The Sports Doc Chalk Talk

I believe the time is now that we make concerted efforts to better educate and prepare families for their child’s eventual sport retirement.  With sports being as big as they are in this country, its a shame that so many athletes are still left to themselves to figure out who they are, what their talents are beyond sports, and what future paths exist for them when in the midst of the sport retirement transition.  Fortunately, most athletes do not fall into the worst-case scenarios of suicide (as with the recent passing of Junior Seau), but literally millions of athletes from various sports, backgrounds, and types, experience great distress during sport retirement – often resulting in depression, anxiety, role confusion, and poor future planning.  In order to cope with this distress, many athletes turn to drug and alcohol abuse, aggression, and reckless behaviors (like gambling).

The message I am sending today is designed to promote more action in the ways of better educating sports families about the athletic identity, and how kids often develop an exclusive athletic identity that hinders them when they end their careers in sports.  With so many kids now specializing in one sport and playing it nearly year-round, it becomes easy to see how athletes develop their self-worth around “athlete.”  Their social identities (or how others view them), are also constructed around the athletic identity, too (like when we immediately ask about the game before anything else).  None of this is “bad” necessarily, but it all leads to the fact that most kids never play beyond high school (only about 5% do), making the sport retirement transition usually an abrupt and unplanned one. Without better educational efforts, families will continue to struggle when their kids (who are often just teenagers without great coping skills due to their youth) experience distress during this period — making it that much more important that we make things better.

Help is Here!

One approach that we have developed is Sport Success 360, a licensed educational system designed to help schools and youth sport leagues by providing key psychosocial information, tips, and strategies designed to help kids have a safe, fun, and meaningful athletic experience.  I encourage you to learn more about Sport Success 360 by watching this introductory video — Sport Success 360 includes a broad range of topics (including sport retirement), complimentary videos, and free downloads of Sport Success 360 and Sport Success 360 PLUS audio program.

If you are reading this blog, then it can be assumed you have an interest in youth and interscholastic sports (probably as either a parent, athlete, or coach).  While you may not be a decision-maker in your school or youth league, you can help raise awareness by mentioning Sport Success 360, or other great sport education programs out there that can help kids not only better prepare for sport retirement, but also learn about key psychosocial issues like the dangers of performance enhancing supplements, youth sport burnout, hazing, and many more issues.  In all likelihood you have also experienced more traditional issues, like playing time, cuts, sportsmanship, tough coaches (or parents), and travel leagues – Sport Success 360 covers those topics, too.

Education Helps On and Off the Field

Mental toughness is needed on the field, but it’s not limited to just wins and losses — we need to help families learn the culture of sports today, and successful strategies to help kids cope with the pressures they commonly experience in sports.  Just as important as the X’s and O’s are, we need to help kids with performance anxiety, as well as the resiliency needed to bounce back from adversity.  Ironically, these are really life skills and not limited to sports, making these kinds of sport education efforts that much more vital.

Better and more prevalent education does not imply that sports are bad, or that all kids who play sports have terrible experiences — far from it.  Instead, we need to realize that the days of a handful of casual summer games played on the local sandlot are long gone — replaced by high-level, intense, pressure-filled travel league sports schedules for kids who sometimes struggle to keep up.  Of course, these are not bad kids, either – they are just that, kids, vulnerable to kid mistakes when trying to deal with pressure.

Helping Kids – Even the Ones that Don’t Speak Up

Kids don’t always speak up when they feel pressure – be it from their parents or team expectations.  In some cases kids have a talent for a specific sport, but don’t love playing the sport — yet still refrain from speaking out because the see the time, money, and energy being invested in their athletic career.  Some kids have a lot of trouble multi-tasking other activities – like school and social activities — while others have difficulty dealing with resiliency that sometimes manifests into unsportsmanlike behavior and/or uncontrolled aggression.

When we view youth sports through the lens of it being an often intense, complex, and radically different experience than generations of the past, it helps us better frame the educational approach to youth sports as being one of “keeping up with the times” than one that needs to be done because of “problems.”  Introducing new and more advanced ways of delivering contemporary sport education is not an admission that an athletic department or youth league has gone out of control, but instead an example of sports leaders making important budgetary decisions that go beyond the traditional basics.  Of course, finding new revenue streams is never easy, but when issues become important enough people become resourceful – this is often referred to as a “tipping point.”  Are we there yet?  I think so, and from my experiences with many sports people, it sounds like there is increasingly more support to improve future efforts.  I personally believe this will happen, and I hope you do, too.

www.drstankovich.com

Sport Success 360 is the premier sport education system, designed to improve the culture of your youth or interscholastic team/league!

Coaches are regularly challenged to be successful leaders and get the most out of their team (Sport Success 360).  When their team is “loaded,” they have to make sure they keep the team focused and playing up to their abilities.  On the other hand, when they coach teams with average or below-average talent, the challenge is to lead the team so that they believe in themselves and play over their heads (and over-achieve).  How a coach leads his or her team is important in both of these situations, and there are a few general rules all coaches can benefit from in order to help the team reach its full potential.  Getting the team to “buy in” to the coach’s philosophy is key — listed below are a few quick sport psychology tips to help:

• Set appropriate, realistic goals. Studies consistently show that when people set realistic, challenging goals (rather than goals that are too easy or too difficult) people are more likely to persevere and remained motivated toward the goals.  Set goals that challenge your players, and then with every accomplished goal try and set another tier of goals that are even more challenging than the first.
• Generate enthusiasm. It’s no secret that when we are excited, we are more apt to be motivated to play hard and win.  Coaches who show positive enthusiasm almost always benefit by the team picking up on this energy, and as a result the team usually plays with better focus, motivation, mental toughness, and resiliency.
• Be consistent. Coaches who treat all players as fairly as possible usually build the best team cohesion.  While it is important to motivate players as individuals, when it comes to team rules and protocols it is important to be as fair as possible in order to improve team chemistry and cohesion.
• Praise often. People are much more likely to reach goals when they are praised and shaped in positive and instructive ways.  Rather than embarrass, berate, or humiliate players into performing better,  find creative ways to praise for effort and encourage players to do a better job the next time out.
• Prepare to deal with losses. While it might sound strange to prepare for tough times, it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.  The reality is that most teams will lose (some will lose a lot), so preparing for dejected players and a negative locker room is very important.  As a wise man once said, “it’s not how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up.”  Coaches need to think about how to regain the team and move them quickly through the sadness and sulking stage and back toward the focus and motivation needed to play at a high level tomorrow.

Being a successful coach at any level is a challenging task when you think about it.  Getting a team to buy into a coach’s philosophy can be a tough sell, and then keeping a team motivated throughout the season can be an equally difficult task.  Coaches who learn about leadership techniques and work on their interpersonal communication skills put themselves in the best possible situation to create a great team environment, as well as win more games.

www.drstankovich.com

Check out Sport Success 360 to help improve the overall culture of your team, athletic department, or youth league – get started today!

Summer sports are just around the corner, and before you know it millions of kids across the country will be playing baseball, softball, soccer, and a host of other sports. Most youth sport leagues are run by volunteer coaches and administrators, and officiated by amateur referees who might be paid a nominal fee for their efforts.  Obviously your son or daughter is not playing professional sports, yet there should be a few minimal expectations you should have from the umpires, referees, and other officials that work your child’s games.

First, keep in mind that most youth sport officials do a really good job — they show up on time, work hard to be fair in their judgments, and attend to potentially dangerous situations in a timely manner.  Still, there are always going to be some officials who don’t do the job they are expected to do, resulting in a less-than-optimal experience for your child.  So what expectations should you have for officials this summer?  Below are a few quick thoughts to consider:

• Hustle. Sports officiating requires hustle, and officials know this going into the job.  Of course, you should be reasonable with your expectations (especially on those really hot summer days), but you should expect that officials are doing all that they can to make the right calls on the field.
• Wrong calls vs. bad calls. Wrong calls are made when an official doesn’t understand the rules of the game (which should not happen very often).  In these instances try and make your point to the official in a tactful way, and not in a manner designed to embarrass or humiliate the official.  Bad calls, however, happen more regularly — these are the types of judgements that happen in a moments notice and are sometimes missed by officials.  Try to be more tolerant in these instances, as even professional officials make mistakes (after all, we’re all human).
• Fairness. Good officials treat both teams the same – with dignity and respect.  You should not see the official going over to one team during a game and joking around and giving the impression of playing favorites – instead, good officials make it a point to stay objective and measured in the ways in which they interact and communicate with both teams competing.
• Responding to dangerous situations. Good officials will keep an eye out for potentially dangerous situations and immediately respond to injuries on the field when they occur.  Of course, you should not expect the official to provide medical attention to an injured player, but he/she should have an emergency protocol to follow (like knowing who to call) for when injuries occur.

