All posts tagged Wichita State

You’re a Ferrari Driving Only 35 MPH

by AdamRingler on October 11, 2011 in Blog, Coaching with No comments

It was a particularly gloomy day in Wichita, Kansas but that didn’t stop the hustling of our Wichita State athletes from flying through the weight room like a precision strike missile set upon it’s destination. I love days that this. The atmosphere in the weight room was perfect; one part fantastic momentum from a great weekend sweep; another part great senior leadership; and equal parts of both competitive & hungry freshman and sophomores eager to move up the depth charts. This makes for a great environment to train and an even better one to coach under.

This atmosphere is akin to having a freshly hand-washed 2011 Ferrari, turbo charged, and eager for top speed drive. The road conditions are perfect with freshly paved cement and a straight away stretch that begs for putting the pedal to the metal. What a great day for cutting loose and opening the speed up.

Stephanie was one of my more gifted athletes; she was one of the most talented athletes I’ve worked with. On the court, she was a complete show stopper; dominant, aggressive and eager to put the team first. I cannot reiterate the capabilities and talents Stephanie had. My job is to help her realize how dominant she really is.

Stephanie had only one downfall to her game; herself. The session was coming to a enthusiastic finish and I noticed Stephanie wasn’t herself throughout the lift. ”Steph!” I said questioning. “Let’s talk when you finish foam-rolling”. She nodded. Moments later, Stephanie came into my office with her workout card in hand and sat down in front of my desk.

As I commonly do, I motioned for her workout card and she slid it across my desk. I sat bewildered as I read through her latest lifting session. After drawing comparisons from her previous six weeks of lifts, I noticed that Stephanie didn’t attempt to progress in either weight or reps during this last lift.

“Stephanie, is there any confusion about what my expectations are?” I said sternly. She looked back at me and repeated “The team looks up to me during the sessions because I am their go-to on the court”. She added, “I don’t want to fail in front of them so I didn’t add weight to my lifts today. I don’t want them to see me struggle, or possibly worse, fail.”

I handed the workout card back to Stephanie and added to the conversation “Steph, you’re an amazing athlete capable of so much more; I wouldn’t tell you otherwise if I didn’t believe in these words with full conviction” I said. ”You are a top speed Ferrari but are deathly afraid to take it above 35 MPHs. Believe in yourself. Believe in your preparation” I added.

“You’re teammates are counting on you to push yourself to your full potential and any failure to do so hurts the team” I said. ”I know you were trying to protect the team by securing their confidence in you, but in reality, you’ve cheated yourself an opportunity to let it rip”, I said.

Stephanie gathered her belongings and collected herself before leaving my office. She responded “I understand what you mean about being capable of so much more. My team needs me to lead and part of that means that the need to see me confident under stress.”

I nodded and I repeated our leadership creed, ”A leader accomplishes the mission first, and protects their teammates second. Your mission is to prepare yourself to the demands of the sport. Do not forget what the mission is.”

The next lifting session I witnessed a transformation in Stephanie. I want to write that I didn’t know this transformation was possible, but that would be a lie; I knew Stephanie had more to give than what she ever believed. After all, she’s a top speed Ferrari. It’s up to her to continue pushing the pedal to the metal.

The Strength & Power Hour Podcast – Episode 8

by AdamRingler on July 22, 2011 in Blog, Training with No comments

Show Notes:

Medicine Ball Power Development
Lower Body Plyometric Program

The Strength & Power Hour Podcast

Coaching & Training Mental Toughness

by AdamRingler on June 19, 2011 in Blog, Training with No comments

Factors determining Mental Toughness development

To prepare our athletes to be both physically and mentally tough, we have identified a need to train our athlete’s minds as well as their physical bodies. We hold many one-on-one meetings to discuss goal setting, challenges, and realistic expectations of training. It is during these one-on-one meetings that we can begin to build the foundation for the four C’s of mental toughness training.

Challenge

Some athletes consider challenges to be learning growth-opportunity, whereas other athletes may be likely to consider a challenge as a threat. Those who embrace challenge may have a mindset for self-development whereas those who avoid challenge may do it out of fear of failure or aversion to effort (Dweck, 2007). During our meetings and training sessions, we setup the environment where athletes embrace challenging scenarios as a “learning opportunity” rather than a “test”. This allows for athletes who struggle or lose to embrace an ideology that their “learning” from the experience.

Control

Some athletes believe that they can exert influence over their environment or that they can make a difference and change outcomes. Whereas, other athletes feel helpless and perceive that outcomes of events are fixed and out of their control. Our staff tries to empower athletes by giving them simple choices over their environment, i.e. the music, exercise selection, or warm-ups. We do not allow the coaches to direct every single decision where as we want the athlete to take ownership over the control of their workout.

Commitment

Athletes differ in their likelihood to persist with a goal or work task. Some athletes, in the face of difficulty, will persist till the skill or task is completed. Other athletes may easily become distracted, bored or divert their attention to competing goals. We setup environments where we break down goals or commitments to micro-goals. We coach our athletes to climb Mount Everest “one step at a time”. Often times, athletes can lose commitment to a goal or task when the result looks too overwhelming or too far away (Goleman, 1998).

Confidence

Athletes that have high confidence have the self-belief to successfully complete tasks which may be considered too difficult by individuals with similar abilities but lower confidence. At Wichita State, our staff does everything in our power to build the confidence of our athletes through proper progressions and challenges. As Harter (1981) wrote about in her research titled “A Model of intrinsic mastery motivation in children”, an athlete’s perception of competency or ability to succeed in a task is highly influential on their intrinsic motivation for that particular task.

We never accept excuses

At Wichita State, our athletes have learned to accept responsibility and not make excuses for performance. If our roles as coaches is to prepare athletes for the challenges of tomorrow, than a realistic and transferable skill is accountability.

We don’t allow athletes to make excuses for themselves nor their teammates. We also don’t allow athletes to accept any excuses. This has created a culture where athletes are consistently honest with each other and everybody is held to the same accountable actions as everybody else.

Teaching athletes how to work “ruthlessly hard”

We receive a lot of athletes who have talent that delivered them division one scholarships. The downfall of that statement is that these athletes have relied off of their talent versus their work ethic. We aim to change that continuum in the direction of relying off of their ability to work extremely hard. Talent gets you to the starting line; work ethic delivers you to the checkered flag.

It is not uncommon for our staff to physically challenge athletes to do what they believe is impossible. Conditioning sessions are perfect environments for teaching athletes how to work “ruthlessly hard” as a team.

Defining Leadership & Growing Leaders

by AdamRingler on June 9, 2011 in Blog with No comments

If your a regularly reader of this blog than you should probably see a trend that I enjoy writing about leadership. I’m also guessing that most of the readers here found their way to this website because the general interest in strength and conditioning. I love reading, writing, and consuming as much information about the functional anatomy, training, strength & conditioning principles and trending topics in the S&C world; however, I find great passion in developing leaders.

Can you define what a good leader is?

What do they look like? How do those great leaders act? Dan and Chip Heath in their fantastic book “Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard”, wrote about setting a “destination post-card” when changing behaviors. When you vacation and you visit a gift-shop, there is always a stand that holds a number of wild and dreamy visual photograph post-cards. The destination on those post-cards usually looks too good to be true.

I want you to think of your “destination post-card” for your athlete leaders. Be vivid and think about the way they carry themselves; how they speak to younger and upperclassmen. In my mind, a leader does two things and two things only;

Accomplish the Mission
Protect their Team

It’s important to note that I’m explicitly numbering these by rank. Accomplishing the mission must come before protecting the teammates. What do I mean by this? As strength and conditioning coaches, we can utilize every method known to mankind to create healthier, stronger, and faster athletes. However, without vocal team leaders guiding the direction of their team’s efforts and abilities; those increases in performance will be rendered insignificant.

There should always be a present understanding that decisions are always made by “Thinking About the Team First”. Too often, unsuccessful team leaders confuse the order of these tasks and prioritize the team’s ego or feelings over accomplishing the mission. Mission objectives take priority over the team. This means that if an athlete asks to be excused from a lift or a conditioning session because they have a hard exam to study for, the leaders will have to ask “what is best for the team and mission objective?”

How many times have you witnessed teams containing multiple all-star athletes, but still manage to lose crucial games, tournaments and championships? On the other hand, how many times have you heard the classic underdog story where a team overpowers the opposing stronger and more talented team? I’ve heard it done a time or two. What I’m emphasizing is the importance of a collective effort of a coordinated team who operates as one unit all walking in lock-step.

The leadership development process at Wichita State is often times no different than many of the classic military style models currently being used today. Our leaders exemplify many characteristics that we have found absolutely necessary for our teams to perform at a high level.

We want all of our athletes to have opportunities to lead. This helps foster leadership abilities as well as giving an appreciation to the difficulty of leading a team. These leadership opportunities allows for greater appreciation of the leadership model and the current athletes in this position.

A leader guides a team, not rules a team. He or she charts a course, gives direction and develops the social and psychological environment (Martens, 1987).

Teammates can also make a leader’s job extremely easy or insanely difficult and as a coach it is our responsibility to help facilitate the right environment for our team leaders. At Wichita State, teammates have two responsibilities;

Great teammates hold themselves to very high standards
Great teammates demand those standards out of every single teammate.

Our weight room standards are visible in every team training manual, on every workout card, and throughout the weight room and my office. There is no escape of knowing the standards. Our Wichita State Strength & Conditioning Standards are;

Relentless Effort
Precision Execution
Vigorous Partner Coaching
Selfless Unity

After we established our culture and standards at Wichita State, the hardest task was creating a common understanding of our high standards. Our athletes understood through trials and tribulations that testing their limits or decision of effort; sub-par execution; or poor partner-coaching was unacceptable execution in our weight room.

Every athlete in our program must abide and hold themselves to these high standards during every session. It was not long until our athletes demanded those standards out of every single teammate. They knew if they did not, that the team would figuratively “live or die” by the actions of their teammates. Before long, everybody’s head was on a swivel demanding the utmost demanding standards out of everybody.

Leadership. It’s a 24/7 Responsibility

by AdamRingler on February 15, 2011 in Uncategorized with No comments

The Strength of Many is Greater than the Strength of One

Being a leader isn’t a temporary job. It’s not season position or a typical nine to five. It isn’t a trait that you can turn on or off at your disposal. Being a leader is a permanent characteristic that defines a person. Coaches often ask for my advice when trying to develop leaders out of their athletes and I often admit that there is no better environment to cultivate leadership growth than the strength and conditioning weight room. I also find it humbling that many other coaches, much my senior, seek my knowledge and expertise about leadership development. I credit this personal development to expert mentors who’ve groomed and developed world class leadership experiences for myself to foster in. I only mention this because leadership is not always a natural process. As humans, our basic mode for survival often predisposes us to selecting the easiest path of least resistance. The path of least resistance, however, does little to naturally develop leadership qualities that transfer over to the competitive arena.

At Wichita State, we believe in developing leadership qualities through the combined efforts and struggles shared by a team. There is no better environment for producing natural challenges that test the physical and mental wherewithal, then the strength and conditioning department. At Wichita State, there are three foundational principles that all Shocker athletes abide by.

1) We Are Mentally & Physically Tough

2) We Don’t Make Excuses And We Don’t Let Others Make Excuses For Us

3) We Work Hard

These are our most basic levels of principles that I expect out of every single one of our shocker athletes. From the star athlete to the walk-on redshirt, nobody escapes without meeting those expectations. You would imagine a strength coach to be overly concerned with developing physical strength; however, I am not impressed by amazing increases of physical strength. I’m concerned and impressed by the increases of mental strength. Wichita State athletes are bound to become both physically and mentally stronger through systematic training programs. Shocker athletes will not make excuses for failing to prepare nor will they accept the false excuses given by fellow teammates. Finally, Wichita State athletes will go above and beyond and work extremely hard to accomplish their goals.

Decisions are made by thinking about the team, rather than oneself.

Those selected individuals who are being groomed as team leaders have even higher expectations from our strength and conditioning department. It is my belief that successful team leaders lead by doing two things;

1) Accomplish the mission

2) Protect The Team

First, without a second of hesitation, successful team leaders accomplish the mission through any adversity that is faced. What I mean by this is that successful leaders, no matter the circumstances, consistently get the job done. If a task is given to a leader, it is executed. If I asked the leader to fulfill a particular role, they do it. If I ask them to confront a teammate, they confront. Successful leaders do whatever it takes, to accomplish the mission given to them.

Secondly, successful team leaders protect the team. Understand the orders of these are absolutely critical. Make no mistake; the most successful leaders will sacrifice feelings and emotions for accomplishing the mission. At the end of the day, leaders execute in order to accomplish the mission. Good team leaders, however, also protect the team by saying what others don’t want to, and demanding expectations that others won’t.

Leaders protect the team by several different means. Successful leader protect the team by demanding nothing but the best out of every single teammate. They don’t allow for excuses to be made nor do they make excuses for others. Leaders also take responsibility for when a plan does not go smoothly. We groom our leaders after a defeat, to address the team by taking responsibility for the loss. A teammate’s failure to follow directions or execute a plan is collectively the responsibility of a team leader. Leaders also give credit to the team when a plan is properly executed. They naturally take responsibility and credit for the failures and give credit to the team for victories. Make no mistake; successful leaders will confront others if they are not carrying out the expectations of their responsibility to the team. Leading is about being comfortable with being alone. Having the mental strength to stand alone and carry the pressure and burdens of accepting responsibility for defeat and having the ego and capability of giving away credit in times of victories.

We prepare our Wichita State athletes to be great team leaders and great team mates. Be certain, we prepare our shocker athletes, every single day, to fill either role.

All posts tagged Wichita State

You’re a Ferrari Driving Only 35 MPH

The Strength & Power Hour Podcast – Episode 8

Coaching & Training Mental Toughness