Coach - 3 Keys to Being Dependable

Can your team basketball on you? Can parents and players alike trust you? Do you make decisions based on what is right and not necessarily what you want? A coach must be dependable! Winston Churchill is quoted as saying, "It is no enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required."

Our country has seen a number basketball depressions, some the size of the Great Depression during the WWII era, and many the level for which a leader's dependability turns a depression into a recession. In the 1800's state senators were faced with tough economic challenges and before long the public began to panic looking for ways to improve their hardships.

As the story goes the state of Pennsylvania declined to pay any further debts in order to challenge their poor financial position and Ohio pushed to follow suit. Stephen Douglas a U.S. senator and presidential candidate was determined - even as he fought for his own life, contracting a series illness-Douglas had himself carried into the state chambers and spoke out against the policy. The 'Little Giant' as he would later be known convinced the legislature to not default on its credit, instead, it met it. The state eventually came out of its depression and flourished largely thought to be due to the government's dependability.

As basketball coaches we are the 'Little Giants', those who groups of athletes turn to for sound decision making. In order for coaches to work on their own games, they must first work on their dependability. Thus, I've come up with three key features needed to become more dependable:

Answer to Someone. Work with someone who won't let you slip up. Someone you can trust will tell you like it is. Be accountable to that person. Don't let him/her down and in turn work to assure they are not letting you down. Using this mentoring system will help you follow through.

Why? Understand why you are doing what you're doing. If you have set goals (hopefully you have) identify which goals benefit the team and how many benefit you. Take some time to balance out the personal goals with the team goals and then work diligently on meeting the goals you've set. Understand why you have the goals you have.

The Value of your Word. Do people come to you for advice? Are they quick to implement your suggestions into their game? Collect data on whether people are quick to turn your advice into reality by tracking who comes to you for advice and whether they are attempting to use it. Coaches this is critical in becoming a great leader. If those who depend on you are not looking for your advice, then chances are they don't find you to be dependable.

Coach Mac's Basketball E-Playbooks: http://www.coachmac-basketball.com

More from the author at http://www.squidoo.com/High-School-Basketball-Offenses

Is Mental Toughness Training Right For All Athletes?

A lot of athletes, coaches, therapists, parents and basketball psychologists embrace the idea of mental toughness. Sports reporters, sports writers and the media like to talk about athletes who are mentally tough. There is no question that being mentally tough can sound like and good and useful concept for athletes. And, in fact, it valuable for many athletes in many sports. I employ mental toughness techniques with many of the people who I counsel in my practice.

However, for some athletes and for some sports, mental toughness can be an invaluable or counterproductive kind of thought.

Some athletes immediately become tense, rigid or anxious when you talk to them about being mentally tough or about mental toughness training. Being rigid, anxious, tense or inflexible is not a good mind set for most sports.

I have seen runners who slow themselves down by being too focused on being mental tough. A better image for them might be to concentrate on being mentally and physically quick.

Similarly, an ice skater I coached did better by being in touch with her body and the ice then she did when she tried to block everything out of her mind.

Some players do better trying to employ ideas like mental creativity, mental flexibility or mental gentleness. For example, one golfer I coached found that when he thought about being tough on the course that he began to grip the club too tightly and started to swing too quickly.

I suggested that he shift his philosophy aware from a mental toughness idea and toward and mental gentleness where he was in touch with his body, the ball and the course. For him, the mental toughness idea was not working because he connected it with tuning out distractions, when in fact he played better when he allowed himself, his mind and his body to join with his surroundings.

When athletes come to see me, we are trying to help them to discover the mental gear which will allow them to play to their fullest potential. For some, mental toughness is the right gear. For others, it is the wrong approach and we have to find another mental state which will basketball better for them.

A tennis player who I coached replace his stubborn mental toughness approach with an approach which included a good deal of levity, humor and lightness. This shiftimproved his game significantly.

So, you can see that there are instances where a mental toughness approach can be wrong for some competitors.