Make sure to do your part this summer by showing respect to officials, and thanking them for all the hard work they do so that kids can have a safe, fun, and meaningful sports experience.  Also make sure to be patient and understanding for when bad calls are made (as they will be), and try to remember how difficult a job it is to be perfect with judgement calls (like calling balls and strikes in baseball and softball).  Sports officials don’t usually make much money for their hard work, and they are often under-appreciated — making it even that much more important to tell them “thanks” for all they do!

www.drstankovich.com

Check out Advanced Human Performance Systems for high-performance products and information designed for student athletes, parents, and coaches!

In today’s youth and interscholastic sports world, the sport specialist (an athlete who plays a single sport rather than sampling different sports throughout the year) has become an increasingly more common sighting (AHPS).  In some cases the child makes this decision, while other times parents, coaches, and other influential people encourage the student athlete to specialize rather than sample different sports.  The main reason for sport specialization, according to most sport psychologists and physicians, is to devote more time and energy toward a specific sport with the idea that more training = better athletic skill acquisition for that specific sport.

While it is likely true that most kids who specialize in a sport will get better at that sport (and at a faster rate), it’s also true that the chances for youth sport burnout increase dramatically as well.  In addition to sports burnout, kids who specialize (and train year-round) might also be running a significantly higher risk for physical injury as a recent Yahoo story revealed:

Repetitive stress injuries are also on the rise. The days of lettering in several different varsity sports are gone; instead, students are encouraged to focus on a single sport starting at a very young age — as early as kindergarten, in some places — and stick with it throughout high school and college. Sometimes, they’re urged to do so by coaches hoping to hone a particular skill. Other times, they’re pushed by parents or driven to land a rare college scholarship. But the intense training in one sport over a long period of time can take a toll, even on young and fit bodies.

“Probably the thing that we’re seeing the most right now is any type of overuse injury, from stress fractures to low-level muscle injuries,” Charlie Thompson, chair of the NATA College/University Athletic Trainers’ Committee and the head athletic trainer at Princeton University, told Yahoo! Shine. “Off-season programs start too soon after the end of a long season, and we’re not allowing recovery to happen.”

So what does this all mean for the typical American sports parent?  The short answer may be that “more doesn’t always = better,” especially if ongoing injuries prevent a young athlete from actually benefiting from specializing in one sport.  It appears as though more sports medicine physicians, trainers, and other helping professionals are becoming aware of the health concerns surrounding sport specialization, and if you are a sports parent today, maybe you should pay attention to this news, too.  As with any important decision, pros and cons should be examined within your family before deciding whether to specialize or sample youth sports.

www.drstankovich.com

Sport Success 360 is designed to help you with the contemporary issues in youth and interscholastic sports – like sport specialization — check it out today!

While watching Barry Melrose talk about the Penguins – Flyers NHL playoff match-up yesterday, he used the expression “will beats skill” when describing Philadelphia’s surprising 3-0 playoff lead over Pittsburgh.  While the Penguins were the heavy favorite going into the series, it is the Flyers — playing with more heart and intensity — who are about to advance to the next round of the NHL playoffs.

Breaking down the Melrose expression, he is really talking about mental toughness and the degree in which players display confidence, focus, motivation, intensity, and the ability to develop the resiliency needed to “play up” and beat an opponent that seems to be the better team (Pittsburgh).  In sports, it is often “who wants it more” that ends up beating otherwise better talented athletes and teams.

While most coaches and athletes agree that “will beats skill” when it comes to the outcome of many sporting events, it’s still a tough sell — especially when trying to convince kids that they can beat state-caliber teams and athletes.  In these instances, kids are so intimidated that they either forget (or don’t believe) that their mental toughness can make a huge difference in the outcome of a game, and often the result of the game is fairly predictable (the more skilled athlete/team wins).

Great coaches and parents are able to connect with kids and “sell” the message that will beats skill, and when this occurs the athlete begins to “play to win” as opposed to “playing to avoid losing.”  When kids buy-in to this approach, they begin to pay more attention to positive cues (the good block, tackle, or pitch they just made), while overlooking or dismissing negative cues (their missed tackle, strike out, etc.).  What we pay attention to in life in large part dictates what we will do next — play harder or give up.

