Monday night, November 4th I flew back from London. As my flight landed in Boston I saw I had a text from my friend Dave. He simply said, “give me a call when you get a chance”.
I spoke to him for about 20 minutes as I waited for my luggage. Just touching base. He had been fighting leukemia for 5 years and was headed back into the hospital. He had picked up an infection.

On Tuesday we spoke briefly again. I had seen something that I knew Dave would find funny. We shared a laugh and said we would speak next week.

On Saturday November 9th at 8:08 AM David took his last breath. Although his final words were not documented rest assured they were likely wildly inappropriate and probably sarcastic.

As soon as I heard I called my wife and then a few other people who would want to know. There was a text message chain going around and it was soon apparent that Dave had spoken to many of us in the week before his death. He knew, but didn’t tell us, that he was going to die. He knew that we would feel guilty if we didn’t speak to him before he died. So he called us.

As I headed into work last week my phone rang. The caller ID said it was him. My first thought was- What a great practical joke. This is definitely something he would do. Then I thought- HOLY CRAP, A call from the dead. How did Dave pull that off? He’s got serious connections! I tentatively answered the phone. It was Kate, Dave’s wife. He had left a list of people to call. To see how WE were doing. He wanted to make sure we were Ok.

That is just Dave. Even in death, wanting to make sure we were ok. Wanting to make sure that we knew he loved us.

Dave had a wide circle of friends. People he knew from gymnastics both as a competitor and then a coach, from his time as a school teacher, a chiropractor, a skater, or just a guy in the neighborhood. We all may have met him in different places but we all know his sense of humor. His ability to make even the most benign situations funny or a funny situation inappropriate.

He loved Kate, he loved his family, he loved his friends and he loved French Fries. Not necessarily in that order.

Dave liked clean endings but everyone has regrets in life. His regrets were few but may include mixing tequila shots and Yuengling and a hot dog of questionable origin at a camp in Huguenot, NY.

Dave was active and loved music, dancing, roller skating, and gymnastics. If there was music on he was moving to it. He was the DJ at my wedding reception. Every time the music slowed down and I walked by- he thrust a drink into my hand and we toasted. After the reception my wife and I went off on our honeymoon. Apparently the reception after party he helped organize lasted for days in our apartment. We found empty bottles in cabinets, under the couch, in closets for about a year. They put our LIVE fish in a blender! (thankfully never plugged it in and turned it on).

On Tuesday, November 19 we held an informal celebration of his life at the Harlem Tavern in NYC. People came in from New Hampshire, WAY upstate NY, Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, and throughout NYC and the boroughs.

It was really great seeing everyone. People who I grew up with but haven’t seen in decades. I met people Dave had gone to pre-school with. I met his sister who I had never met. People from around his neighborhood. People from the NYC skating scene.
There was laughter, tears, stories, more tears, more laughter and a potential for too much alcohol and some bad decisions. Dave would have been proud.

Dave never wanted to be the center of attention. He was more the guy on the side making wise ass comments. Someone put a photo of Dave in a glass. We toasted with him often.

It is heartbreaking to think that many of us are not going to see each other until someone else dies.

Dave was the one who kept us in touch through e-mails and text messages.

When I die I hope I face it with the dignity, compassion and pure thoughtfulness that he did.

I hope that I am able to make an impact in as many lives as he did. And continues to do.

While I was on the train back from NYC the person sitting next to me noticed I was upset (and possibly REALLY hungover). I told her I was heading home after a celebration of life for a friend who had passed. Her toddler asked, “Mom, what is dying?”

What is dying
I am standing on the seashore, a ship sails in the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.
She is an object of beauty and I stand watching her till at last she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says: “She is gone.”
Gone!
Where?
Gone from my sight that is all.
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her, and just at the moment when someone at my side says,
“She is gone”
there are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout:
“There she comes!”
and that is dying.

May you rest in peace my friend. We all loved you.

Gymnastics May Help Children Handle Anxiety

October 16, 2019 by Tony Retrosi Leave a Comment

As I was reading the newspaper this morning there was an article on Rising Anxiety and Depression in schools.

In the 25 years I have owned ATLANTIC GYMNASTICS I have seen tens of thousands of children come through the doors. The past few years I have noticed increased anxiety levels in the children.

Current issues in society are really having an effect on the anxiety our children are feeling. Within the first few days of school our children will practice an ACTIVE SHOOTER DRILL. Never before have our children been faced with such stress.

There are things that we as parents can do to help them with anxiety.

Get Back to Basics

Your anxious child doesn’t need to play every sport and attend every party. They do need to slow down and focus on basic health needs:

Getting a good nights sleep
Healthy meals
Plenty of water
Outdoor free play (without a parent hovering over them)
Daily exercise (of course I will recommend gymnastics but think riding bikes, playing at the park, etc.)
Downtime to decompress

We need to be careful that we are not passing on our anxiety to them. Kids look to their parents for information about how to interpret new or ambiguous situations; if a parent seems consistently anxious and fearful, the child will determine that a variety of scenarios are unsafe. As parents we need to help our children face new and uncomfortable situations without freaking them out. They need to know there are acceptable risks in the world.

Gymnastics is all about acceptable risks. Getting out of your comfort zone, accepting and overcoming challenges. I have seen many children come into the gym afraid to leave their parents side. Afraid to join the class. Slowly they learn to explore on their own. To figure out how their body feels upside down and in the air. They begin to understand that the anxiety they feel is just their body and mind letting them know that something new is going on. It’s not bad or good. It’s just NEW. Through small, progressive steps the children begin to gain confidence and build resilience.

Some helpful tips from Child Mind Institute.

1. The goal isn’t to eliminate anxiety, but to help a child manage it.

None of us wants to see a child unhappy, but the best way to help kids overcome anxiety isn’t to try to remove stressors that trigger it. It’s to help them learn to tolerate their anxiety and function as well as they can, even when they’re anxious. And as a byproduct of that, the anxiety will decrease or fall away over time.

2. Don’t avoid things just because they make a child anxious.

Helping children avoid the things they are afraid of will make them feel better in the short term, but it reinforces the anxiety over the long run. If a child in an uncomfortable situation gets upset, starts to cry—not to be manipulative, but just because that’s how she feels—and her parents whisk her away, or remove the thing she’s afraid of, she’s learned that coping mechanism, and that cycle has the potential to repeat itself.

3. Express positive—but realistic—expectations.

You can’t promise a child that his fears are unrealistic—that he won’t fail a test, that he’ll have fun ice skating, or that another child won’t laugh at him during show & tell. But you can express confidence that he’s going to be okay, he will be able to manage it, and that, as he faces his fears, the anxiety level will drop over time. This gives him confidence that your expectations are realistic, and that you’re not going to ask him to do something he can’t handle.

4. Respect her feelings, but don’t empower them.

It’s important to understand that validation doesn’t always mean agreement. So if a child is terrified about going to the doctor because she’s due for a shot, you don’t want to belittle her fears, but you also don’t want to amplify them.You want to listen and be empathetic, help her understand what she’s anxious about, and encourage her to feel that she can face her fears. The message you want to send is, “I know you’re scared, and that’s okay, and I’m here, and I’m going to help you get through this.”

5. Don’t ask leading questions.

Encourage your child to talk about his feelings, but try not to ask leading questions— “Are you anxious about the big test? Are you worried about the science fair?” To avoid feeding the cycle of anxiety, just ask open-ended questions: “How are you feeling about the science fair?”

6. Don’t reinforce the child’s fears.

You don’t want to say with your tone of voice or body language: “Maybe this is something that you should be afraid of.” Let’s say a child has had a negative experience with a dog. Next time she’s around a dog, you might be anxious about how she will respond, and you might unintentionally send a message that she should, indeed, be worried.

7. Encourage the child to tolerate her anxiety.

Let your child know that you appreciate the work it takes to tolerate anxiety in order to do what he wants or needs to do. It’s really encouraging him to engage in life and to let the anxiety take its natural curve. We call it the “habituation curve”—it will drop over time as he continues to have contact with the stressor. It might not drop to zero, it might not drop as quickly as you would like, but that’s how we get over our fears.