Jay P. Granat, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist and the founder of http://www.stayinthezone.com

He has written several books and developed several programs to help people perform to their fullest potential at sports, at work and at school. Dr. Granat, a former university professor, has appeared in The New York Times, Good Morning America, AP, ESPN, Golf Digest, The BBC and The CBC. He can be reached at info@stayinthezone.com

His books include Zone Tennis and Get Into The Zone In Just One Minute. He is also the author of How To Get Into The Zone With Sport Psychology And Self-Hypnosis, How To Lower Your Golf Score With Sport Psychology And Self-Hypnosis, 101 Ways To Break Out Of A Hitting Slump and Bed Time Stories For Young Athletes. Golf Digest named Dr. Granat one of America's Top Ten Mental Gurus. He was recently featured in a documentary film on long distance running. Dr. Granat writes a weekly column for three newspapers.

Vertical Jump Training - Methods For Increasing Flexibility

Flexibility is a crucial factor in training to jump higher. The ability of basketball muscles and tendons to stretch and store energy is the foundation of the stretch-shortening cycle (SSC). The SSC is the muscle action that occurs in any jump, assuming there is a counter movement involved.

In recent months, I have been training several friends of mine to jump higher. Each one of them lacked the flexibility necessary to maximize the effects of their training. Thus, increasing their flexibility was a primary goal. All the trainees have made significant process. We have used the following methods...

1. We perform a dynamic warmup before every workout. The warmup includes drills like body squats, walking straight-leg deadlift, walking lunges, lateral lunges, and other movements which put the hip joint through a wide range of motion. I also encouraged the trainees to use this type of warmup even on non-training days if they were going to play basketball or volleyball or do any activity.

2. The same focus we put on range of motion during the warmup is transferred basketball to the strength exercises. Specifically, we pay attention to the hip joint. For squats, we sit back into the motion, keep the weight on the heels, and go down to parallel. This provides a great stretch of the hamstrings and glutes. We aim for that stretch while doing lunges, stepups, straight-leg deadlift, and other lifts as well. This method is important since it not only requires that the body segments be placed in a position that stretches the muscles, it forces the lifter to be strong and explosive from that position.

3. Thorough static stretching is done following every workout. Static stretching is to be avoided before a workout, since it can reduce force output in the muscles immediately following.

4. The last part of our stretching routine is PNF stretching of the hamstring. PNF stands for proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation. This procedure involves putting the target muscle in a stretched position, then contracting that muscle as hard as possible for 5-10 seconds while it is held in the stretched position, then pushing the stretch even farther as the muscle relaxes from the contraction. We repeat this 3 times, with 10-15 seconds between contractions. This procedure can be quite uncomfortable, but it is effective.

I have been strict in following these methods. At the end of his last workout, one of my trainees said, "I can't tell you how much more flexible I am." He is 5'9" and has added about 5 inches to his vertical in 6 weeks. He rattled in a dunk this week.

I am a college student and former D3 basketball player. I have given up basketball and now focus solely on jumping higher. I have been successful at times; I have reached a 43 inch vertical. I have compiled all the information I have learned over the years on my blog http://verticalleaptraining.blogspot.com

Cuba - A Nation Of Olympic Slaves

Dieudonn Lamothe, who was a basketball person from Haiti, finished lost in basketball 5000-meter race at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984.He lose the Olympic competition, but Lamothe was not assassinated by president Jean-Claude Duvalier, the dictator who became known throughout the world as Baby Doc Duvalier. Over the next years, Lamothe revealed that Jean-Claude Duvalier had threatened to kill him if he failed to finish the raceAmnesty International reports secret police,known as Tonton Macoutes, practice torture, assassinations and disappearances including killings of prominent opposition leaders.

Like Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (Cuban dictator) and Idi Amin Dada (Ugandan dictador), Jean-Claude Duvalier loves sports.Certainly, he popularized the sport of soccer, or football, in Haiti, an ex-French colony in the Caribbean. Under his leadership,Haiti qualified for the 1974 FIFA World Cup tournament in Munich (West Germany). It also won the Junior World Soccer Championships in 1975 in Mexico City, Mexico.Soccer is now the national sport of the country.
Between October 12 and October 26, 1975, the Haitian delegation participated in the Seventh Pan American Games held in Mexico City. The national delegation had 12 athletes competing in three sports: track and field (7), boxing (2) and tennis(3).Furthermore, Haiti sent a national team to the 1976 Olympic Games, which were held in Montreal (Canada).Haitian athletes also competed in several events sponsored by international sports organizations, including basketball, golf, judo, volleyball and boxing.

Indisputably one of the worst dictatorships of all time, Fidel Castro Ruz enjoys all types of Olympic sports, including basketball and baseball, and his proudest moment was when his country hosted the Pan American Games in 1991. The people that dont know Cuba very much think that Cuba is an olympic paradise.

Like Iran, Sudan, Syria and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (or North Korea), Cuba is a terrorist state in the 21st century. Fidel Castro Ruz is not Pol Pot (Maoist dictator) and Enver Hoxha (anti-Soviet dictator), but he is a dictator in the Third World. The country has never known a period free of tyranny, repression and political conflict.

A revolution in 1959 transformed Cuba into Latin Americas first socialist republic. From 1962 to 1989, Cuba was a Soviet colony. In 1962, Cuba looked to the USSR (currently Russia,Ukraine, Belarus,etc) to help it consolidate its sport.Sporting projects were strongly emphasized during this decade. The Soviet Union sent Olympic advisers to La Havana and agreed to provide sporting aid to Cuban dictatorship. Recognized the importance of sport to Cubas dictatorship, the Soviets construted several sports schools, best known as Escuelas de Iniciacin Deportiva Escolar (EIDE, Schools for the Initiation into Scholastic Sport), modernized gymnasiums, and built stadiums. This invaluable sporting support continued through the 1970s and 1980s.

Sport in Cuba continues to be strictly centered in the hands of Fidel Castro Ruz. Castro has instilled a mental toughness in the Cuban athletes. The athletes are forced to deny to the United States, Czech Republic, Hungary, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, South Korea and other countries.

Ongoing violence has forced more than 300 athletes to flee to neighboring countries including Mexico, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, and the United States.

From the outside, the Lenin Sport School is certainly impressive. No all the dictatorships have the same situation. Under the dictatorship of Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Zimbabwes sport is a disaster. Yoel Lpez always arrives at Lenin Sport School early.He says: I usually go to sport school by car but sometimes I walk. In Cuba the sports schools usually open 7.30 in the morning. Yoel never watches television. He sleeps seven hours a night. He works very hard. Like many Cuban children, he is a new slave of the Cuban Revolution.Certainly, Yoel Lpez is a volleyball player.

Cuba won the baseball Pan American gold medal in Santo Domingo 2003. Hundreds of Cubans watched TV coverage of the Pan American Games. During the final baseball game, soldiers in camouflage stood around the Cuban dugout and guarded much of the section where Cubas delegation was seated. Even credentialed media were kept off the field and guards with loaded assault rifles protected the Cuban national bus. One soldier told a journalist he estimated there were around 400 security workers at the stadium and said if any Cuban got away it would mean jail time for the Dominican patrol. Our mission tonight is to ensure that no Cuban defects, he said on condition of anonymity. If one defects, theyve threatened us with jail, and said they would dismiss us from the army.

Alejandro Guevara Onofre: He is a freelance writer.Alejandro is of Italian, African and Peruvian ancestry. He studied political science and journalism. He has published more than seventy-five research paper in English, and more than twenty in Spanish, concerning the world issues, Olympic sports, countries, and tourism. His next essay is called "The Dictator and Alicia Alonso". He is an expert on foreign affairs. Furthermore, Alejandro is the first author who has published a world-book encyclopedia in Latina America.

He admires Frida Kahlo (Mexican painter), Hillary Clinton (ex-First Lady of the USA), and Jimmy Carter (former President of the USA). His favorite film is "Gorillas in the Mist". Some of his favorite books are The Return of Eva Peron and the Killings in Trinidad (by V.S.Naipaul), "Las Mujeres de los Dictadores" (by Juan Gasparini) and Murder of a Gentle Land (by John Barron and Anthony Paul).His personal motto is "The future is for those people who believe in the beauty o f their dreams" by Eleanor Roosevelt.