Will, motivation, perseverance, and resiliency are all things we can develop, and are independent traits from our physical abilities.  Do your part to “sell” this message to a young person today!

www.drstankovich.com

Go to Advanced Human Performance Systems to check out our product line to help with developing WILL!

Sport Success 360 is the premier sport education system on the market today, designed to provide coaches, parents, and student athletes with key information pertaining to today’s commonly experienced problems, issues, and trends in youth and interscholastic sports.  Whether its youth sport burnout, dealing with irate parents, playing time, travel leagues, or the decision around sport specialization vs. sampling, Sport Success 360 delivers professional advice designed to help kids use sports as a vehicle for life success.  Improve the sports safety at your league or school by delivering easy-to-understand tips and advice specific to coaches, student athletes, and parents – providing the “360″ advantage!

Benefits of Sport Success 360

• A 24/7 resource for coaches, student athletes, and parents
• Immediate and practical advice, as well as short videos to help with even deeper insights around today’s psychosocial issues in sports
• A built-in coach exam to test for proficiency
• FREE Sport Success 360 book and audio file downloads
• Finally, a product designed to help with the overall culture of your athletic department or youth sport organization!

Visit Sport Success 360 today and watch the short demo to learn more about individual purchases as well as school/league licensing.  Do your part to help the kids in your league or sport organization have a safe, fun, and meaningful athletic experience – check out Sport Success 360 today!

www.drstankovich.com

I have very exciting news to report – now, for the first time, Sport Success 360 is available to individual users including parents, coaches, and student athletes!  Previously only available to sports leagues, Sport Success 360 is now offered to anyone involved in youth sports wishing to learn more about how to make sports a fun, safe, and meaningful experience.

Benefits of Sport Success 360

• The most comprehensive sport education on the market today, offering professional tips and advice for parents, coaches, and student athletes
• A state-of-the-art interface that allows you to quickly learn about specific topics that are most important to you
• Unique learning system that provides perspectives to issues from multiple views, including coach, athlete, and parent angles (providing the 360 degree learning system)
• Videos to compliment each learning module
• Bonus Sport Success 360 pdf and Sport Success 360 audio program offered FREE with the program (a $25 value!)
• Built-in assessment that certifies users after they complete the Sport Success 360 quiz (great for getting everyone uniformly certified)
• The easiest way to quickly learn everything you need to know about youth sports, including sports burnout, communicating effectively with coaches, quitting, performance supplements, the mental aspects of injuries, hazing, travel leagues, sport specialization, plus much more!

Never be left out of the loop again when it comes to successfully handling the many challenges commonly seen in youth sports today.  Sport Success 360 is designed to help you navigate the sports landscape and prevent problems from occurring, while at the same time equip you with the knowledge needed for kids to maximize their athletic experience.

Easy, convenient, and affordable – that’s Sport Success 360!

while leagues and schools slowly implemnt training, you can stay ahead of the curve

Most athletes have heard of the term visualization, but did you know that visualizing success is just one aspect of imagery?  While it is important to “see” in your mind your future athletic success, you also have many additional senses you can use to make the imagery experience that much more real, including your sense of touch, smell, sounds, and even body motion (like how it feels to follow through on a swing when you hit a baseball).  Imagery is a vital skill when it comes to mental toughness, and sport psychologists regularly encourage athletes to develop imagery skills to help with confidence development (Sport Success 360).

Imagery helps athletes prepare for competition and is actually a very easy tool for you to develop and use.  First, there is no wrong way to use imagery – some athletes like to think about their athletic success the night before games, while other athletes prefer spending a few moments thinking about what they need to do that day while dressing in the locker room.  The truth is just about any way you can incorporate mental preparation will ultimately help your athletic performance.

The key with imagery is that by repeatedly “seeing” in your mind your future athletic success, you are actually strengthening your neural connections in your brain – leading to better muscle memory.  Why is this important you might ask?  The simple answer is that when you are competing the best mindset to be in is when your mind and body are in perfect synchrony – where you don’t have to “think” about what to do next, but instead simply react to the situation.  Keep in mind in most sports you do not have an unlimited amount of time to think through situations, making muscle memory a very important aspect of athletic success.

