Posts Tagged ‘Character’
Greed is the name of the game….the pro game anyway
A friend of my dad’s once asked me “So you coach kids? Is there a lot of money in that? Sadly Pete there isn’t. Like a teacher I affect the learning, discipline, determination and character of young children. I give them lessons and opportunities to learn, perfect and perform skills. I help formulate the future…
Read MoreStretch-schmetch and warm up-schmarm up
I have long said that gymnasts waste a lot of time doing stretching before practice. Traditionally coaches have felt that stretching before practice is very important because it reduces the likelihood of injury during practice. That is wrong. First off, lets clarify two very different terms; stretching and warming up. Warming up is a very…
Read More7 from camp
So 2 weeks ago I was in Pennsylvania coaching at a really great gymnastics camp called Woodward. I had a chance to work alongside many experienced coaches that I had known through reputation and many young coaches coming up. I trained kids that I had never met, didn’t know their skills, their hang ups, their…
Read MoreLife is suffering, pain is optional
That’s a pretty big title. It’s actually an old Buddhist saying that has always resonated with me. It’s akin to when Lincoln said he believed that “most people are about as happy as they want to be.” The gist is the same. My mom, who I often quote because of her kitchen table wisdom, used…
Read MoreFitness for Americans: (part 1 of 3)
The shadowy world of the exercise industry is a dark and scary place. For a person seeking to raise their level of fitness, lose weight, get healthy or just feel better we have created this frightening and confusing landscape to scare them out of doing what they set out to do. We tell them of…
Read MoreIs he any less of an athlete?
Alex was a Formula 1 racer. Formula 1 cars are the fastest and most dangerous cars to race and often exceed 220 miles per hour (compared with Nascar’s average speed of 180 mph) and Alex was one of the best the sport has ever seen. In 2001 Alex Zanardi’s car was hit by another car as…
Read MoreWhy I am the proudest man in town
It was this last Sunday and I was struck speechless, a rare occasion for me. It was our team banquet and after dinner the girls had a few presentations to make. They honored each other with gag gifts, I was even given the best hair award (nice!). They honored their parents for their support and they honored our one…
Read MoreEliminate the excuses, I’ve tried them all, they’re wrong.
“I just don’t have the time” “I would but I get my workout at work” “Since I don’t have the time to do it every day, I might as well not even start” “That program was too intense”, “I get too sore” “Healthy? I’m healthy enough.” I’ve heard them all, in fact I’ve said them all at some…
Read MoreThe day I met Picasso, a true story.
This is a long post, but I realized that I never wrote about it before. I swear that it’s true, though the quotes may be fudged a bit. We were in San Jose California. Me, my co-coach Matt and a friend named Jim who, at the time, was going to open his own gym. We…
Read MoreDreaming is not a waste of time
I remember the cartoon we had on our refrigerator when I was a kid. It was of two archaeologists with pith helmets and all looking at a little nub sticking out of the ground in a desert scene. The one archaeologist walking away says over his shoulder to the other “yeah, it’s probably nuthin.” But in a cut away…
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