8. Try to keep the anticipatory period short.

When we’re afraid of something, the hardest time is really before we do it. So another rule of thumb for parents is to really try to eliminate or reduce the anticipatory period. If a child is nervous about going to a doctor’s appointment, you don’t want to launch into a discussion about it two hours before you go; that’s likely to get your child more keyed up. So just try to shorten that period to a minimum.

9. Think things through with the child.

Sometimes it helps to talk through what would happen if a child’s fear came true—how would she handle it? A child who’s anxious about separating from her parents might worry about what would happen if they didn’t come to pick her up. So we talk about that. If your mom doesn’t come at the end of soccer practice, what would you do? “Well I would tell the coach my mom’s not here.” And what do you think the coach would do? “Well he would call my mom. Or he would wait with me.” A child who’s afraid that a stranger might be sent to pick her up can have a code word from her parents that anyone they sent would know. For some kids, having a plan can reduce the uncertainty in a healthy, effective way.

10. Try to model healthy ways of handling anxiety.

There are multiple ways you can help kids handle anxiety by letting them see how you cope with anxiety yourself. Kids are perceptive, and they’re going to take it in if you keep complaining on the phone to a friend that you can’t handle the stress or the anxiety. I’m not saying to pretend that you don’t have stress and anxiety, but let kids hear or see you managing it calmly, tolerating it, feeling good about getting through it.

When we see children walk into the gym for the first time, EVERYTHING is NEW and UNCOMFORTABLE. But it is also FUN and EXCITING. Children in the gym learn to overcome their fears. They learn that NEW and UNCOMFORTABLE can turn into FUN and EXCITING. These are lessons that can follow them in life.

In the gym children learn to persevere, to trust that they can overcome their natural anxiety. They may end up really loving something that was initially scary and uncomfortable. As a gymnast, when I was feeling super stressed and anxious over a new skill or a performance, I came to understand that this was just my body and mind saying. “Hey something important is going on here, pay attention”. As an adult, that feeling is just part of my everyday routine, whether I am TEACHING a new skill or getting up to speak in front of a room full of people.

The Twisty Physics of Simone Biles’ Historic Triple-Double | WIRED

October 15, 2019 by Tony Retrosi Leave a Comment

The Twisty Physics of Simone Biles’ Historic Triple-Double The star gymnast appears to defy physics in her epic tumbling pass. Here’s how she managed to jump, twist, and flip her way into sports legend. JAMIE SQUIRE/GETTY IMAGES What. The. Heck. Did you see that? Simone Biles appears to defy the laws of physics with this epic tumbling pass from the 2019 US Gymnastics Championships. It’s called a triple-double. That means she rotates around an axis going through her hips twice while at the same time rotatin

Source: The Twisty Physics of Simone Biles’ Historic Triple-Double | WIRED

What. The. Heck. Did you see that? Simone Biles appears to defy the laws of physics with this epic tumbling pass from the 2019 US Gymnastics Championships. It’s called a triple-double. That means she rotates around an axis going through her hips twice while at the same time rotating about an axis going from head to toe THREE times. Yes, it’s difficult—but it doesn’t defy physics, it uses physics.

Let’s go over the three key parts of this move. You can follow the physics, but I don’t recommend trying this triple-double in your backyard.

Jumping

If you want to do any kind of flip, you pretty much need to be off the ground for some amount of time. Otherwise, you are just a human rolling around on the floor. That might be fun, but it’s not really tumbling.

Once a human leaves the floor, there is essentially only one force acting on him or her—the gravitational force. This is a downward-pulling force that depends on the local gravitational field (g = 9.8 Newtons per kilogram) and the mass of the human (or whatever object). This constant downward force causes a person to accelerate downward. But because both the force and the acceleration depend on mass, the mass cancels out. All free-falling objects on the surface of the Earth have the same acceleration of -9.8 m/s².

Rhett Allain, an Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, writes about physics for WIRED.

The other great thing about the gravitational force is that it only acts in the vertical direction. This means that there are no net forces in the horizontal direction. With no net force, there is no CHANGE in velocity. Once she’s in the air, Simone’s center of mass will move along with a constant speed—with the same horizontal velocity at which she was running before the jump.

But in the vertical direction, she launches upward with some vertical velocity. This velocity decreases as she travels up until it reaches zero at the highest point of the jump. At that point, she starts moving down and increasing in speed until she returns to the floor.

