football

Nutrition · Players

7 Vital Soccer Nutrition Tips For Players – By Pablo Toledo

Pablo Toledo is the Director of Rush Soccer’s Coach & Player Development Department.

HEY ROCKY, YOU CAN CUT OUT THOSE SIX RAW EGGS EVERY MORNING IF YOU DO THE RIGHT THING.

Train — EAT — Rest.

That’s the foundational triangle of sports performance, and the best athletes in the world know it very well.

You can watch Rocky I, II, III, IV, V, VI and its spin offs 16 million times and love that eternal training and think that you have the eye of the tiger, so training more and more makes your preparation better and better, but it doesn’t. If you want to perform, you need to learn what, when and how much you should rest and EAT.

If you’re the type of person who thinks that nutrition is just an equation-based matter “you just need to burn more calories than you consume” please get out of this article. If it was that simple we wouldn’t have these nutritionists studying for years and years at school.

Now, this is obviously a very broad subject so I’m just going to focus on giving some basic insights and tips to help you and your teams perform better at playing soccer. Out of Train — Eat — Rest, we will only pay attention to the EAT.

Soccer Nutrition Tips

In simple words, I want you to imagine that your body is like a hybrid car that can be fueled in three different ways: by ATP-PC (Phosphocreatine), carbs and fat. Now, using a different analogy, I also want you to think of a shelf in your kitchen that’s slightly too high and too deep for your reach. In that shelf, your first jar (the closest to your hand and easily reached) is the ATP-PC, the second is the carbs jar that’s much bigger than the first and the third is a heavy, far, hard-to-reach, huge jar that has fat.

These three jars represent sources of energy for your body and you pick stuff from all of them at the same time, but clearly the first jar is easier to reach than the second and the second than the third. When we talk about this, for your body, we are talking about the immediate availability of energy. ATP-PC is the fastest, carbs is the second and fat is the third.

Why is this important? Because if you get up off your chair right now and sprint five yards to the kitchen or the bathroom, your body needs quick energy to fuel such request. That fuel will comes from ATP-PC, as the effort required is not enormous and we need immediate energy, so why pick the third jar when the first is enough and easier to reach, right? That’s the logic. The problem is that if you had to run four miles to the bathroom, that little ATP-PC jar would not have enough cookies to fuel that challenge, so you’ll need to use energy from the other two jars, that are not so immediately available.

That’s how your body works, and you are obviously wondering how all of this relates to playing soccer. Fair question, man.

The answer relies on pasta.

Why is it that soccer players eat pasta before games? Because pasta, among other foods, has a high content of carbs and this type of carbs is easily digested. Then, by eating pasta, what players intend to do is overload their second jar. Carbs are extremely important for soccer players because their availability of energy is high and they provide enough energy to support the physical demands that the game implies. Even if they tried to overload the first little ATP-PC jar, it wouldn’t ever be enough to support such demands, and the third jar has lots of energy, but is harder to reach, so its energy is not as immediate as the one coming from carbs.

That’s why soccer players eat pasta up to about three hours before the match.

Now that we understand these very basics, let me give you a couple of tips that will help you perform on the field.

The first tip you want to consider is creating an overload of your carbs jar before the match, and to that you can’t eat two pounds of pasta the same day, so you need to start working on that overload at least 36 hours before the competition. Eat carbs and drink water.
If you enjoy a cup of coffee or mate, why not drink a quick cup half an hour before the competition? Coffee and mate are stimulants, so it will help you get in mood and feel energetic.
If you weigh yourself before and after the game you’ll see you’ve lost a lot of weight. That’s because you’ve burnt a lot of calories, but mostly because you’ve lost a lot of water, so you need to rehydrate right away. When you do so, drink water, eat something with carbs and add some protein to it. Water and carbs will help you recover, and protein will work on the muscular adaptations to the efforts made, so that next time it becomes easier to do.
If you enjoy eating something bad every once in a while, always eat it during the morning or right after your training/competition (within 45 minutes of completion). Your body will absorb it right away.
If you want to lose weight, reduce your carbs on the days you are not training so that you force your body to reach the third jar of the shelf and use fat to provide energy. Forget about this when you’re close to game day; that’s time to perform.
Don’t try new foods on game day. People are strange … and different, so you don’t know if what’s great for Johnny is good for you as well. No time for experiments on game days.
Nuts have a lot of calories, true, but no studies relate a moderate daily consumption of nuts with gaining weight, and they are also great providers of stable, day-long energy, so if you enjoy them it would be wise to eat a handful every morning.

There are many more tips and explanations we can give about sports nutrition, but it would be never-ending. What I can tell you is that if you follow these seven soccer nutrition tips, you’ll feel it on game day.

Good luck!

