59 Lessons

Performance expert Dr. Fergus Connolly is one of my favorite teaching authors. He has coached around the world with some of the best coaches and teams. 

Here are a few quotes from 59 Lessons. 

1. "Practice to deliver." Everything at practice should impact results, whether it's injury rehab, strength and conditioning, drills, or scrimmage. There's no point in lifting weights to see how much you can lift. 

2. "The biggest challenge is complacency." Nobody becomes a champion without drive, competitiveness, and 'unrequired work.' "Champions do extra." One player told me years ago, that she walked onto the court every day with her head up and chest out with a goal to prove that she was the best player in the gym. 

3. "Never bring just a gun to a gun fight- bring everything to overpower your opponent." I've argued that you need three dynamic hitters to go deep in the playoffs. Some hitters develop during the season. It's not too late. For most of her career, Rachel Johnson was an exceptional blocker, but not an offensive force. In the final three games of her career during the State Championship run, she became a dynamic hitter. 

4. "To be truly great...you need to concentrate on continual improvement every day." Ask what you improved today, timing on blocks, passing, your runup on hits.

5. "It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will conquer." Excellence is hard. It demands physical and mental work. 

6. "Can you take responsibility for yourself when there is no one to look after you?" Become your own coach, your own trainer. 

7. "...create environments that equip them to independently problem solve." How do we get this girl off the front line? At whom should we serve? 

8. "Success leaves clues...the best are constantly looking to improve." It's not just players, its coaches, and these lessons translate into the classroom and everything you do. 

9. "No one achieves lasting success without the basic desire to improve." We improve or we fall behind. 

10. Ask three simple questions before you use any kind of fitness tracking: 

• What do you want to know? 
• Can you measure it? 
• How will it improve performance?"

11. "More is more. More is not better. Better is better." Brian McCormick wrote a basketball book, "Fake Fundamentals" asking what activities help versus which are traditional. We don't do simple layup lines or 'three-man weave' because they don't reproduce game play. 

12. "There's only one challenge more difficult than finding the solution, and that's that identifying the right problem first. Often, we don't identify reasons properly and only make excuses." Many players are frustrated with their role or progress. Not so many ask what must I improve and how I will do that. 

"When you speak with older coaches, they're proudest about the relationships they've built not trophies they've won." - Fergus Connolly