An eye-opening article in The New York Times about the high cost of youth sports these days. The biggest news of the article is the poor financial return on investment (e.g., college scholarship, professional or Olympic career) that comes from pouring $$$ into your children's athletic experiences. Plus, the self-serving and corrupt "youth sport industrial [...]
A wonderful article in The New York Times about the importance of allowing your children to explore, risk, and fail. A must-read in today's world of over-involved and fearful parents who try to protect their children from dangers that don't exist and experiences that will actually make them more confident, capable and resilient people.
You want to see an aggressive mindset and intensity? Watch the first 10 seconds of this video of Lindsey's World Cup SG victory (scroll down). Notice the pole clicking, breathing, constant movement, pole-strap-adjustment "twitch", and attacking out of the start to the first gate.
One of the first questions that I ask athletes and coaches I work with is: Should you compete like you practice or practice like you compete? By far, the most frequent response is: You should compete like you practice. This answer seems perfectly reasonable if you think about it. When you practice, you’re relaxed, feel [...]
Taylor family at the 2014 Sugar Bowl Tiki Race Back in 2011, I wrote an article titled “Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Ski Racers, in which I described my internal conflict about whether I wanted my two daughters (then ages 5 and 3, now 9 and 7) to become [...]
My next book, Dance Psychology for Artistic and Performance Excellence, will be published in a few months. My publisher has provided two wonderful choices for the cover design. We just can't choose, so we decided to 'crowdsource' the decision. Cover #1 [...]
Children love the Earth. They really do hug trees. Kids care in the purest and sweetest way for birds, flowers, plants, and animals. To see children smell a flower, marvel at a bee buzzing around them, and jump with joy at seeing a deer are just a few of the ways that children express their [...]
One of the first questions that I ask racers and coaches I work with is: Should you race like you train or train like you race? By far, the most frequent response is: You should race like you train. This answer seems perfectly reasonable if you think about it. When you train, you’re relaxed, feel [...]
If you haven't already seen it, watch this Today Show segment about the recent deaths of 2 young ski racers, Ronnie Berlack and Bryce Astle. Powerful, touching, inspiring, painful...Get ready to cry.
We in the ski racing community take our sport pretty darned seriously. We are driven by our passion for ski racing and our profound desire to help young racers achieve their goals. But sometimes that seriousness can shift from a healthy commitment to a loss of perspective. For example, this past weekend, I saw 8 [...]