Very Stable Idiot Week 25: June 11-17 2018

THE FIRST WORD 

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently." - Warren Buffett

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RANDOM RAMBLINGS

I’m a big fan of Brad Stulberg’s writing.  He wrote a good book with Steve Magness called Peak Performance.  You should read it.

Brad and Steve also write a Peak Performance blog. The following is from this past week’s post.  

In the very least, this is a topic that all athletes and coaches should give some serious thought to. 

Eating Disorders, Divorces, and the Risks of Really Going For Something

- Brad Stulberg

Elite athletes are abnormal. Elite anything is abnormal. Otherwise, it's not elite.

In psychiatry, crazy drive toward something improbable without self-awareness is typical of a personality disorder. Out in the world it's called being a fearless entrepreneur, a big-firm partner at the age of 33, or an elite athlete.  

It's worth reiterating: none of this is bad until it is. 

But that line between "none of this is bad" and "until it is" is a very, very fine one. If this sounds super serious that's because it is. But it's also super common. And I think it's worth talking about more openly and more often.

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The Shayne Parrish blog Farnam Street is one of the best on the web. I’ve read pretty much every word on the site.  This past week, Parrish shared the Farnam Street Five Core Principles.

In his words:

“All that we write about, think about, and strive to achieve is inspired by one or more of the following principles. We hope they offer some clarity about what our community believes, and perhaps some direction as you carve your own path.”

Farnam Street Principles

1. Direction Over Speed: If you’re pointed in the wrong direction, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re traveling. 
2. Live Deliberately: create space to cultivate a life and mind of purpose—outside the influence and dictates of others
3. Thoughtful Opinions Held Loosely: As our understanding increases, we must be willing to adapt and change if we are to learn and grow to position ourselves to lead the life we want to live.
4. Principles Outlive Tactics: By understanding the principles that shape your reality, your “why” will more accurately guide your thoughts and actions.
5. Own Your Actions: one of the most powerful ways to make giant leaps forward in our lives is to not only accept that we’ll screw up, but to actively seek out correction when we do.

EMOTION

Leonard-Duran I: June 20, 1980 

In Olympic Stadium on a cool Canadian night, with salsa music in the upper deck, Duran's people -- his true kin or those here who have adopted him -- cheered with raw conviction.

After a lifetime of hard work but almost effortless success inside the ropes, Leonard finally came face to face with the core of boxing: suffering. He passed the test of personal courage but, because he was so intent on that examination of character, he neglected the tactics of his art and lost a crown. 

Experts will argue interminably over why Leonard fought what appeared to be a brave but hopelessly stupid fight. Why didn't he jab? Why didn't he dance? Why didn't he circle? Why didn't he slide when Duran tried to cut the ring? Why didn't he clinch or push off more to avoid the in-fighting? Why did he stand toe to toe countless times and exchange hooks to the head and uppercut digs to the gut? 

Only Leonard had the absolute and unarguable answer.

"I had no other alternative," he said.

Early in the fight, when Duran was fresh, and late in the fight, when Leonard was tired, Duran made certain that the fight would be conducted only one way -- his way.-

• Thomas Boswell

Leonard-Duran II: November 25, 1980 

Bullies can dish it out, but they just can't take it. This is an ancient boxing rule of thumb: a seeming psychological paradox that really is a straightforward truth. 

Sugar Ray Leonard proved the verity of this maxim again tonight as he humiliated 

Roberto Duran with flashing combinations, glorious boxing skills and audacious courage.

Leonard, who depended on a complete change of tactics to regain his crown -- and prove himself to be a fighter for the ages in the process -- was ecstatic, but gracious in his greatest moment.

"I beat Duran more mentally than physically," said Leonard, accurately. 

"The things I did, especially in the seventh round, demoralized him."

 "Killed in a duel." 

That is the epitaph for Duran tonight. This evening, Sugar Ray Leonard had the feet of a Bourbon Street tap-dancer, the blended combinations of a fine Dixieland jazz band and the punch of Ramos gin fizz.

• Thomas Boswell

Going into their first fight in Montreal, Sugar Ray Leonard was considered the better boxer, and a slight favorite (he was listed as the 9-11 favorite just prior to the fight) to beat Roberto Duran.  Leonard was expected to use his superior boxing skills and outclass the ‘brawler’ Duran.  But in the lead-up to the fight, Duran reportedly goaded Leonard - insulting him, and his family.  Leonard’s ‘emotional’ reaction led to him ignoring the advice of his trainer Angelo Dundee - instead brawling with Duran.  

Duran had clearly gotten under his skin, and eventually outpointed him in a close decision.  

It has often been argued that Leonard learned his lesson - and rather than brawling with Duran in the rematch in New Orleans 5 months later, he instead set the tone from the outset - boxing, moving, jabbing - frustrating Duran, and eventually forcing him to quit in the middle of the 8th round.  This would go down in history as one of the most epic of boxing matches - the ‘No Mas’ fight (although it is doubtful that Duran ever actually said this - but he DID quit).  

