THE GROWTH MINDSET

A Newsletter for Coaches

Date: August 4th, 2023 Vol:#2 Issue:70

How to become an unconventional swordsman.

a man with tattoos sitting on the street

Mike Lombardi of the GM Shuffle podcast is one of the people who has had profoundly impacted my coaching.

He has an amazing talent for simplifying complex concepts and ideas. During his long career in the NFL, he has worked with Bill Walsh & Bill Belichek, arguably the two best coaches in the history of the league.

His book Gridiron Genius is excellent and explores what made Walsh & Belichek geniuses. I highly recommend it even if you don't love football.

Lombardi understands coaching.

He also has a knack for creating language and terminology.

One of the concepts that Lombardi talks about is the coach as an unconventional swordsman. A term he borrowed from Mark Twain.

Mark Twain famously wrote:

“The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot."- Mark Twain

Lombardi is not suggesting that Belicheck needs to be concerned about a coach who doesn't know the sport at all. He is suggesting that the coach who does things differently may have an advantage because they are unpredictable.

I love this concept. As a coach from a smaller school it's vital that I embrace being an unconventional swordsman.

The teams we need to beat to win a championship generally have:

An athletic advantage at most positions.
A skill advantage at most positions.
Sometimes a size advantage.

So if we enter a game and try and beat them at their own game the results aren't pretty. I know I tried for years.

The margin for error for my team in these games is very small.

To make up for those shortcomings my team needs to maximize our advantages & play like the unconventional swordsman.

It doesn't just happen. It takes planning.

Here are the areas I focus on to try and be different. The can apply to just about any invasion sport:

1. Tactics and Strategy

What style does the majority of our opponents play? What sets or offenses do they run? What defenses are they playing? Where can I create an advantage for our team? These are questions that anyone coaching an invasion sport can ask themselves.

This is a yearly process that is determined by my personnel.

A few examples:

Over the last few seasons, opponents have shot approx 25 3pters a game, hitting at a 24% clip. We allow most players to shoot them because they aren't hitting them at a high enough rate. Our goal is to identify the good shooters and aggressively guard them.
We tend to not shoot the 3 very well so our goal is to shoot fewer threes than our opponents. We want layups so we try and play very fast to create them.
The game has become much faster in the last 10 years, most teams are sending fewer players to the offensive glass, to make sure that transition defense is a priority. To be different we send all 5 players to the glass. The goal is to create as many extra possessions as possible

The goal from an X's & O's standpoint is to be different. If our team plays like everyone else we will never win a championship.

2. Focus on the Human Side of Coaching

I know this is on brand for me. 🤷‍♂️

Teams that function on a higher level will close the gap against opponents who do not.

Here are a few unconventional advantages that can be created by leaning into the human side of coaching:

Mentally resilient athletes are hard to beat. They just keep coming.
Winning is not the yardstick of success. Athletes who don't fear losing are freed to leave everything on the floor.
Teams that play for something bigger than themselves are more successful than teams of individuals.

Many coaches have this goal for their teams. What is unconventional about our approach is the amount of time we dedicate to accomplishing it.

We schedule and dedicate time to each week and sometimes it is at the expense of time spent on the practice floor.

This is not a secret formula to beating the best teams you play against. I do think it is a great way to compete against them though.

Summer Self-talk Sale

I have a whole bunch of copies of my Self-talk Curriculum lying around the house so I am going to blow them out to create room for my cohort-based course that is coming out soon. (Editor's note: Not true it's all digital)

For the next week, you can pay me whatever you want for it.

It includes: