes to proper footwork and balance.
Every player can look great in their own workout videos, but when we see them in actual
games you can see how easily they are pushed around and not properly balanced to make winning moves. The Rick Mahorn Big Man Camp absolutely goes about it the right way - drilling you repeatedly in games and helping you learn exactly what you need to know to be an impact player. Unless you are receiving continual feedback under these circumstances and being mentored to put that feedback to use, you are wasting your efforts. If you are serious about your career, the Rick Mahorn Camp is probably one of the best investments you can make!"
-- Ettore Messina, San Antonio Spurs
Assistant Coach, Four-time EuroLeague Champion
"I highly recommend the Rick Mahorn Big Man Camp if you want to take your game to the next level. You can expect great attention to detail from experienced coaches and invaluable tips on when and how to use the moves you will learn."
-- Paul Miller, Star Player at Wichita State and Polish Club Slask Wroclaw, Wichita State
University Sports Hall of Fame Inductee
"As a sport psychologist and teacher, Mitch Smith is passionately committed to helping athletes capitalize on their talents. He has worked with several players in our basketball program. Their success can be traced, in part, to the direction and inspiration he has provided. He is committed to excellence and his integrity is the foundation of all that he does."
-- Bob McKillop, Head Men's Basketball Coach, Davidson College, 2008 NCAA Coach of the Year, 2013 USA Head Men's Basketball Coach, World University Games
These days one finds the term "resilience" being mentioned a good deal. For year, however, British educator Sir Ken Robinson and others have been stressing the importance of this quality, particularly for the youth. (See an earlier article addressing this topic here.)
In a TED Talk, joked that just as a child who showed up to the doctor with some ailment, like ADHD, that was not yet in fashion (so he might be considered "mentally ill") at one point observers were not yet acknowledging the concept of resilience, until the topic recently caught on and took off!
Resilience can be defined as "the capacity that a person or group has to recover from adversity in order to continue progress toward some future goal." Sometimes difficult circumstances or traumatic events can facilitate the development of inner resources that were latent and of which the individual was unaware.
My first opportunity as head coach of a professional club came when I was called upon to replace a colleague. Our team was in last place, having lost far more games than it had won. The budget did not allow for signing any new players, so the goal was to improve on what he had at the moment.
As a young coach full of dreams, ideas and energy, I got to work. We made some progress but still continued to lose more often than win. One day, after a loss, I spent an entire day working up several strategies and preparing my speech to the team the next day. I would show them some game film highlighting our mistakes, help them understand what we had to do, which I was sure would motivate them. I was certain that my reasoned logic would change the way they played.
The next day, I woke up highly motivated and arrived to the gym much earlier than usual to choose the proper set-up for my speech and work through in my mind the exact scenario and how I would present my ideas.
As players arrived I scanned their faces in an attempt to ascertain their mood. As I did so, I realized what I was NOT seeing: Determination, Confidence, Energy, Calm.
I was thinking my plan made sense; I had the feeling the players were tired of words and speeches. And I tried to put myself in their shoes, What would I need if I were a player? Would being told what I was bad at help me to get better? Was I being part of the solution?
Meanwhile, the players were ready to go; we all met in the middle of the court to kick off practice, with all those thoughts still running through my mind as I was still trying to decide how I should proceed. I took in their faces, one after another. They seemed to reflect that passive style "Let's see what speech the new coach gives us."
I understood that this wasn't going to get me anywhere. So I explained the plan for the day's practice and got the first drill going. A clear expression of relief came across their faces.
Putting them to work changed the feeling in the group. I realized that the coach's attitude makes the difference in the team's chances to bounce back. Groups are - or become - more resilient to the extent that the members become more resilient. And that starts with the coach.
The way to get it is always to show up ready to work. That's the best way to help the players improve.
The coach strengthens his standing with the players not with what he says but with what he does. While facing adversity, the message to be sent is: Let's keep moving forward. Let's keep improving. Good results will come.
To me, this is what resilience is. And it starts with the coach.
Frustration. It's frustrating. But it doesn't have to be!! So says veteran Spanish coach and educator Manolo Povea.
Should we give in to feelings of frustration**? This might seem like a stupid question. After all, how can we not? However I don't see this question as so black-and-white. Allow me to elaborate.
Even for those of us who live in privileged circumstances relative to so many others around the world, stress is a constant in our lives.
College students about to graduate stress about finding a job. To parents at least, teenagers live in a state of nearly permanent stress about this or that. Younger children, well their parents are constantly taking care of one thing or another to shield their youngsters from stress.
The term is probably becoming trivialized for overused.
An ancient proverb states that "to understand a skill, it must be repeated 1,000 times; to truly know it, 10,000 times; and to master, 100,000 times." Persistence is the mother of success.
Some young basketball players practice a skill or a move movement, then try to use it in the game - and when it does not work out ... they feel frustrated. Students who put in the time to study for an exam expecting a good grade and end up with results not matching those expectations ... feel frustrated.
Let's keep in mind that frustration is a term that only comes following such other terms as "effort," "tenacity," "perseverance," or "dedication."
There can be no frustration without first persevering in the attempt to achieve the goal we are after. Our "frustratability" is just the opposite of the quality cited by Danish-American social reformer Jacob Riis, who studied the lives of poor people living in the slums of New York City 100 years ago - in a favorite quote of Coach Gregg Popovich which he called "Pounding the Rock":
"When nothing seems to help, I think of a stonecutter hammering away at the rock over and over again, maybe 100 times, without as much as a single crack appearing. However with the 101st blow, the rock splits in half. It was not that last blow that caused the rock to split, but the 100 previous attempts."
Returning to the initial question: Should we allow ourselves to give in to feelings or frustration? Maybe yes, but only if we have previously done everything to achieve the goal. And do you know the most curious thing? It is those who try everything who are the least frustrated. Surely it is because they believe that if things don't work out as desired, you have to keep trying!
** Frustration = a feeling that is generated in an individual when he can not satisfy a stated desire. Faced with this type of situation, the person usually reacts emotionally with expressions of anger, anxiety or dysphoria.
Many years ago, a leading psychologist named Albert Ellis, whose lengthy career focused on how people reacted to the things in life they defined as problems, proposed that schools could help kids enormously by exposing them to mildly distressing situations so that the kids would develop the skills and strengths to successfully cope with these situations and thereby master their abilities to see such problems as not debilitating or otherwise disturbing, but as road bumps in life that they felt confident they could cope with and overcome with proper effort.