March 5, 2021

Podcasts

Lesle Gallimore From The Girls Academy: Strategies, Processes And Communication To Be Elite

NCAA and University of Washington Legend joined Megan McCormick, Rush Soccer’s Coach Education Consultant, to discuss ways to Manage The Performance Environment, on a MUST LISTEN episode of The Rush Podcast Network (Click HERE to Listen).

“We are fortunate to share a conversation with an absolute legend in the game, a woman who needs very little introduction“, stated Megan McCormick at the beginning of her interview. Lesle Gallimore‘s background and experience definitely validate the statement, as she is one of the most respected and experienced soccer coaches in the USA, a Washington Youth Soccer Hall of Famer, and NSCAA National Coach of the Year (2000), among others, and we had the privilege to connect with her during a brand-new episode of The Rush Podcast Network.

Find below some of our takeaways from the conversation:

“If you are striving to be elite, there are so many different people and things that go into your performance environment, that it can get overwhelming. Strategies and processes are key”, Lesle explained.

“Communication is everything. I don’t think there is such thing as overcommunicating”, she added, and went deeper to explain the importance of “open, honest, and frequent communication with everyone who might influence the environment”.

Lesle’s emphasis in the importance of communication and recognition of stakeholders was a common denominator along the conversation. As a matter of fact, these were brought up as well when Megan inquired on what she considers key steps to successfully manage any performance environment, to what she listed:

Prioritizing areas of opportunity.
Having a plan to influence your environment.
First thing to think about is the people.

And also when commenting on Common characteristics of the best performance environments:

Focusing on individual people’s strengths.
Clear and consistent focus on priorities.
Communication.
Positive, solution-oriented mentality.

Another area that was frequently highlighted by Lesle was to focus on individuals, escaping from one-size-fits-all approaches. This was evident not only on the above but also when weighting on the age old debate of focusing on Development vs. Winning. Here, our guest speaker spoke about achieving results by focusing on the plan for each individual player above everything else.

It wasn’t an exception when she shared her personal philosophy to manage the Girls Academy League: “My guiding light is the players. So wherever there is a difficult decision to make, making sure I’m not just listening to the loudest voice in the room… and just trying to do what’s best for the ‘team’ (players), using players and their experiences as my guiding light when I make decisions”.

When asked what advice she would offer to her younger self: “There is no substitute for experience. You have to go through it. You have to be willing to suck. You have to be willing to fail. You have to go through it”.

Thank you for a spectacular Podcast, Lesle and Megan!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN THE FULL PODCAST!

March 2, 2021

Coaching

February Ed: Lessons Learned On Coaching The Bantam Division

This article is based on February’s Educational Campaign On Coaching The Bantam Division (U9-U10).

Along the month of February we focused on learning about the Bantam Division (U9-U10 age groups). Find below a list of the events covered and some of the takeaways we extracted from interviewing experts and analyzing some important articles (among others).

We started the month analyzing the Rush Way Guide for the Bantam Division, a comprehensive document with age group specific recommendations and applications of the Rush Way.
Our second event found us talking to Sam Snow & Vince Ganzberg, who shared some of their cornerstone concepts to coach this age group, through an enriching Webinar hosted by Chris P.
Megan McCormick stepped in right after, sharing an important piece about why a ‘Play-Practice-Play’ Method is preferred when working with the Bantam Division.
Building off of this base, Chris P. shared a U9-U10 session on The Rush Coaching Manual to improve the players ability to score using a Play-Practice-Play design.
Lastly, Pablo Toledo hosted a 2 hours long open-mic meeting with fellow Argentinian and world renowned youth coach Rubén Rossi on Building a U9-U10 Curriculum.

These were some of the main takeaways:

1) The Game Is The Teacher: It sounds like a cliché. We all say it, yet not everybody really understands what it means. The game is the teacher because technique and skill are two different concepts, in which the second relates to the effective application of the first in a game setting. It is only in the complexity of the game in which the skill can be developed. This is what Ruben Rossi wanted to highlight as well when saying: “Kids train more and more and play less, so there are fewer and fewer creative players. The fundamentals of individual technique are learned from the game, they cannot be trained out of it. Once the child has learned to play, it can be helped from the conceptual point of view”.

2) Why we start with Play: Starting a session with play is another important tool in the toolbox of coaches working with any age group. Along with so many other benefits, it can help us increase the value of coaching. In more traditional “progressive methods” the session starts simple and gradually becomes more complex. If players are finding mostly success as a task or activity starts, they have little reason to tune in and pay attention to coaching. Starting with the game allows coaches to pose questions and point out challenges, allowing players freedom to explore and experience failure. This can make them more likely to pay close attention and work to implement coaching points that could turn their failure into success.

