Dr. G's blog

I recently got a disturbing email from a father of a 10 year old lacrosse player. The boy had been playing the game for almost 5 years and absolutely loved it. Lately however, his happiness on the field had been replaced by sadness, frustration and an ever dimishing self-confidence.

I overheard a conversation the other day that, unfortunately, I've heard far too many times. The story always seems to be the same. It's a weekend golf, basketball or baseball tournament, a swim meet or some other competition that the parents have to invest a lot of their time, money and energy into.

The following interview was recently conducted between Dr. G and Jared Zwerling, writer for Sports Illustrated For Kids on his website, SPORTZ UNDERCOVER:

Psyching Out The Pressure

One of the more common and frustrating problems for athletes and their coaches is to consistently perform better in practice than competitions. What causes this and what can be done to turn it around?

Perfectionism: The need to be perfect /a strong intolerance for anything short of perfection is not always the athlete's friend as it appears to be.

The key ingredient that separates champions from everyone else is not talent or ability. It's not simply work ethic because a lot of athletes are willing to work hard. It's not better coaching or training opportunities. The crucial difference that makes a difference in determining how successful you'll be in both sports and life has to do with one word: FAILURE.

A U-13 soccer game had to be suddenly stopped because two mothers of players on each opposing team began physically fighting and rolling around in the mud, kicking, screaming and slugging each other. What earth shattering, critically important issue could have led them to resort to fighting?

I had a conversation with a coach over the weekend who told me a wonderful story about what makes coaches good teachers. He was working with one particular kid in the pool who just didn't seem to be getting the technique changes that this coach wanted her to make in her strokes. No matter what he said to her, or how he said it, nothing seemed to click.