A Preview of Aligned: The Inside-Out Path to Coaching Excellence Issue 158- Jason Payne, CMPC. A different kind of newsletter this week, arriving on a different day. Four weeks from today, ALIGNED: The Inside-Out Path to Coaching Excellence launches. I have been writing this newsletter for six years and have spent the last few years shaping it into a book. I am really proud of it, and I know it will help coaches. Below is the introduction and the first chapter of the book. If it sounds like...
11 days ago • 1 min read
Quentin The 3C's of Trust, the Backbone of a Successful Season Issue 157- Jason Payne, CMPC It is late September, and for many of you this means that pre-season is underway: weeks of practice and intersquad games until the season gets rolling. It can feel tedious. One coach I talked to this week said his team could not wait for games to start; they are tired of battling and crashing into each other every day. While you and your team may be restless, this is not a trivial window. It is where...
19 days ago • 4 min read
Quentin The Small Steps I Took to Rekindle My Love for Coaching Issue 156- Jason Payne, CMPC I have written a lot about the moment when my coaching career flipped. Burnout led me to make an important choice that significantly changed my life. I needed to find a more meaningful way to coach or find a different way to spend my time. The cost of maintaining the status quo was too high. What I have not written much about is what I did the following season. The changes were not dramatic or flashy....
26 days ago • 4 min read
Quentin The Sunday Scaries Issue 155- Jason Payne, CMPC You know the feeling. It's Sunday night. You start thinking about the week ahead, practices, games, maybe a tournament. You're doing what you love; you should be excited, or at least ready. Instead, something in your body feels heavier than it should be. Not tired or stressed about a specific play or a specific player. Just off. Most coaches call it burnout. Or fatigue. Or the season is getting to them. It's usually none of those. Not...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Quentin Is your Coaching aligned with what you want people to remember about their time with you? Issue 154- Jason Payne, CMPC Dolly Parton passed away this week, and I was amazed at the outpouring of tributes to an artist I did not know much about. I am not a country music fan, and I have never really been one. So other than a brief time in the early 80's when 9 to 5 crossed over to mainstream radio, her career existed off my radar. What blew me away this week was the wide variety of...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Quentin Green, yellow, or red? One question to ask before each practice. Issue 152- Jason Payne, CMPC You walk into your team room for a random weekday practice. The players are dressed. The music is on. From the outside, it looks like any other practice during the season. But you can feel it within ninety seconds. Something is off. Two of your seniors are quiet in a way they aren't usually quiet. The freshman in the corner is going through the motions. Your captain, who is normally the first...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Quentin The Orange Ball Has Given Me More Than I Ever Asked For. Issue 151- Jason Payne, CMPC In the last month, I have coached athletes from twenty different countries, alongside coaches from five continents. Building those relationships has been the kind of gift I would never have thought to ask for. It does not seem to matter where I go. The game finds a way to put me across the table from someone worth learning from. The world is truly a global village, and sport is one of the few things...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Quentin A Four-Minute Diagnostic To Help Work from The Inside Out Issue 150- Jason Payne, CMPC You know your team’s win-loss record from last season. You can probably tell me who led your team in scoring, in rebounds, in assists. You have scouting reports for every athlete you have ever coached, whether you kept them formally or in your head. The ones who improved or plateaued. The player you knew was going to become something more than the version who walked into your gym at the start of...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Quentin Something I've Been Writing For Six Years and Thinking About For Twenty-Five Issue 149- Jason Payne, CMPC Somewhere in the last twelve months, you have probably had this thought. Maybe it hit after a bad game that left you drained of energy like you had played instead of coached. Perhaps it arrived on a Sunday afternoon when you realized there was a part of you dreading practice on Monday. Or it was the exhaustion you felt in every cell of your body the day after your season...
2 months ago • 5 min read