3) Why a Game Based Approach: One of the main reasons why we encourage games is because they add a decision making element. It also gives (if well applied) contextual fit to check for understanding. We can modify the training session based on rules, equipment, space and time to create the desired environment.

4) Remember That Kids Get Tired Of Working, They Never Get Tired Of Playing: The title says it all, so we’ll only leave a passage from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer’s Adventures – “Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign“.

5) Have a clear “picture” of learning: Before executing a session, it’s important that coaches take the time to ask themselves a few simple questions highlighted by Vince Ganzberg:

– What do I want learning to LOOK like?
– What do I want learning to SOUND like?
– What words/actions am I looking for from players?

Knowing what we are looking for before stepping onto the field helps ensure that feedback and coaching is focused and specific. It also allows us to shift our focus away from “what am I teaching” to a much more important question: what are they learning?

6) Know who is in front of you: At every age and stage we must know who is in front of us, so we can understand the characteristics and what to expect from them. We must understand the human development aspects and what children at 8,9, 10 can comprehend. Vince spoke about ‘letting players pack their own bags’ and owning the experience. For this age group we must observe and have the players show us what they know. Using of “show me” or “let me show you” are always simple and effective ways of checking for understanding. Revisiting the Rush Way Guide for the Bantam Division for more details and characteristics of this age group is always a good idea, especially if you haven’t been coaching this age group for some time.

Stay tuned, coach.

February 26, 2021

Goalkeeping · Players

Can you stop a goal with your mind? – By Sean Connors

Sean Connors is Rush Soccer’s Global Goalkeeping Director.

The Goalkeepers job at its core is very simple… Don’t Let the Other Team Score! The entire scope of the task is a bit more complex, and now the expectations for the modern goalkeeper include a greater focus on distribution than ever before. It is extremely important when working with youth players that their responsibilities and jobs on the field are defined and communicated so that expectations are as clear as possible. This will allow players to focus on areas they need to develop further and set goals/targets that they know are important to their success directly related to the position.

As we work to develop Rush Goalkeepers focus on the following job description!

Main Purpose of the Position: Keep the ball out of the net! Keep possession for your team. Organize and lead. First line of offense and last line of defense.
Goalkeeper Priorities when team has the ball (In Possession): Play out from the back; short, midrange, and long. Support play; switch the point of attack.
Goalkeeper Responsibilities when team doesn’t have the ball (Out of Possession): Make Saves! Own the Box. Command space behind backline. The GK must communicate and organize the entire team while paying special attention to the backline and weak side of the field. The better position the GK can put their teammates in, the easier the job will be to keep the ball out! Have presence and be in control.
Mindset Needed to be Successful: The Goalkeeper must learn from every mistake, but move on from it quickly. They must have the ultimate self confidence. If a mistake happens and a goal results, they need to be confident, learn from the goal, and then work to move forward. Work to establish the next save mentality! Naturally the team will look to the GK for leadership. The Goalkeeper must embrace this role and follow servant leadership. They need to be there to bail the team out when mistakes are made higher up the field. Goalkeepers need to have presence in the goal and make a positive impact for their team by being steadfast.

The last component, Mindset Need to be Successful, might be the single most important factor in determining the long term success of a GK. Unfortunately this area is often associated with a players natural ability, or something they either naturally posses or don’t. Have you ever had a Goalkeeper make a mistake and then not get past it? One mistake becomes two, then three, then you have lost the game in a big way. It can even happen at the highest level with top Goalkeepers. Check out this clip to see Liverpool’s Allison have a mental let down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kywc0C4dXTI&ab_channel=hoangCuongBL

Just like teaching a GK how to dive, the Goalkeeper Coach must work to improve their GKs mindset if they are truly going to develop the complete Goalkeeper. Keep in mind, however, that players, parents, and coaches need to be patient with this process because making changes to well established ways of thinking will not happen overnight! If players are aware of what they need to change, and work on it everyday, they’ll see results.

The Goalkeeper Coach is responsible for developing the training environment and depending on the type of environment, it will either be a positive or negative environment to develop the Goalkeepers mentality. If you plant a seed and cover it with dirt, add a bit of water, and keep it in the sun you will see different results verses putting a seed in a pot covering it with dirt, and keeping it in a closet. What is your training environment? Are Goalkeepers supportive and celebratory of each others saves or do they laugh at mistakes? Remember that as the Coach you set the tone and example for everyone else in the group, but you also have the ability to modify and address others actions as they happen to reroute there actions to better fit your expectations/group environment.

This quick video from National Geographic Brain Games shows a simple experiment when a small group of people either cheer/support or boo/negativity toward a person shooting free throws. The results are amazing! As you watch be sure to look at the shooters face as they go through the process because this paints a clear picture of the environment all Goalkeepers would thrive in at training.