Below are some quick tips to help you begin using imagery as part of your pre-game preparation:

• Using imagery regularly will help with muscle memory, which will help you with those important in-game reactions needed for athletic success
• Try to make your imagery as real as possible by using all your senses.  For example, while you can “see” the field, can you “feel” the ball in your hands?  What about when you run on the field – can you feel the grass beneath your feet?  There’s also a type of imagery called kinesthetic imagery – this is when you can feel the movement in your body as you release the ball or follow through on a swing.  Some athletes can even “hear” the sounds of their sport, or smell what it like when they compete (like the smell of freshly cut grass).
• Make it real, vivid, and positive.  The more real the imagery experience the better, and when you can make it vivid and the outcomes positive that’s the best way to use imagery!  Since you control the imagery experience, you never want to see yourself failing or coming up short – instead, always see success!

www.drstankovich.com

Check out the growing line of Sport Performance Assessment apps, including the new FOOTBALL app set to be released in September!

As the end of summer youth sports nears, many families are nervously awaiting to learn whether their young athlete has been selected to be a member of his or her leagues all-star team.  At the same time, coaches across the country are faced with the dubious task of making critical, often subjective, appraisals about which kids should make the all-star team (AHPS). As with any selection process, errors, oversights, and omissions will occur – sometimes resulting in hard feelings between families and coaches.  The strife some families feel during the all-star selection process is often blamed on the “politics” of sports (Sport Success 360).

The “science” behind all-star selections

While the field of sport psychology has allowed us to learn many powerful skills to enhance athletic abilities, it has yet to yield a cook-book recipe for coaches when it comes to all-star decisions.  In other words, there is no science – only each coach’s own ability to evaluate talent while maintaining a level of integrity in the process.  What this means is that while there are always some statistics to examine, individual comparisons are never “apple-to-apple.”  The “X” factors that include mental toughness are rarely captured in a box score, yet coaches often use these factors when evaluating talent.

Many parents become upset and disenfranchised by the all-star selection process because they subjectively see their child as better than he or she really is — and/or they don’t see the talents of another athlete who was chosen over their son or daughter.  Additionally, while its not the norm for coaches to purposely pick only the kids they personally like (politics), this does occasionally occur (though not nearly to the level upset parents think).

The reality

Selecting all-stars can be a brutal task for coaches and league operators involved in youth sports, as it is inevitable that some deserving kids will be left off teams while other seemingly less talented kids will end up making all-star teams.  Similarly, many parents struggle accepting the news that their child has been left off a sports all-star team, and in some situations feel as though their child was “done wrong” in the process.  Since this disconnect happens so regularly, I have provided a few quick tips for both coaches and parents so that the all-star selection process goes smoothly and with fewer problems around how the kids were selected:

What coaches can do

• Try to use as much objective data as possible.  Statistics like goals scored, batting average, fielding percentage, and stolen bases are examples of data you can use to not only help in the selection process, but also to offer up when people question your decisions.
• Take time to critically evaluate the kids.  Of course, some all-star selections will be quite easy, but after the first couple of kids it usually gets a lot tougher to discern the small differences between kids.  When you consider the heartfelt responses that usually follow all-star team selections, it certainly warrants that you take the process serious and do your homework when making decisions.
• Vote on players.  Leaving the decisions up to just one coach is never a good thing, so be sure to have multiple sources available to offer opinions.
• Be respectful when announcing the team.  Keep in mind that as soon as the team is announced there will be some families who feel as though their child was treated unfairly, and may even let you know about it.  Be sure to prepare for this and try to be understanding if you get approached by a distraught parent, keeping in mind their level of hurt seeing their child left off the team.

What parents can do

• Understand just how difficult all-star selections are for coaches!  At every level of sport competition we see criticism around what players make the team and what players don’t.  Keep in mind all the unseen variables coaches often take into account (i.e. hustle, team needs, particular position needs, etc.), and try not to immediately use the excuse that “politics” were to blame.
• Talk to your child (if he or she didn’t make the team) about stress, failure, and adversity – and how they can be used for motivation and future success.  Many kids come back the following year and make the all-star team because of the motivation they developed after missing the team a year earlier.
• If you feel it’s important to learn more about why your child didn’t make the team, be sure to remain respectful and considerate toward the coach.  It’s always better to ask about what areas your child can improve in for the future rather than argue why your child should have made the team over another kid who was selected.

Help your child succeed on and off the field – check out our ever-expanding line of peak performance products for student athletes, coaches, and parents!

www.drstankovich.com