If you want to grow your health or fitness or improve your performance it’s helpful to think like a gardener more than a mechanic. We don’t really make ourselves healthier or stronger or turn ourselves into better runners. Instead we cultivate the conditions out of which that health or performance can emerge. The changes andContinue reading “Cultivating The Conditions For Growth”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
You Are Clearly Not Average
Average is a statistic not a person. There is no such thing as an average human being. In 1950 the U.S. Air Force measured 140 dimensions of over 4000 pilots to help improve the design of the cockpits of their airplanes. The idea was if you could determine the dimensions of the average pilot youContinue reading “You Are Clearly Not Average”
Lighting Your Fire
Who inspired you this week? What did they do? What challenge did they rise to? What qualities did they draw on to do it? What lesson did you take from their choices and actions? Now, do that two more times. Beginning to see a pattern here? The people who inspire us are often just lightingContinue reading “Lighting Your Fire”
Shifting The Pattern
What good coaches do is listen, patiently for those “simple, quiet opportunities”, as Wayne Muller called them, to shift the pattern, to help the people they serve explore and create the possibility of something better, something more in line with what they know can be.
The Holiness Of Limitations
A few years ago I had two high school hockey players come to me asking for a little help. They had both broken an arm during hockey games in the same week. Now they were out for 4-6 weeks while they healed and they wanted to know if I would help them stay fit andContinue reading “The Holiness Of Limitations”
Natural
“But are not exercise and the open air within the reach of us all?” ~ Walt Whitman The grass on the soccer field is much longer than normal. There are no lines, no cones or flags, just open green space. The players, two of the college athletes I train, check in with the appropriate tenContinue reading “Natural”
Move
“Nothing happens until something moves. When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe resonate with it. Everything is connected.” ~ Albert Einstein — Albert Einstein Before every training session I would ask my athletes to make an entry in their training journal. One of the questions was about mental energy. On a scale ofContinue reading “Move”
Improvise
“Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next.” ~ Bobby McFerrin I’ve had to improvise a lot lately. Moving stretch classes from the rec center to online. Going from seeing clients in the gym to coaching them in their basement on FaceTime. Some of it has worked. Some of it, notContinue reading “Improvise”
Glad I Did It
“Be deliberate, act with intention.” ~ Twyla Tharp I learned, the other day, that “glad I did it”, and “glad it’s done” aren’t the same thing. I began a session with a client like always, checking in. Part way through he said that some days it’s harder than others to get started, his mind startsContinue reading “Glad I Did It”
Showing Up
Research shows that sustainable progress, in everything from diet to fitness to creativity, isn’t about being consistently great; it’s about being great at being consistent. ~ Brad Stulberg Showing up can be a challenge when the places and routines we are used to are no longer available, when the world around us, even if it’sContinue reading “Showing Up”