At your next goalkeeping session pay attention to your players mentality. Are they positive or negative with themselves? How is the environment? Could it be more productive and conducive to developing the metal mindset needed to be successful? Spend time and be attentive to working with your players to develop not just their physical and technical abilities, but their mental abilities as well!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Self Talk – Hailey Hultberg – TEDxYouth @ Park City.

7 Psychology Tricks to Build Unstoppable Confidence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbX958xwCA&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=TopThink

The Growth Mindset – Carol Dweck – Talks at Google.

February 23, 2021

Players

Building Mental Toughness To Take Your Game To The Next Level: Meet Rush WI West’s Mallory Meighan!

It’s been fantastic to see the dedication that our Rush players have to not only become BETTER, FITTER and SMARTER but also with the launch of the new TOUGHER Train @ Home Track, it’s obvious that they are ready to take their game to the next level by building mental toughness and increasing overall performance.

Among the many who have set big goals and taken the challenge to step up their habits to reach them, Coach Michelle Weimer chose Mallory Meighan from Rush WI West U14G as the very first featured player for the new TOUGHER Track.

“Mallory not only set some great goals but she has already started implementing new practices, including mental cues, to help her excel to the next level”
Coach Michelle Weimer.

Here’s what Mallory had to say about the new TOUGHER Training Track and how it’s already helping her think and behave differently.

What do you like the most about the new Tougher Training Track?

“I have watched a lot of really good players that make a mistake during a game and you can tell that they just become more and more frustrated and continue to make mistakes. Training usually focuses on physical skills but if you don’t learn to take control of your mental game even the best players won’t perform well. The mental part of the game is something that we don’t often talk about or work on improving in practice but it’s a big part of the game”.

As someone who is working to become a high performance athlete, how do you think building your mental toughness will benefit you?

“Nobody is perfect. We are all going to have times where things just don’t go the way we want them to. I hope building mental toughness will help me turn these situations into learning moments and continue to improve. It’s easy to become frustrated and let emotions negatively impact your game. I want to learn to quickly recover from mistakes and put my focus back on making a positive impact”.

How has what you’ve learned about mastering your mindset, managing your emotions and maintaining your behaviors affected your performance on the field already?

“I haven’t had much opportunity to use the training from last week yet. We are hoping to start our spring outdoor season next week. I have been able to think of times when I have lost my focus in the past and can see where some of the things discussed in your session could have helped”.

What high performance habit have you implemented so far that you feel is helping you the most?

“I like the roadmap idea. I know where I want to go or what I would like to do, but if I don’t write it down and have to look at it I don’t work as hard to do it. Seeing it on paper makes me want to work harder so I can mark it off”.

What is your favorite way to remember your mental cues and keep you taking action to be your best?

“I think using notes will be good. Being able to see it will keep reminding me of what is important. I get busy and think about other things so a note will make me stop and remember what I should focus on”.

We can’t wait to see the fast development and growth of Mallory and the enormous amount of great players that keep working hard at home.

Keep going Mallory and all!

February 18, 2021

Coaching

Starting With ‘Play’ – By Megan McCormick

Megan is Rush Soccer’s Coach Education Consultant & Lead on The Rush Female Coaches Alliance.

The single most common question I get working with young players:

“Coach, when are we going to play?”

Why not answer the question before they even have a chance to ask it? Not only will it save the explanation that everything we do at training is actually “playing”, there are also plenty of significant learning and developmental benefits to starting with play (the game). To name a few obvious ones:

Players are excited to arrive to training.
No need to wait for stragglers. Players are immediately engaged and can burn off excited energy.
Coaches can observe to tailor and adjust the session’s coaching points to player needs.
“Free” play increases opportunities for decision making and creativity similar to street soccer or pickup.

There are also some, in my opinion, more deeply compelling reasons to start a session with some form of play. (Be it 2v2, 4v4, or in this case full 7v7.) I want to share a few that helped shift my firm commitment to progressive sessions into a borderline evangelical belief in starting with the “game”.

Finishing with “success”

Performance and execution is often best at the beginning of a traditional “progressive” session. As activities become more complex, we expect to see more struggle and failure. This can leave young players feeling frustrated as success decreases through the session. Utilizing a “play practice play” or “whole part whole” structure can allow players to experience increased success at the end of a session compared to the initial play phase. The result for young players can be an increased sense of accomplishment and keen awareness of the impact of effective coaching. Players walk to the parking lot feeling like they improved and motivated to return to the training environment.

Increasing the value of coaching

What we know from education research is that people are more likely to tune in and retain information that is immediately useful for them. A quick example:

In February 2020, I knew NOTHING about the importance of incident rates and average test positivity when tracking a virus… let alone how a community achieves herd immunity. The information has always been there, and yet, I found very little reason in the past to give it more than a passing glance. And here I am, a year later, writing COVID-19 protocols for a soccer club.

Players behave the same way. If they are finding mostly success as a task or activity starts simple, they have little reason to tune in and pay attention to coaching. Starting with the game allows coaches to pose questions and point out challenges, allowing players freedom to explore and experience failure. This can make them more likely to pay close attention and work to implement coaching points that could turn their failure into success.

Replicating the structure (chaos) of the game

The most chaotic and complex minutes in soccer games often occur when? The beginning. In my experience, this is especially true with young players as they settle into their positions, navigate relationships with teammates, and take stock of the opponent. A progressive session structure moves from simple to complex and systematically introduces challenge and complexity (i.e. direction, an opponent, etc.). However, we know intuitively this is not how players will experience the game on Saturday. Introducing a scrimmage or play at the beginning of a session can support a player’s ability to jump straight into the chaos and build the habit of working to immediately solve problems. The player’s mental and physical experience throughout the week will more closely mirror what they are likely to experience during the weekend.

In conclusion, there is certainly no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to developing young people. Increasing the number of tools at our disposal as coaches increases the likelihood we will be able to meet the needs of the players in front of us. Session structure is one of those tools, so regardless of your comfort with play-practice-play, I challenge you to take it for a spin and look for signs of the benefits listed above.

February 9, 2021

Coaching

Lessons Learned On Leadership: Know your Why, and why the One Size Fits All… Fits Nobody

This article is based on January’s Educational Campaign On Leadership.

Leading as a soccer coach is a huge responsibility and not an easy task. As such, you are an incredibly influential figure to the youth that surrounds you. That’s why we take the study of leadership seriously, and we dedicated the month of January to humbly meet with top professionals of our industry (and others) and some of the best leaders we know to dig deeper into what it means to be a good leader and how we can do it more effectively in our environments.

These are some of our takeaways:

– You Need A Holistic Approach: International Swimming Hall Of Fame member Jonty Skinner focused on this aspect during a fantastic webinar with our Developmental Director, Chris P. Jonty highlighted the importance of coaching the person as a whole, beyond the specifics of the sport, beyond the “X’s and O’s”. In his words, if coaches gave the holistic side the same importance as the other aspects of coaching, players would inevitably get better.

“If you can improve the holistic side of your athletes on the field, they are going to perform better on the tactical and technical level as well” – Jonty Skinner.

– Know Your ‘Why’: This was a common theme across all events and publications shared. To lead, you need to deeply know yourself first. Know your why, your vision, your strategy, your core values. Develop your team culture based on the values that are common ground between you and your players. It needs to be authentic to who you are, or your players will tell sooner than you would expect, trust me.

– The One Size Fits All… Fits Nobody: Rita Pierson’s remarks this aspect in her Ted Talk: Besides leading a team -whether is a sports team or not-, connecting at an individual level is key. Jürgen Klopp seconded this concept framing it in a soccer specific context: “I don’t give all the information at the same time and to everybody”. The core of these statements relies on the fact that great leaders know that people are not the same, so they look for discovering each person, what it is that gets the best out of them. We see way too often coaches leading teams with many rules and demands. Be careful with that, because what is fair for one might not be fair for another. The one size fits all tends to fit nobody.

– Be Selfless And Lead To Have A Legacy: Tim Schulz, Rush Soccer’s President, repeated this on several occasions during the webinar that had him as guest speaker.

“I don’t want people to follow me and I wouldn’t want to follow someone, because when he’s gone or quits there’s nothing left. Follow the mission, follow the vision, and work and lead for it, selflessly, for something that is bigger than yourself. When you do so, people follow”

This message also came across when we presented James Kerr’ All Blacks based book Legacy, in which the author describes this as the core of their incredibly successful culture:

Empower others to be exceptional, to ensure it won’t stop with you.

Or, as expressed in other words of the book,

‘Be a good ancestor, planting trees you might never see’.

This selfless approach seems to be a virtue of great leaders, offering themselves as custodians of the future.

– Ingrain a Behavior Without Burning Your Players Out: This was one of our favorite takeaways from interviewing Daryl Brazeau, Iowa Rush’s Girls DOC, for The Rush Podcast Network. Daryl, who specializes in Leadership studies, highlighted that to develop a certain behavior in your team (using competitiveness as an example), you need to work on it as a process, demanding and pushing it at times but also letting it break down in other moments. Push, but don’t push harder than the player can take. Think of it as periodization or as Daryl exemplified with New Year’s resolutions:

“The problem about these resolutions is that people make commitments that are unsustainable. You hear people say ‘I want to get in shape’, so they start going to the gym 3 hours a day, but after a month they’re burnt out and give up. The same happens, at times, with the coaches approach to ingrain a team behavior”.

