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When Arthur Ashe plays tennis, his purpose each day is to play the game in a way he has never played it before. It may be a backhand he uses, one that he may never have used before in that circumstance. His play is a fresh integration of his world at the instant of action. A really great scientist has the whole past at his disposal. At any instant he is rebuilding the world, molecule by molecule, in his subconscious. That is what you want in an athlete or a scientist.
The 7 Practices of Exceptional Student Athletes is an excellent book for student athletes to understand what it takes to be successful. It covers all phases of life, and it is filled with wonderful wisdom. Illustrated by brilliant examples of very successful people, The 7 Practices of Exceptional Student Athletes forces student athletes to use their common sense as they work to achieve their goals. Raven Magwood is a very talented person and an extremely gifted writer.
Every time a player goes out to ply his trade he's got to play from the ground up - from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That's O.K. You've got to be smart to be Number One in any business. But more important, you've got to play with you heart - with every fiber of your body. If you're lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he's never going to come off the field second.
I think it's interesting that a lot of times people want celebrities to give back in the way that they want them to give back. They want them to give money to the cause they think is important and when that doesn't happen they say, "Oh, they're not doing anything." People think celebrities are going to solve their problems. People think because someone is famous or an athlete or a politician that the solution begins with them. All they're there to do is sell you a product.
I came out as a gay as I have earned myself respect as an athlete. I have only lost 2 out of 22 professional fights. I knocked out some of my opponents in the first round. But I never really received respect as a person. That's something I had come to realize over the past few years. The end of my boxing career is no longer that far off, and it was time for me to make peace with myself. And there was a second reason for me to come out: I hoped it would make me a better boxer.
O.J. Simpson was primarily interested in O.J. His rise to fame in the late '60s coincided with the period where black athletes were more outspoken and political than in any era. You're talking about the generation of black athletes that came about after Jackie Robinson. Athletes after that were just happy to find a place in sports. But when you got to the mid-'60s, you had athletes like Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali, who were very outspoken on the issues of race and civil rights.
I often hear that it's unfair that athletes should make what they make versus teachers, because who's more important. But that's not how the market works. Markets don't sign things. You know what you're worth is what somebody will pay you. It's not some arbitrary - the purpose of a company is not to create jobs and health care. That's not why they exist. And it's not to create fairness or any of that. That's not why people form businesses and try to sell a service or a product.
I most certainly believe that when you're an athlete, that really translates to all sports. You just understand it, your body understands it, and your mind understands it. And you just - it just clicks. I've found that happening when I play other sports. I've seen it, like when I've hit the ball with other professional athletes, and you can see they're just learning so quickly. It's just something that's in their blood. So I think it was in my parents' blood and they understood.
As a believer, I know that Jesus Christ has a plan and it's not going to be my plan. It's not always succeeding and looking back it's amazing looking back to see how God works in mysterious ways, not always good ways, rough ways but those rough times, those rough patches, and those swamps and all those things that I went through are looking back, were such an incredible life lessons for me not only to shape and build me as an athlete but most importantly, my character as a person.
Whether I'm on the road or off the road it's really important for me mentally and physically. Physically, when I'm on the road, I work with men that love to eat - I work with former athletes, with men who love to indulge on the road, so I eat like a guy. I have four appetizers, I try their entrees, I eat mine, I like dessert. So I have to make sure that physically, I try to stay in shape. I'm always doing some sort of a workout, and then mentally it just helps a lot with the stress.
We tend to look at successful athletes and make them almost bigger than life. I have seen many young men who have achieved greatness. I have also seen those who have come up a little short of their potential. I do know that those who succeed have been able to recognize within themselves the potential to do something well and then work hard to prepare themselves for that eventual opportunity. Others wait for the opportunity to come and then start to work, thus coming up a little short.
Ultimately, any type of discipline is flawed because it keeps the person who is being disciplined inept. As long as the experience is happening to you, while it is imposed on you, it is not your dream. When discipline is administered externally, the participant is dependent on the administrator of the discipline. When discipline is administered internally, the athlete becomes a victim of the structure of the discipline. Either way, only the discipline, not the dream, is being pursued.
