For those coaches and athletes out there struggling through a difficult season. Love this from @BStulberg ⤵️ In the modern world, we are all too prone to sleepwalking through life, perpetually going through the motions in a kind of half-dead, half-alive trance. In trying to eliminate all friction and discomfort from our lives, we’ve made our lives boring. But this need not be the case. Humans aren’t machines. We are meant to care. We are meant to struggle. We are meant to feel doubt and apprehension and resistance and fear—and we are meant to overcome it. All of which is to say we are meant to exert effort, and we are meant to go on quests.

We’ve been sold on the idea that toughness is created through fatigue and torture—and that toughness is the key to winning. There’s a better way. Win through executing fundamentals. Win through team-first focus. #Ubuntu Win through improved athleticism. Win by making the sport the best part of a kid’s day. Don’t train kids to survive the sport. Train them to thrive in it.

Doing a deep dive into Hans Selye (1907-1982). ⤵️ Too much stress without adequate recovery eventually produces exhaustion. The traditional coaching mistake is assuming: MORE STRESS = MORE ADAPTATION Selye’s work says that’s not how biology works. A better equation would be: STRESS + RECOVERY = ADAPTATION And when stress continually exceeds the ability to recover: STRESS − RECOVERY = BREAKDOWN (Injuries are almost always a load-management problem.) Selye eventually differentiated between: EUSTRESS — beneficial stress that stimulates positive adaptation. DISTRESS — excessive or poorly managed stress that becomes harmful.