– Have A Growth Mindset: Many of our guest speakers focused on this aspect. This one is fundamental to me as well, especially because I’ve personally experienced the impact of changing my mindset from ‘this has to be perfect’ to ‘I’ll try to make it perfect, but it might not happen as such in my first try, and that’s ok because I’ll keep working on its improvement every day”. You have to be willing to fail and keep going. You can’t only play matches that you know you’ll win. There’s no progress there. The same happens with leadership. Our guest speakers were open about sharing their many failures, and we could always perceive, as a common thread in them, their attitude of ‘just learn from it and keep going’.

– Be Humble: This human quality seems to be the starting point of all other Leadership characteristics. Leaders know they don’t know it all. Leaders know they need others to perform, and they’re open to listening to them. Humility and Advice for good Leadership, three of our core values.

February 1, 2021

Coaching · Podcasts

Leadership with Daryl Brazeau: “You can ingrain a behavior in your team’s culture without burning the players out”

In a brand new episode on The Rush Podcast Network, Pablo Toledo, Rush Soccer’s Sporting Project & Coach Development Director connects with Daryl Brazeau, Iowa Rush’s Senior Girls Director and a specialist in Leadership studies, to chat about leadership concepts, indicators, and best practices from an inter-disciplinary standpoint, as well as discussing fundamentals to have your team adopt desirable values and behaviors without burning the players out. Must listen.

Below, some of the many concepts that Daryl shared with us:

Leading a Player: “Three fundamental concepts that I follow to lead the player are to see in them more than they even see in themselves, to guide them in the discovery of their own answers, and to create an open dialogue environment”.

“When I refer to open dialogue, I mean it beyond the trust that is needed to lead. For example, when it comes to evaluations, I’m against the yearly cycle, it’s too long and the reference of our feedback can be too far already and the player hardly remembers it. Instead, I think small and more frequent calibrations are more effective”, he added.

Daryl also share insights on how to shape a team’s culture without burning the players out:

“I’ve learned over the last couple of years that you can try to ingrain a behavior like competitiveness in your team culture, but you can’t do it all the time, in every session and activity, because it would burn the players out. You need to give them a space to break it out, but what you can do to favor it is highlight the behavior when you see it. ‘Catch them being good’, like Tony Di Cicco said. Rush is very good at that by promoting the 4:1 ratio of coaching positive to instructional”.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN THE FULL PODCAST!

January 26, 2021

Coaching

Leadership Lessons from a Dynasty

This article was written by Megan McCormick, Rush Soccer’s Coach Education Consultant, for January’s Educational Campaign on Leadership.

New Zealand’s national rugby team, the All Blacks, have long been touted as one of the most successful organizations in the history of team sports. The subject of James Kerr’s book Legacy and Amazon Prime’s “All or Nothing” series, the All Blacks offer lessons in leadership that translate well beyond the rugby pitch. Both the book and docuseries offer intimate and rare looks at the inner workings of a team that has historically been incredibly secretive.

In his book, Kerr outlines 15 leadership lessons that he calls “The First XV” which summarize the culture of guiding principles in the All Black’s organization. There are some that many might find obvious including “Embrace Expectations: Aim for the highest cloud” and “Sacrifice: Find something you would die for and give your life to it”. In the clip below, Kerr summarizes some of the key messages from his book.

Among so many great lessons and guiding principles, there is one that really stands out to me as I reflect on 2020 and look to all the potential of 2021. Lesson XIV: Be a Good Ancestor: Plant trees you’ll never see. At the core of the All Blacks culture is the importance and sanctity of the jersey. Kerr explains that each player “is called to ‘leave the jersey in a better place…To ‘leave the jersey in a better place’ means to work incrementally towards a better collective outcome. It means to be a custodian of the future, an architect of tomorrow, a steward of society. It means to live with respect, humility and excellence.”

Amazon Prime’s binge worthy “All or Nothing” series brings the leadership lessons in Legacy to life. In the clip, Rieko Ioane explains dreaming of someday wearing the jersey and the honor that accompanies the opportunity. You can sense the reverence in his voice and almost feel the weight of responsibility that comes with wearing the jersey.

Kerr summarizes it so eloquently, “You don’t have to be an All Black, you don’t have to be Māori, to understand that, as a leader, you can carry the ball forward and pass it on to the next generation.” What a great thing to contemplate as we put 2020 in the rearview: how will my leadership this year leave the players, club, and game in a better place for the next generation?

“The First XV: Lessons in Leadership”

From Legacy by James Kerr:

I Sweep the Sheds: Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done.

II Go for the Gap: When you’re on top of your game, change your game.

III Play with Purpose: Ask “Why?”.

IV Pass the Ball: Leaders create leaders.

V Create a Learning Environment: Leaders are teachers.

VI No Dickheads: Follow the spearhead.

