Episode #20: What is Motivation? of my Train Your Mind for Athletic Success podcast is the first of three episodes that examines the impact of motivation on your training efforts and your competitive success. This episode will introduce you to what motivation is, why it is the foundation of all aspects of sports performance, and [...]
Is the COVID-19 crisis and Shelter-in-Place getting you down and/or driving you crazy? Are you feeling like you're spinning your wheels with your ski racing progress (in other words, not making any!)? Well, join the crowd; it's frustrating for everyone, to be sure. What is crazy is that the last races of the 2019-20 season [...]
The downtime imposed on us by the COVID-19 crisis is certainly frustrating whether you're an athlete, coach, or parent. As an athlete, you may feel that your development has been slowed or come to a screeching halt. But this time is also an opportunity for you to focus on areas of your athletic performance that [...]
Let me begin with a question: What does the COVID-19 crisis have in common with sports? At first blush, you would probably say, “Absolutely nothing!” I mean, really, the current pandemic has created crises of health and financial markets that are disrupting the lives of almost everyone on our planet. People the world over are [...]
Episode #16: Experimentation of my Train Your Mind for Athletic Success podcast is the third of six in a series that examines the ways in which you can maximize your training efforts and the benefits that you gain from those efforts. This episode will explore the essential value of experimentation in athlete development. Because of the [...]
In my last ski racing post, I shared with you my list of Dos for Ski Racing Parents. In general, I much prefer to focus on the positives of behavior and, in that article, emphasized what you can do to help your ski-racing children have a great experience in our sport, ski their fastest, and achieve [...]
Episode #6: Perspective of my Raising Young Athletes podcast explores the influence of perspective on how you as sport parents and your young athletes perceive, feel about, and react to their sports experiences. When I talk about perspective, I mean lens through you and your young children look at their sports involvement in terms of [...]
The fifth episode of my Train Your Mind for Athletic Success podcast explores the importance of having a long-term attitude on your athletic development. With this perspective, you aren't focused on quick improvement or short-term results. Instead, you know that the path toward your sports goals is long and filled with setbacks, plateaus, and failures. [...]
I just read a fascinating article by David Epstein, the author of The Sports Gene, that further supports my position that early specialization in sports (or any achievement area, for that matter) is not the path to later success. He recounts research and anecdotes in which children who didn't specialize early went on to have [...]
The New York Times just published a revealing article about Norway's approach to youth sports that provides a painful juxtaposition to the often-times toxic "youth sport industrial complex" that currently has gone off the rails in the U.S. The article offers some valuable insights into how youth sports can be returned to its original health [...]
