Vince Lombardi was famous for winning Super Bowls with the Packers.
Every year he would walk into the locker room and stare at the professional football players, even after coming off of winning championships, and say
“Gentlemen, this is a football.”
Sounds weird,
What he was expressing was the need to revisit the basics and be good at the little things…..
And never to believe we are too good to work on the basics.
I had a coach in prep school who would make us start practice every day with the three man weave.
Its usually one of the first drills you learn with playing basketball.
Three guys and the basic rule is pass and go behind.
He added a wrinkle. The ball could never touch the floor, and you had to make two round trips or you started over.
This required a lot of extra hustle. The guy who makes the layup can’t catch the ball out of the net, you have to hit the guy perfectly in stride for a layup and the ball can’t touch the floor!
We were all guys that were recruited to play Div I…….and we struggled with this drill.
He wanted us to do the basics, and he wanted them done perfectly.
I was thinking about what I need to revisit in 2019 and what we could do better at.
The answer I came up with………EVERYTHING.
2019 isn’t just a year for us to set goals and try to achieve new heights, it’s a year to double down on the little things and master the basics.
Coach Glassman wrote something years ago and he said:
“Stick to the basics and when you feel you’ve mastered them, it’s time to start all over again, begin anew, again with the basics, this time paying closer attention.”
When we think we are good at our job, we should find out what details we ignore
When we think we understand nutrition is dialed in, we should dive deeper into the minutia
When we think our movement is good, we should try to make it perfect
When we think we communicate well, we should figure out more/better ways to do it.
Mastering the basics is what separates success from failure on the big stage or in crunch time.
The problem is that its boring.
So we have to learn to love mastering things we are already “good” at.
So here’s a pushing into the new year and revisiting the basics
This time, paying closer attention.
Fern