It is easy to argue that Leonard was ‘too emotional’ in Montreal - and it was his refusal to be drawn into Duran’s taunts that won him the famous rematch.  

In New Orleans, Leonard ‘controlled his emotions’, and took it to Duran.  Right?  

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“The best coaches I’ve met are calm on the sideline.  Athletes take emotional cues from their coaches, so a coach who displays calmness and confidence inspires the same with their athletes” - Fergus Connolly

Emotion was the topic of an interesting discussion this week at an ALTIS Apprentice Coach Program Pool-side Chat.  

While I don’t disagree with the above comment from Fergus, I don’t think ‘controlling emotion’ is as simple as it sounds.  As discussed last week in regards to ‘coordination’, I feel the word emotion in sport has lost its meaning somewhat - or has been co-opted into meaning something else entirely, existing now on the ‘negative’ side of a false dichotomy fallacy between rational and emotional.  

What do we even mean by “too emotional”?

We tend to use ‘emotional’ as if it has a single meaning, but it’s not a single thing; it’s a state of mind, that can range from fear, to anger, to disgust, to happiness, to surprise, to excitement.  Does what we mean by ‘emotional’ apply to all of these ‘emotions’?  

• You’re too happy
• You’re too excited
• You’re too sad
• You’re too proud 

These are all very different things - but we tend to lump them all together.  

Generally, and in sport - having ‘emotion’ has traditionally been described as a good thing, but is increasingly being seen as now a negative.  In both coaches and athletes, we are now told how important it is to stay calm - to be relaxed - to be in control - to be rational. 

Again - what is really meant here?

What is important is an athlete can perform under situations of heightened arousal that is often present at major competitions.  

The question being - does this heightened state make an athlete react - and perform - worse than in a state of lower arousal?  

Does an increase in pressure make us react in a way that is different?  

Generally - the answer is yes.  

Some athletes perform better.  Some perform worse. 

Some athletes require this increase in pressure - this increased arousal - to perform optimally.  

What exactly is the emotion that they controlling here? 

And how is it controlled? 

THE FLIP-SIDE

On September 24, 1994, I remember watching American boxer Oliver McCall make his way to the ring to fight Lennox Lewis.  McCall was in tears the entire time.  Clearly, ‘emotional’, McCall would go on to say after the fight: “I usually cry when I go to the ring.  So I can pump myself up emotionally.”

McCall beat the heavily favored Lewis - knocking him out in the 2nd round.  (This fight actually changed Lewis’ career, as he responded by dropping his trainer in favor of McCall’s - Emanuel Steward.  The rest, as they say, is history)

ALSO

Prior to Sugar Ray Leonard’s fight against Roberto Duran in New Orleans: 

"I've never felt about anybody the way I feel about Duran. It's no one thing, I just dislike everything about him: the way he walks, the look on his face, the way he disrespects people he doesn't even know, flipping the finger at nice people on the street, all because he knows what he is and can't respect himself. He wants everybody to kneel down to him. That's not right." 

Does it sound like Leonard’s ‘emotions’ were really that different in New Orleans than they were in Montreal 5 months prior?  

Duran, on the other hand, was described as relaxed, and “as close to happy as he is capable of being - as contrasted with his mood of perpetual menace in Montreal” (Boswell)

Like I said - I don’t think it is as easy as ‘controlling your emotions’.  

To be continued …

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An example of the kind of ridiculous advice that is given in response to our supposed need to control our emotions:

If You Want To Master Your Life, Learn To Organize Your Feelings

- Brianna Wiest

People who are controlled by their emotions typically have something in common: they tend to only do what feels most comfortable. In other words, their emotions are organized into “feels good” and “feels bad,” not “feels good” or “does good.” 

If you let feelings control your actions, you will never progress in life. You will wonder why you keep circling the same patterns, habits and unhealthy relationships. 

This is because you haven’t learned how to organize, or process, how you feel in relation to what you should do and how you need to think.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

“Top” (however u define it) t&f coaches love giving away their knowledge 4 free. There’s nothing noble about it. It hurts the sport. Their = in football or basketball doesn’t give away the farm 4 likes & retweets. Scarcity implies value. The only free cheese is in the mouse trap. - Latif Thomas

My response (as I - and ALTIS) give away a lot of free information):

First - as we can see by the number or responses, it is an interesting question, and one worth pondering - so thanks for stating it.  As we see it, there are four specific motivations:

1. Marketing: building an interested-engaged audience, in order to potentially later sell to them.  Examples of this are numerous, both generally - as well as in our industry.  Godin, Altucher, Ferriss, all built their ‘brands’ through giving away free content (as, in our industry, BTW so did Kelly Starrett, Brian Mackenzie, and John Berardi)
2. Altruism: we are genuinely interested in sharing information with the population.  T&F is small-time for a reason.  A more-educated population is our only chance at bringing legitimacy to this sport. 
3. Knowledge is cumulative: we follow the Harold Jarche SEEK > SENSE > SHARE framework.  The more we share, the better we become
4. Working out Loud: sharing our thoughts - holding them to the light - and thus opening them up to increased critique helps us better define our own thoughts, and forces us to better understand what we share. 

