Hot Take: The cologne from Anchorman will make you a better coach.
Wearing it won’t help. Practicing it will.
Fellow New Wave Coach and buddy Kevin engaged me so I had to write this article. Just kidding I was going to write it anyway.
The short answers to his two questions that would fit within the Twitter character constraints are:
Yes
Yes
But we aren’t here for Twitter-worthy answers, we are here for value.
The Bad, The Worse and the Ugly
I didn’t start out as New Wave as I thought I was. When was the head coach of my junior team at 26 years old, I still had some Old Way in me.
I fucked up a lot. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
So I did dumb shit, like this…
I’d explain a new concept or drill to my team. I thought I was “clear and concise.” And if I wasn’t, I still asked at the end for questions, comments, and concerns before starting the drill. Side Note: I’ve now learned to ask, “what questions do you have?”
So I was clear and concise, asked if they needed anything cleared up and when the response was, “no”, I said:
Okay, let’s go, full speed, full intensity.
4 minutes later I blew the drill down because 1,2, or 14 guys were fucking it up. I’d get a little upset.
I’d call everyone in, signal that I was disappointed and said something to the effect of, “this isn’t hard, let’s figure it out here.” Then I sent them to restart practice.
3 minutes later. I blew the drill down again. I’d get more upset.
Oh Drew, you were so young and so stupid… and so programmed
The Thing About Epiphany
Epiphanies are weird.
They are essentially something you already knew that you weren’t doing.
Here’s where I remembered something I already knew intuitively.
Intensity and Its Effects
Don’t forget this about intensity:
The closer you get to 100% intensity in anything, the harder it becomes to:
Perform the skill, because it requires a ton of energy
Do other tasks or skills with it
Don’t believe me, fine. Split test this for me.
Try and sprint 100 meters, that’s going to take between 10-20 seconds of 100% intensity. While sprinting do 4 multiplication table problems:
3x8
4x11
6x12
9x6
When fully recovered, go for a walk and do the math problems.
Just like fatigue makes your players fuck up more, so does high intensity combined with thinking.
The New, The Improved, The Better
Full intent and full intensity are not the same. Even though intensity has most of the word intent in it.
2 years after my failed junior hockey experiment, I helped coach a high school pre-season team. They had no concept of how to create anything off the rush. So I introduced the stick pick to them:
I created a simple 2v1 drill to eliminate a lot of the noise and told one offensive player to skate into the defender and stick pick like the dot lane drive player on Chicago demonstrates above.
I sent them on their way and then… Didn’t see any stick picks.
I forgot something.
So instead of blowing the drill down and talking down to them like they were idiots… I just told them to restart the drill but only skate at 60% speed. I also told them the intention to skate the correct path, stick pick detail and the player on the puck getting off the wall was to remain high.
Keep the intent, drop the intensity.
And just like Sex Panther, 60% worked every time. At 60% they could get a rep at the correct skill.
Within a few minutes, they could stick pick at full speed.
In a world where you’ve been told, “how you do anything is how you do everything…”
Unlearn that fast. Or you’ll continue with this misjudgment…
The Misjudgment of Coach
Remember learning to drive?
This is what an anxious teen thinks when backing up the car from the driveway. You see it as one step, they see it as this many:
“Oh don’t forget my seatbelt. Okay, check.
Mirrors, don’t want to hit anyone
Ummm, okay let’s reverse it, make sure you push in the brake for it to work
Okay, let off slowly
Shoulder check while backing
Turn the wheel the correct way, back end goes same way of where you turn the wheel
Okay, brakes again, can’t just chuck it in drive, you’ll mess up the transmission
Okay, now throw it in D and drive away
Throw a simple stick pick at a high school-aged kid and his brain starts spinning on how he’s going to pull that off at full speed the first time. And you’re making him do it in a drill where he might have to do a few other things first. He’s a ball of anxiety.
They aren’t stupid for not being able to do it the first time. You’re stupid for thinking they can. You see it as one step, they see it as eight.
The Way of the Wave
Let’s end with a simple frame for our picture taught like in the Tao Te Ching:
The Old Guard blows the drill down and skates his players.
The Average Coach blows it down and tells his players to “figure it out.”
The New Wave Coach instructs his players to go half-speed from the start
Slow it down before you blow it down.
Here is some related reading on this topic, your best players will know they need to slow down before you even tell them: