Decoding Excellence #001 Matt Shadeed In this episode of the Decoding Excellence show I am speaking with Coach Matt Shadeed, the Director of Strength & Conditioning for Arkansas State University. Matt and I discuss leadership strategies, staff development, and the many lessons learned from navigating his career to his current position. We discuss: * His path
Blog Featured How Our High Performance Team Utilizes Slack Section 1: Introduction to Slack Slack is a fast growing communication tool many are utilizing as an email replacement in Silicon Valley. Slack has enabled our distributed team of performance coaches to be constantly informed and available. The use of Slack within our performance team has been an incredibly valuable
Blog Breaking Down the MIT 2016 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference This past weekend was the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, and if you happened to miss the event - it was full of great information regarding the latest in sport-science, athletics, technology, and analytics. If you don't already have that weekend booked for next year, I would highly recommend
Blog Effective Leadership for Business Empowerment Leadership can be a tricky thing to work with. The conventional model is that that one person possesses it and everybody else wants it. It’s my belief that this is flawed model at best. When possible, you should try to do everything to move decision making abilities to those
Blog Teaching Mastery with Michel Thomas > There's No Such Thing as a Poor Student. Only a Poor Teacher. - Michel Thomas Can teaching a squat be similar to teaching a foreign language? Could there be similarities between mastering a business concept and the performance of a deadlift? I would argue there are more
Blog The 4:1 Principle In a conversation with Mike Boyle, I was advised that I had two eyes, two ears but only one mouth; as a rule for interning, use a 4-1 ratio. This doesn't mean to always be a shy introvert who never speaks their mind, but rather learn to listen
Blog Perseverance 100,000 words into my manuscript and I'm left still typing into this medium. It's a different medium with a whole different purpose. The manuscript, being a complete mind dump from the everyday lessons learned through coaching exceptional athletes and this one, a place to document
Blog Sharing Quality Information Believe it or not, I'm still around. Yes, it's hard to believe. If you occasionally visit this website, which by all traffic metrics and Google Analytics doesn't reflect it, you may notice a huge fall off of quality blog posts being published here. The
Blog Get the Right People on the Bus > "I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way." - Lee Iacocca Part of my responsibility is adding the highly skilled and incredibly talented coaches as a supportive staff to our high performance training department. It is always a never-ending task of
Blog It's About the Athlete At the beginning, the middle, and the end; it's about the athlete and the progress made. Behind that athlete is the person that drives their athletic prowess. Coaching is a process and an art. Although strength & conditioning is deeply routed in science, the act of coaching should
Blog How I Work One of my favorite web articles is by Lifehacker [http://www.Lifehacker.com] titled "How I Work". It takes CEOs technology startup and documents the methods of how they produce their best work. In the spirit of that article series, I'm presenting the "How I
Blog Not What You Do; It's How You Do It It is too easy in this profession to get caught up with chasing the next perfect program or spending hours critiquing every rep scheme, volume base, or periodization model. As strength and conditioning coaches, we all are guility of this. I'm advising you to trust your gut and
Blog Attention to Detail One of the most important lessons my Father taught was how important even the smallest detail was. I feel that is something many people has lost sight of now days. Call it the modernization of self-correcting technology, simple laziness, or any other combination of generational factors or ineptitude; needless to
Blog Lions & Zebras As a leader, it is vital to identify others members within your organization that will help support your cause and leadership efforts. Identification of other potential leaders is a valuable task which will allow you to best utilize your time and efforts supporting the environment and culture you are trying
Blog You Are Your Team When I was first starting my career in Strength & Conditioning, a mentor of mine once told me, > "What you see is what you coach". He couldn't be anymore correct. Let me explain. You Create Your Environment You set the tone, the high-expectations, and the
Blog Adapt, Migrate, or Die Thanks for staying with me for this long. I've made a decision to move my hosting services away from my previous one and streamlined the backside of this blog to make for more efficient strength & conditioning writing. This was a tedious process which required me to migrate
Blog How to Lose Talent Within an Organization Introduction Michael Fertik wrote an excellent article titled “Managing Employees in Their Twenties” [http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jan2011/ca20110121_067889.htm] in the Harvard Business Review last month. What I enjoyed about Michael’s blog post was the simple to read tips about what it is that keeps
Blog Be a Beginner > “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Zen Master Shunryo Suzuki * Be Present Don’t get caught up in wondering what should come next or the grand illusion that there is a sequence of events that one should follow.
Blog CSCCa I love this time of the year because it's a great opportunity to meet up with the best strength coaches in the nation to learn and spread information. As I'm driving in from Wichita, pondering on my three hour drive, I'm amazed at how
Blog On Details > It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen. - John Wooden The secret to success is often so obvious that it hides within plain sight. I don’t claim that there are too many hidden secrets within strength & conditioning that will
Blog On Coaching and Leadership Coaching requires a great understanding of leadership that is rarely taught in any kinesiology or exercise science coursework. You will rarely find it taught in any conference or certification body. It is often only developed through personal growth or obtained from other coaches who’ve been in the field and
Blog Teach. Mentor. Give Back. > “Be a man of principle. Fight for what you believe in. Keep your word. Live with integrity. Be brave. Believe in something bigger than yourself. Serve your country.” “Teach. Mentor. Give something back to society. Lead from the front. Conquer your fears. Be a good friend. Be humble and
Blog Focus on the Process > In basketball - as in life - true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way. Of course, it's no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether
Blog Nuggets of Wisdom This semester has nearly passed by and with another tick of the second hand on the clock, another year of coaching had passed. Throughout the year, I keep accurate notes on everything from: leadership development, my staff’s performance, athlete/team progress, and a wide variety of other topics and
Blog Leave it at the Door Rachael had her head down throughout the beginning of the lift and I could tell that she wasn’t herself. She did little to motivate her partner nor did she respond to the vibrant enthusiasm her partner Taylor was giving her. “Rachael, may I speak with you?” I said. Rachael