More generally - the growth of the amateur (us), fueled by the democratization of distribution, has disrupted every form of digital content.  Music is free.  Papers are free. Most books can be found for free.  A lot of art is free. Most University Courses can be taken for free.  This is our reality - there is no going back from it. 

There is free content on the web for literally any subject under the sun.  Education Programs, like what you put out, or what we put out, are simply little more than curated syntheses of information, packaged in a more digestible format, and communicated in a way that a maximum of interested people can understand.  

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THREE WORLD CUP READS

(Fergus Connolly posts a lot of really interesting articles on Twitter.  He’s a great follow if you’re interested in sport and-or performance.  The following are brief quotes from three articles he posted this weekend))

A GOOD ONE

How Germany became an example to the world of football

In 2016, at £193, Darmstadt had the highest priced season tickets in Germany – still considerably lower than the cheapest seat in the Premier League (Stoke City at £294) – while Bayern Munich fans were seen refusing to enter Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium during the opening five minutes of play, claiming to be disgusted by the extortionate prices for football tickets that takes advantage of loyal fans. 

The Bavarian giants have some of the cheapest season tickets anywhere in the world, with an adult one in the standing section at the Allianz Arena costing just over £100. A club representative was quoted as saying: “We could charge much more than £100. Let’s say we charged £300. We’d get £2m more in income but what’s £2m to us? In a transfer discussion you argue about that sum for five minutes. But the difference between £104 and £300 is huge for the fan. We do not think the fans are like cows, who you milk. Football has got to be for everybody. That’s the biggest difference between us and England.”

AN OK ONE

Messi Walks Better Than Most Players Run

Throughout his career, Messi has been criticized for walking. After an El Clasico match between Barcelona and Real Madrid in December 2017, there was widespread coverage of the fact that Messi walked 83 percent of the roughly 5 miles he covered that game. Despite this, he scored and assisted in Barca’s 3-0 trouncing. 

We’ve known this trait of Messi’s for quite some time: In 2014 World Cup coverage, Ken Early remarked that “only Messi has figured out how to win matches by moving less than everyone else.” Benjamin Morris wrote about the phenomenon for FiveThirtyEight after Argentina lost to Germany in the final. The most popular explanation has been that Messi walks to conserve his energy for critical moments, like a perfectly efficient machine. But even when he’s walking, new research suggests, he’s far from idle. 

Whether Messi consciously decides to go against the run of play with his movement is difficult to ascertain. “Can we say Messi gets a lot of his space by not chasing the play? Yes, that’s precisely what our research shows.” Bornn said. “Is he doing it deliberately? To answer that, you’d probably have to ask the man himself.”

A NOT VERY GOOD ONE

The Belgium Process

The system wasn’t working. 

By 2000, the Belgian national team had been stuck in a rut in international play for years. It had been two decades since its runner-up finish in the 1980 UEFA European Football Championship. The team’s best finish in the World Cup—fourth place—was in 1986. In its most recent showings, in the 1998 World Cup and the 2000 European Championship, the team failed to progress beyond the first rounds. 

After the 2000 debacle, the Royal Belgian Football Association convened a working group to devise a plan to return the country to football prominence. Among those involved were Michel Sablon, then the technical director, and Werner Helsen, a former footballer turned sports scientist at the Catholic University in Leuven, just outside Brussels. Helsen was the first academic to apply the 10,000-hour rule, made popular by Malcolm Gladwell, to sports. Performance, he found, was linked to the number of practice hours. At the time, teenage footballers in Belgium practiced four or five times per week. (Games were often played on the weekend, which amounted to some 12 hours per week.) It wasn’t enough, Helsen thought. “We need to double the amount of practise,” he said. 

They worked to establish “Top Sports Schools” across the country, where flexible curricula allowed students, beginning at age 13, to train for three hours every morning except Wednesdays. “The football training is integrated in the school plan, which means that these students can have a normal graduation,” Helsen said. Players would meet the threshold of 20 weekly hours—school and club commitments included—that Helsen believed was required for success. The schools would incubate a number of the current national stars, including De Bruyne and Napoli striker Dries Mertens, who attended Genk and Leuven, respectively. 

The Belgian squad has marketed itself as a group of friends coming together to play for a common cause. Hazard has been teasing his #REDTOGETHER campaign on social media as a means of gathering support. Lukaku has expressed his thanks to supporters as well, perhaps to drum up more enthusiasm. 

Whether the family campaign will pay off is anybody’s guess. The kinship is surely there. "If I have something to say to Romelu— Romelu, stop scoring goals now. Score goals for Belgium in the national team for the World Cup, please," Hazard told Sky Sports in March.

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THE FINAL WORD

"In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it." - Robert A Heinlein