Since this motion has a constant acceleration, we can model it with what’s called a “kinematic equation.” It is a relationship between position, velocity, and time and it looks like this.

For this tumbling pass, we know Simone’s starting and ending position—they are the same, so let’s just say they are both zero. Now, if I know the total time, I can find her initial upward velocity. Looking at the video (and using Tracker Video Analysis), I get a total in-air time of 1.18 seconds. Yes, it seems longer than that—but that’s an impressive hang-time. This gives a launch speed of 5.78 meters per second (that’s about 13 mph).

What if she increased this launch speed to 7 m/s? That would give her a hang time of 1.43 seconds. Yes, that’s still super short. The key here is that it’s really hard to be in the air for a long time. If you want to do some twists in the air, you need to focus on rotating faster more than on staying in the air longer. Jumping is hard.

Flipping

Just to be clear on terminology—a flip is a rotation of a human around an axis that runs through your hips. Here is an animation I made for an older post (yes, this is created in python with GlowScript).

The rotation is represented by the red arrow, which points along the axis of rotation. That’s a flip.

The key here is to rotate your body all the way around that axis while in the air. If you don’t do a full rotation, bad things happen. Fortunately for Simone Biles, she has a head start in the flipping aspect of this tumbling move. She’s already rotating before the jump even starts. During the moves before the triple-double she starts off with a fairly significant rotation rate of about 11.8 radians per second (1.9 rotations per second).

Once she’s in the air, she speeds up slightly to about 12.2 rad/s by tucking in her arms and legs. In the absence of external torque, she will have a constant angular momentum. Angular momentum is a measure of the rotation of an object that takes into account both the rotation rate and the distribution of mass. Since some of her body mass moves closer to the axis of rotation, the mass influence on the angular momentum decreases. To conserve angular momentum, the rotation rate must increase. This is why a “tuck” flip is easier than a layout (where the body remains straight).

Twisting

The last element of this triple-double is the triple twist. A twist is a rotation of the human body about an axis that runs from head to feet. Here is an animation.

But notice there is a big difference between the twist and the flip in Simone’s gymnastics move. She was already rotating about her hips before she left the floor—but she was not already twisting. She had to add this twist on the last part of this tumbling pass. There are two ways you can twist in the air.

The first way is called a torque twist. Torque is the rotational equivalent of a force. Where a force changes the momentum of an object, torque changes the angular momentum. However, you can’t apply a torque to yourself while you are in the air—you have to do it while you are still in contact with the ground. If you push forward with one foot and back with the other foot, you will exert a torque. This torque will result in your twisting motion once you leave the ground. It’s simple. You can try it yourself.

Alas, a torque twist will only get you so far. The second option is an angular momentum twist. Once a person is in the air, he or she can change body positions. This position change will result in a non-symmetric mass distribution and produce an amazing result. Even though the angular momentum stays constant, the angular velocity (the direction of rotation) will change. If both the angular velocity (red arrow) and the angular momentum (yellow arrow) are represented with arrows, this twist would look like this

Notice that the angular momentum is constant—as it should be because there are no torques in the air. But exactly how do you do this? Notice that in the air Simone moves one arm up and one arm down? That changes her mass distribution and starts the twisting. Remember—she does THREE twists. Is that crazy? Yes, it’s a tough move. Simone does it anyway.

Your Stubborn Child Might Just Turn Out To Be More Successful And Wealthier, Says Study | Atlantic Gymnastics

October 15, 2019 by Tony Retrosi Leave a Comment

Source: Your Stubborn Child Might Just Turn Out To Be More Successful And Wealthier, Says Study | Atlantic Gymnastics

Your Stubborn Child Might Just Turn Out To Be More Successful And Wealthier, Says Study

1. Stay Calm, Listen To, And Understand Your Child

It’s normal to feel frustrated when our children don’t quickly acquiesce to our rules or demands, but it’s critically important that as parents we do our best to stay calm in such situations, and attempt to understand the reasoning of our little ones. Keep a calm voice, refrain from yelling, and listen with your heart as to why your child refuses to wear their shirt today. If it’s because their favorite superhero also doesn’t wear a shirt, then their pure hearts are actually motivated towards a good cause. Let them know that you understand, and praise them that they too are a hero of kindness and justice, and see if you can negotiate a little by explaining that even superman wears regular clothes during the day, and a cape when he needs to help someone.

2. Establish A Connection. Don’t Impose Your Will

Often, we may feel inclined to overpower a defiant child. Yet doing this often does more harm than good for our children and leads to resentment and further problems. Teach your child empathy, so that they too become kind and caring, and give them consequences when they go too far. Connect heart-to-heart with your child through listening and understanding, and by being on the same team as our child we often disarm their desire to rebel. Show them that we too struggle with putting our empty cup in the sink, but with a hero’s passion and determination, together we can do it!

3. Encourage Their Drive Towards A Good Cause: Inspire Them

If parents can use positive reinforcement to motivate their children to do well in school or can help direct their passion and drive towards a meaningful and compassionate purpose, these children can become wonderful and motivated leaders who will do the right thing, even if they have to do it alone. Help them pick up trash around the neighborhood to save the environment, help them learn to be kind and sit with the lonely kid in the cafeteria, help them volunteer to help feed the homeless, help them walk the puppies at an animal shelter. These successful and stubborn children won’t give up easily, and spend more time and energy finding valuable solutions when compared to their passive peers.

Author Maureen Healy gives some wonderful advice on parenting Indigo children when she says, “Indigos see, feel and experience life differently than their more mainstream counterparts. They tend to have an usually high level of creativity, sensitivity, giftedness, and angry energy to channel. This angry or warrior energy that defines many indigos isn’t a bad thing. It is the energy that breaks down broken systems (think: public school systems) and creates better ways of doing things. Of course, the challenge is to raise indigo kids to use their incredibly sensitive, highly responsive, and fierce energy as a force for good.”

So the next time your beloved little one comes to you to negotiate a new bedtime, take a deep breath, and lovingly listen. Showing empathy and understanding towards their positive and strong willed little personalities will enable them to become more successful adults who can help to make our world a better place.

Do you have success stories you want to tell us about YOUR STUBBORN child? Let us know.

Make Coaching A Profession

October 14, 2019 by Tony Retrosi Leave a Comment

At USA Gymnastics National Congress this year a number of club owners got together by the USGCOA booth in the trade show. These club owners were discussing the shortage of coaches available through out the country. There are many reason for this. In the last few years fewer new coaches have joined our ranks. All the turbulence within the gymnastics community has kept some coaches sidelined. With coaches like Liuken, Chow and Brestyan now coaching overseas we have lost some great leaders in our sport.

With fewer coaches joining our profession there seems there seems like there are hundreds of unfilled coaching vacancies in state after state.

But we need to stop calling it a coaching shortage.

You can’t solve a problem starting with the wrong diagnosis. If I can’t buy a Porsche for $1.98, that doesn’t mean there’s an automobile shortage. If I can’t get a fine dining meal for a buck, that doesn’t mean there’s a food shortage. And if appropriately skilled humans don’t want to work for me under the conditions I’ve set, that doesn’t mean there’s a human shortage.

Calling the situation a “coaching shortage” suggests something like a crop failure or a hijacker grabbing truckloads before they can get to market. It suggests that there simply aren’t enough people out there who could do the job.

There is no reason to believe that is true. But pretending that it is true sets up justification for a variety of bad “solutions” to the shortage. “Since there aren’t enough coaches,” the reasoning goes, “then we might as well just let any warm body coach in the gym.” Some gyms have adopted the idea of letting any person with any college degree take charge of a class or group of team kids. We are lucky that we are still a field that we cannot be replaced by computers and online learning!

Some gyms instead of saying, “Well, you’d better bend to free market forces and make a better offer,” instead ask USAG to change the rules so that gyms can hire folks who have no real credentials. Some gyms have suggested that a single super coach could handle an entire gym full of gymnasts without any loss of the quality that made them super. All of these choices are less than optimal.

I believe it was Jeff Metzker who said, “It is better to be UNDERSTAFFED than POORLY STAFFED”

All of those “solutions” rest on the premise that there just aren’t enough qualified humans in the world, that the magic coach tree hasn’t borne enough fruit. Given that premise, these all seem like ways to address the problem, even if means settling for less than the high-quality coaches all students deserve.

But if we assume there are plenty of qualified people who could choose to enter our gyms and stay there for a career, then we realize that we’re dealing with an entirely different problem. Gymnasts who could choose to become coaches are choosing not to. People who could choose to stay in the gym are instead engaging in a slow-motion strike, an extended exodus, and our real problem is how to attract and retain those people.

Money is obviously an issue. Also that being a GYMNASTICS COACH is often not viewed as a profession (just ask my father). But over the past couple of years coaches have also suffered a steady drumbeat of disrespect, the repeated refrain that a guy who coaches women’s gymnastics must have a problem. That coaching gymnastics is just a stepping stone until someone can get a “real job”. The rise of “any warm body will do” solutions send the message that coaching is such a simple job that any shmoe with minimal training can do it.

Qualified people exist, but too many gyms want to pretend otherwise, in part because there is one other appealing aspect to viewing this as a coach shortage. The shortage model allows gym owners and managers to shrug and say, “Hey, they just aren’t out there. It’s not our fault.”

When the dealer won’t sell me my $1.98 Porsche, I can blame it on him and complain, “It’s not my fault he wouldn’t sell to me.” Or I can suck it up, take a look in the mirror and say, “If I want that car, I need to do better.”

As gym owners we need to make coaching a profession. Educate our staff. Make them proud of what they do. We need to charge for classes and team enough to pay our staff a sustainable wage. If we do that we will see the ranks of coaches grow. Making coaching and teaching gymnastics a competitive profession.

Customer Service. How to Stand Out in Your Area.

October 9, 2019 by Tony Retrosi Leave a Comment

I have just returned from the 2019 USGCOA Summit in Las Vegas.

It was such a pleasure being around many club owners who want to be agents of change in our sport. I spoke on “Standing Out In Your Area”. How Customer service can give you a leg up on the competition. The competition NOT being the gym across town. The competition being all the other youth sports and activities. The slide show of this lecture will be in this journal.

There were many notable speakers.
Holding Your Employees Accountable- Tom Koll
Safe Sport Expectations – Mark Busby (USAG Safe Sport),
US Center for Safe Sport – Michael Henry (USOPC Safe Sport).
Social Media- Lesley Jean
Is Retirement in The Cards- Kylie Sharp
How to Best Protect Your Business- Mark Sohn

There was an open discussion held on Safe Sport, Policies, Procedures, and Expectations. It did get a little heated with club owners voicing their concern with USAG overreaching policies. In the end it was very informative.

The most moving speaker was Cassie Rice. Confessions from a Compassionate Coach. It is impossible for me to put into words what she and Tasha spoke about. I know it was videoed and I will see if when it is edited we can post it here.

The take away from the weekend was that club owners (and coaches) need to stick together. We must be united in these times. We can no longer trash talk other gyms. Other coaches. That simply is not good for the sport.

We are Celebrating our Gymnastics Coaches!

September 13, 2019 by Tony Retrosi Leave a Comment

USGCA, USECA and leading industry suppliers are initiating the FIRST Annual National Gym Coaches Week to celebrate coaches in all gymnastics disciplines!

National Gym Coaches Week is an opportunity to celebrate the outstanding impact our current gymnastics coaches have in ensuring gymnasts are properly trained and developed with care and safety. From September 15-21, 2019 we encourage “thank you’s” from athletes and parents to the coaches who call the gymnastics industry home. Come celebrate with us the inaugural National Coaches Week!

STEP ONE

Gym owner or parent orders their $25 box of National Gym Coaches Week supplies from USGCA. Orders start shipping August 15.

STEP TWO

During the week of September 15 – 21, 2019, athletes express their “thanks” to their coach(es) using the “Thank you, Coach” post cards.

STEP 3

Between September 15-21, 2019, using hashtag, #ThanksUSAGymCoach post single picture of each coach on gym’s Facebook page.

STEP FOUR

Around October 1, 2019, USGCA will award the selected winners with their prize! Club is awarded $150 and the coach is awarded $350.

FIND OUT MORE

Coaches Cups, A Summer Thank You.

September 13, 2019 by Tony Retrosi Leave a Comment

This is what one of the parents brought into the gym all summer. The fruit was Super appreciated by the coaching staff BUT ALSO they all have the memes stuck on the walls by their desks.

Coach Cups: Small cups of fruit prepared each Friday for all our coaches as a small gesture of thanks. Sweat free. Chalk free. Flavor full. …. and with the occasional laugh from a funny meme attached to the cup.

It really is a small gesture for our coaches who spend their summer in a hot, sweaty, sticky gym filled with chalk dust and hot, sweaty, and sticky young women athletes. You bring positivity every single day, and it matters. You encourage. You inspire. You build confidence. You build trust to help these young women hone physics and defy gravity when they’d all probably rather be sleeping in or tanning at the beach. My guess is that all of you might also prefer an occasional summer day on the beach to the hot, sticky gym.

I see what you bring. I see it in my daughter and her teammates. You spend more time with these girls often than their families do, and your influence is more meaningful than you can imagine. The skills they gain are cool, but the longer lasting impact is in the growth of character traits – perseverance, determination and confidence. Your presence in these young ladies’ lives encourages them to believe they can do anything.

The fruit cup and the laugh is really just very small gesture of my heartfelt appreciation for ‘bringing it’ all summer long. “Building Champions for Everyday Life” is the signage that adorns the front of our gym. Thank you for daily mentoring these young women push their own mental limits and shatter their own glass ceilings, for doing things think they can’t.

Here are some of the others from the summer.

Be a Rebel!

August 26, 2019 by Tony Retrosi Leave a Comment

While doing some yard work yesterday I was listening to the podcast HIDDEN BRAIN. An NPR podcast. The title of this one was REBEL WITH A CAUSE.

In the gym I am a pretty conservative guy. I tend to try to learn as much as I can and follow the paths others have followed. I take their recipe and just add my own spice. That being said- I also ask “WHY?” very often. I find it pointless to do a drill that I do not understand.

I have met many coaches who rebel for the sake of rebelling. They want to “do it their own way” or they have a disagreement with a colleague and want to rebel. I have worked with some great people and some real nut jobs. BUT I never lost sight of the fact that if we were going to succeed we needed to be going in the same direction. Every ship can have only one captain but all sailers need to do their job for the ship to sail. It is OK to rebel against the norm and come up with a creative solution to a problem as long as you keep your on on the overall goal of the program.

Someways to rebel in the gym that could lead to success

1. Identify your differences and personal talents.

Take inventory of what makes you unique. What is it that makes you different from other coaches? Leverage what you have that most others don’t, and let it be known.

Set yourself apart. It is OK to not conform and be the same as others. Share what you are good at. Allow yourself to be you and not let others put you in a box.

2. Be curious.

Questions allow the other coaches to better understand you and avoid misunderstandings. Let your mind and interests lead you to new information and opportunities.

3. Say “yes,” not “no.”

Saying “yes” expands opportunities. Saying “no” closes off opportunities. Don’t say “no” because you think you should. Give yourself the liberty to say “yes” to what you want. When I am dealing with other coaches or parents I try to ALWAYS say YES. But that YES also has consequences. An extreme example from a parent:

“Can my daughter be a level 10 and only work out 3 days a week”

Answer, “YES. Although she will probably NOT be able to compete”

Don’t close doors before they even open

4. Don’t tether yourself to what you have learned.

Don’t get stuck in the past. Don’t let what you have learned hinder you from looking to the future. If something you hear is inconsistent with what you learned, check your bias towards doing what you know or think is comfortable. Doing what is comfortable may not be the best decision. Just because something is new does not make it less true or more risky. As Professor Gino says, “learn everything and then forget everything.” Don’t restrain yourself.

5. Focus on what can be done, not what cannot be done.

Limited options can make things easier for you. You don’t have to think about tons of scenarios. Instead, you can thoughtfully consider the few that exist. Don’t view your limitations as a roadblock but rather an opportunity to focus on a few options.

Only you can be you. Capitalize on your uniqueness to become a groundbreaker and ask questions, be open to new information and see the possibilities.