Summer grew up in a small town with zero to very little competition. Like many athletes in similar shoes, when she started playing college sports--for her, women's volleyball at a Division III school--she was struck with a cold, hard fact: she wasn’t the best anymore.

Going from...

Breathing.

Seems simple enough, right? Completely natural. We breathe without thinking about it, one of those involuntary functions of our bodies that keep us alive.

But, then my mentor, Dr. James Hollingsworth, told me it wasn’t just breathing. It’s deep breathing. And they’re...

In the summer of 2013, Coach James Bacca of West Liberty University Softball experienced a fracture… with his team, that is.

The softball players were emotionally and mentally separated from him. That split soon developed into a desire for physical separation: 11 of his players were...

Now that you've had a few days to create your focus lists and put those 80% efforts into practice, I want you to stay encouraged by knowing what you can expect by maintaining diligence in working toward your goals.

Applying focus in the way described in Focus for Coaches: Part 2 may seem...

In our previous article, Save Your Best for the Things that Matter Most, we talked briefly about the pressures of being a coach and how you might have to wrestle with yourself to find focused time away from work to spend with those important to you.

That touched on a complex truth, that…

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My college coaches (who happened to be married to each other) had one rule about work: don’t talk about it during dinner. For one hour of the day at least, rowing was off the table. The other 23 hours of the day were apparently fair game.

With all the stresses of coaching, it’s no...

Before mental training

Not long ago, the coaches of Niagara University's Women's Basketball team, including Head Coach Kendra Faustin and Assistant Coach Corinne Jones, felt their program had untapped potential.

In 2013, they knew they wanted to make a change in their team’s collective...

I once heard from an NFL coach that each player in the NFL has their "thing" they rely on.

‘Honestly, Lindsey,’ one of them confided, ‘you could come into our facility and I could tell everyone that you were my professional fart sniffer; you smell my farts to make sure my...

Joy isn’t elusive

The new school year is just around the corner and, with it, come a variety of stresses for students: events, schoolwork, and a tougher homework load. For some, even one of those words can incite a domino effect of anxieties. Throw them together and you’ve...

There are examples all around us. Two NFL coaches collapsing in a single weekend last fall. The Rutgers men’s coach ‘snapping’. Women’s basketball coaches being downed by health issues in recent years.

It’s enough to stress you out

While it’s easy to point to...