Return to play the smart way

Today on Dad Strength

• Unspoken values in youth athletics

• Return to play – the smart way

• The tyranny of the blank page

• A book, a quote, a dad joke

Sometimes, we over-schedule our kids. Or push them harder than maybe we should. The impulse is totally understandable. We want to err on the side of achievement and the risks of doing too much feel way less scary than the risks of doing too little. The real truth is deeply personal because – like so much of parenthood – what you do is an extension of what is happening inside of you. You’re not going to get everything right and that’s ok. There is a force of caring that drives all of these decisions and creates a creates a thru-line on what’s important. However, along the way, you may miss some early signals of things aren’t going according to plan.

Today, we talk about where those kinds of signals pop up... In youth athletics. In managing your own injuries. And in setting the stage for effective work.

If it would do you some good* to talk this stuff through with other dads,* you can upgrade to the Dad Strength Community Edition. Join in on weekly calls on Zoom that talk through the universal challenges behind fatherhood.

* It would

Fatherhood: Unspoken values in youth athletics

"The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behaviour the leader is willing to tolerate." That’s from School Culture Rewired by Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker. This idea holds true for everything from pee wees to pros. Good sportsmanship, teamwork, and a positive attitude are the ideals. Sometimes, though, they take a backseat when a young player combines superior talent with a subpar attitude. More transgressions are tolerated because, "That kid is gonna to go pro. I can see it." How (and how quickly) we respond in those moments is important. For coaches. For parents. And, most of all, for kids.

Team sports can teach some amazing things but what unintended lessons may be coming along for the ride?

Do you have experience with conflicts of culture in youth athletics?

Fitness: Return to play – the smart way

So, you got yourself a boo-boo and now you want to return to competitive practice. If the injury was serious enough to force you to take time off, avoid the common mistake of trying to jump right back into things at full steam.

Here’s what I recommend first:

Do a few short-duration, highly technical practices
Put comparison to past performance aside and work on your positioning and mechanics. Don’t take these drills to fatigue. Instead, terminate the sets] just before things slow down or get messy.

A ball player with a knee injury might take a few steps, decelerate laterally and shoot. A jiu-jitsu player might drill a sequence of movements with just enough resistance to make things feel real. A runner might go through some technical drills like A-skips for multiple, short-duration sets. Technique is kept crispy. Fatigue is minimal. Positions that create pain or compensation are avoided.

And then?

• Turn up the heat slowly by adding add length and demand to these sessions

• Mix in some additional work in between sets
  This in-between work should reflect the energetic demands of your sport.

• Return to practice but modify duration and intensity 
  BUT keep your early sessions short at first. Build progressively. Be patient and persistent. See how your body responds.

• Come out of ahead
  You can use this opportunity to improve your technical mastery and – in time – find yourself ahead of where you would have been.

  
  Need some help putting things together? Book a consult with me.

Productivity: The tyranny of the blank page

There’s nothing worse than staring at a blank page while the deadline clock is ticking loudly. That is straight-up quicksand. I experienced this recently when I started overhauling Dad Strength and it took me a while to figure out why.

Austin Kleon, who wrote Steal Like an Artist,, said that “Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities.” That was the problem. Normally, I am holding myself back… Trying to get to the essence of Dad Strength without burying you under what author, Stephen Fry, calls “a towering wall of grey piffle.” However, this time, progress was slow. Plodding. Painful.

I researched how artists have attacked this problem over the years. The way forward is often through raising the bar via constraints. You think you need to make it easier but you might need to make it harder. Dr. Seuss successfully challenged himself to write Green Eggs and Ham using only 50 words. Picasso said that "art is the elimination of the unnecessary." Finally, I found a quote from choreographer, Twyla Tharp that said, “Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box.”

So, I crafted some creative constraints, made things harder and weirder. And, if you are reading this, it means that the strategy worked.

If I just happened to catch you at a time where you are feeling a bit stuck, I’ll leave you with one more idea, this one from Hemingway: “All you have to do is write one true sentence.”

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A book

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battle by Steven Pressfield

This is a much-recommended book on understanding and overcoming the resistance that lives inside of you.

A Quote

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.”

― Hannah Arendt, 1951

A Dad joke

Did you hear about the teacher who never farts in public?

He’s a private tooter.

Take care of yourself, man!

Geoff Girvitz
Father, founder, physical culturist
dadstrength.com

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