VII Embrace Expectations: Aim for the highest cloud.

VIII Train to Win: Practise under pressure.

IX Keep a Blue Head: Control your attention.

X Know Thyself: Keep it real.

XI Sacrifice: Find something you would die for and give your life to it.

XII Invent a Language: Sing your world into existence.

XIII Ritualize the Actualize: Create a culture.

XIV Be a Good Ancestor: Plant trees you’ll never see.

XV Write Your Legacy: This is your time.

Excerpts From: James Kerr. “Legacy.” Apple Books.

January 13, 2021

Coaching

Lessons Learned On Managing The Performance Environment

As we said along the month of December, Managing The Performance Environment, as defined by the US Soccer Federation (Influence off-the-field circumstances and persons in order to create the best possible conditions for the development and performance of the players) is one of the most important tasks of coaching.

However, it is also a very broad topic and if there is one thing that we noticed along this educational campaign (or at least we are under that impression), is that it relates a lot to personal priorities in our coaching. As we connected with coaches and experts, we realized how the topic immediately related to something they considered very important in their coaching. That’s why one of the most fascinating aspects of this month’s campaign was the diversity of subjects. In some cases, it led to Parent Engagement, in others to the construction of Participant Centered Environments, in others to Team Culture, etc.

As we tried to compile the best of the month below, we realized how we couldn’t really list them as part of a one and only subject and under a unique title, but as multiple.

All of them, at the end, add up to creating and managing this performance environment.

Richard Shorter – Parent Engagement

Chris P., Rush Soccer’s Developmental Director, interviewed our guest Richard Shorter of Non-Perfect Dad & author of ‘Questions For The Car Ride Home’. Richard shared with us his journey and his insights on how we can unite all stakeholders in youth sports.

REWATCH THE WEBINAR!

Don’t ‘deal’ with parents, engage them and recognize what a vital role they have in developing a good learning environment and your team culture. We are all the team: players, coaches, parents, and club. Parents are fundamental. Be always mindful of how a chat in the ride home can empower or crumble all the work you’ve put in developing a culture and a mentality in your team.

2. Create an environment in which your players feel safe about getting out of their comfort zone: This was one of Richard’s most beautiful concepts. “If we are going to get genuine unity, we need to create a safe space where everybody feels like we have an identity, and in which we are willing to explore the new together.” – Richard Shorter.

John O’Sullivan: Your Environment Has To Connect With Your ‘Why’

In this opportunity, Chris P. and a panel of Rush Soccer Directors, Mentors, and Mentees were joined by John O’Sullivan -an internationally known speaker for coaches, parents and youth sports organizations- to analyze fragments of his book Every Moment Matters and discuss the topic of Managing the Performance Environment.

LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST!

Your Environment Has To Connect With Your ‘Why’: This was a golden moment along the month, and one to deeply self reflect about, as it relates to Authenticity. You can take ideas from many others, but at the end, you can’t ‘copy-paste’, and the environment you create and the team culture you promote has to be a reflection of it. You have to be you or your players will notice it, and to be you, you have to know yourself very well. “It’s important that you connect with your ‘Why?’ and that is a personal question you have to ask yourself. ‘What really drives you?’ There’s this story that Steve Kerr told me in which he met with Pete Carroll when he became Head Coach for the Golden State Warriors. He says Pete asked him ‘How are you going to coach your team?’ and he wasn’t referring to tactics or plans or sessions but later said ‘How is it going to feel to be a part of this team? You got the rest, so that’s what it’s all about’. It was about the environment. For me, creating these learning environments in which there’s competitiveness and joy and connection is at the very forefront of my coaching, and this has to be connected with your ‘why’, with your purpose. It has to be authentic” – John O’Sullivan

2. Focus on the Learning Rather Than The Performance: Juan Gonzalez Mendia briefly commented on a thought he has about the importance of games and results when he said “To me, Saturday’s match is part of the process, it matters but not necessarily more than other instances, it’s just another component”. What’s important about that sentence is that it invites us to look at the bigger picture. John O’ Sullivan highlighted this, remarking the difference between Learning and Performance: “You cannot recognize learning in the moment. This is performance. Learning is being able to retrieve the information and skill over time. Learning happens over time. Many parents (and coaches) confuse performance for learning.”

Juan Gonzalez Mendia – Developing Participant Centered Environments:

Coach & Player Development Director Pablo Toledo and our guest Juan González Mendia -from Sudamérica Coaching- discussed Performance and Athlete Centered Environments on an enriching new episode of our Webinar Series.

REWATCH THE WEBINAR!

Turn Steps into Stages: If you want to create a great learning environment, you need to make the player the protagonist of his/her own learning. The story Juan shared about turning the classroom step (for the teacher) into the classroom stage (for the student) is the perfect example. “Well, I would say that most of the environments in sports in the last 20 years have been related to education, and in the last 50 or 60 years (if not more) education has been related to somebody on a step, literally, telling the participants what they need to learn. If they were lucky, they would also hear ‘why’ they need to learn it. This is a real story that serves as an example. I started teaching at a school years ago, in 2008, and the classroom had a step, so in my first week I turned that step into a stage. I moved my desk to the back of the room, and we turned the step into a stage in which the student would perform, express himself/herself, or present”. This is also why Doc Rivers says, in my opinion, that he’s always started his teams saying “I’m Doc Rivers, I’m human, and I’m going to make mistakes. That said, every decision I’ll make will be for the best of the team”. My interpretation is that he’s leveling himself with the team, what he’s implicitly saying to me is “We might have different roles in this team but we are all the same, and we are all together in this endeavour”. It’s encouraging for the athlete to get involved, to speak up and actively engage the process.
FAIL = First Attempt In Learning. Mistakes, Growth Mindsets, and When Perfect Is A Bad Sign. The learning environment and culture we create should tell the participant “it’s ok to make mistakes, don’t fear them, they just mean we are learning”. This is important in the development of character and relates to what we presented in November as part of Carol Dweck’s “Study On Praise & Mindsets”. Quoting the author:

“The child or adult hears ‘oh, you think I’m brilliant and talented. That’s why you admire me – that’s why you value me. I better not do anything that will disprove this evaluation’. As a result, they enter a fixed mindset, they play it safe in the future and they limit the growth of their talent. Whereas focusing on the strategies they use, the way they are stretching themselves and taking on hard tasks, the intense practice they are doing, those are the kinds of things that say to a child or an older athlete: it’s about the process of growth. As a result, they don’t feel ‘oh, if I make a mistake you won’t think I’m talented” but instead they think ‘oh, if I don’t take on hard things and stick to them, I’m not going to grow”. That’s why, in line with these concepts, Juan highlighted how ‘Perfect’ might indicate something is not going so well. “If your practice looks perfect, and the players are not making mistakes, I would encourage you to reassess and possibly change that practice. If they are not making mistakes, I’m not sure they are developing”.

Glenn ‘Doc’ Rivers – Team Culture and Dealing with Conflict and Pressure.

Glenn ‘Doc’ Rivers is one of the most recognized coaches in the NBA. We took an interdisciplinary step towards watching and analyzing the remarkable Netflix documentary “The Playbook: A Coach’s Rule For Life“, in which this wonderful coach shares some of his coaching experiences and conflicts he faced both as head coach of the Boston Celtics and the L.A. Clippers.

WATCH THE TRAILER!

Teach your players to naturalize Pressure. Pressure is a Privilege: Pressure is present in all competitive environments. ‘Don’t run away from pressure, legacies, or expectations, run towards it’, says Doc Rivers. If there’s pressure and expectation, it’s because you’ve worked hard for it and you’ve put yourself in that position. Embrace it.

2. Use external conflicts and crises to unite and strengthen the team culture: Problems arise, whether we like it or not. How we deal with them is what makes a difference. Can we turn them into a uniting force on the team? Can we turn them into an emotional lace among team members? That’s the learning I take from Doc Rivers and the Donald Sterling situation. Instead of eroding the team culture, it brought the team closer than ever.

Doug Lemov – Building Culture

Megan McCormick, Rush Soccer’s Coach Education Consultant, covers the topic of Building Culture through this publication from world renowned Coach Educator Doug Lemov -CEO of Uncommon Schools and author of ‘Teach Like a Champion’, a recognized study in the U.S. field on teachers in urban areas that have obtained great results, analyzing their concrete working methods-, in which the author dives into some of the systems to connect teams and build strong mindsets.

READ THE ARTICLE!

Building Culture: ‘Want to run a successful organization (team)? Take everything you do and multiply it by culture’ – said Harvard Business School Professor Frances Frei. Recognize the importance of developing a positive environment and team culture, and mostly, remember that building a culture is not about that great speech but about what we do every day, it’s about the details: Culture is built in a thousand smaller moments when we’re not fully aware that we’re building it. The aggregate message of those moments is at least as influential as the moments when we are aware that we are building culture: talks before or after games or before the season when we discuss how as a team we want to interact and what our mindset should be. Those aren’t irrelevant. But culture really is the thousand unacknowledged half second interactions in which our response communicates mindset and relationship – Doug lemov.

2. Respond Rather Than React: Coaches make statements… in response to player errors in part to protect their own ego, suggests Stu Singer, a consultant who works with coaches to develop their mindfulness and self-discipline. “The statement lets everybody know: I taught him better. It’s about protecting the self instead of responding to the athlete”. That’s disruptive for team culture.

December 29, 2020