The biggest concern with female athletes is they don't naturally compete. And so I think a part of what we do here exceptionally well that separates us from other programs is we train them to compete. So a huge challenge in women's athletics is to get them to compete against their teammates and friends in practice with the same intensity they compete with their bitter rivals. So that's a huge challenge for me, to get the women in practice to go after each other the way you would a rival
Just as the education of nerve and sinew is vital to the excellent athlete and education of the mind is vital to the scholar, education of the conscience is vital to the truly proactive, highly effective person. Training and educating the conscience, however, requires even greater concentration, more balanced discipline, more consistently honest living. It requires regular feasting on inspiring literature, thinking noble thoughts and, above all, living in harmony with its still small voice.
If you want to make it as a sportsperson - Become knowledgeable in the sport you want to participate in. Think about the sport and what it can offer in its entirety. You shouldn't want to become a professional sportsperson because of the money. There's a lot more to gain from being involved in sport. Work hard to get what you want. If it's your ambition, go for it. You don't have to be the best in the world to make it as an elite athlete. You need to be a grafter and be prepared to sacrifice.
Anybody who is a professional athlete who has a social media account on any of the networks, when they sign up for that account, they subject themselves to all of the criticisms and all of the praises that may or may not be out there. So you can't get on social media and complain about the people because that's what you know you're dealing with. You have to hear it. You don't have to respond. Me personally, I don't respond to the negativity. It's gonna be there. I read it. It keeps me grounded.
A good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can't tell the dancer from the dance. It happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior intelligence of the body.
For younger athletes - women, especially, if it's a male-dominated sport - I'd say be very careful to just be true to yourself. I spent a lot of time trying to emulate how a male wrestler was. They're tough, they're very confident, they don't show a lot of emotion, and they push through everything. That's not me at all. I'm a wrestler but I have emotions, I'm sensitive. When I stopped trying to be something that I wasn't, I felt like I was freeing myself up to find ways to make it work for myself.
When a lot of athletes get done playing, they end up in some really tough positions. They have a hard time transitioning because their identity is wrapped up in who they are as a player and what they do rather than who they can be in Christ. We desire to help people understand the invitation that God has given each one of us as Christ followers to be a part of this global redemptive story. If you can't give your life to something with meaning and purpose of that magnitude then there's nothing there.
I want to see all the countries in the world and learn all the languages. I want to have thousands of friends and I want all my friends to be different. I want to play six instruments. I want to be the best in the world at two things. I want to be a great athlete and I want to be a great surgeon. I need to practice very hard every day. I need to sleep as little as possible. I need to read at least one major book every week. And I need to remember that my seventy years are going to go by too quickly.
Boxing is a glorious sport to watch and boxers are incredible, heroic athletes, but it's also, to be honest, a stupid game to play. Even the winners can end up with crippling brain damage. In a lot of ways, hustling is the same. But you learn something special from playing the most difficult games, the games where winning is close to impossible and losing is catastrophic: You learn how to compete as if your life depended on it. That's the lesson I brought with me to the so-called "legitimate" world.
Heartbreak is our indication of sincerity: in a love relationship, in a work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is just as much an essence and emblem of care as the spiritual athlete's quick but abstract ability to let go... But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.
I think that we ill-prepare athletes from the very beginning. From the moment they pick up a ball or kick or whatever it is they're doing. We ill-prepare them. Especially with the major sports. What you see is this cycle of entitlement that gets thrown their way, so the kid who is in junior high and hasn't finished his test, but still gets to play because he is an athlete, fails the test and still gets to play because they're an athlete, gets to get away with not doing chores at home because they've got practice.
"She (Minnie Ruth Solomon) was unusual because even though I knew her family was as poor as ours, nothing she said or did seemed touched by that. Or by prejudice. Or by anything the world said or did. It was as if she had something inside her that somehow made all that not count. I fell in love with her some the first time we ever talked, and a little bit more every time after that until I thought I couldn't love her more than I did. And when I felt that way, I asked her to marry me . . . and she said she would."
To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten. The first 'second' is when you come out of the blocks. The next is when you look up and take your first few strides to attain gain position. By that time the race is actually about half over. The final 'second' - the longest slice of time in the world for an athlete - is that last half of the race, when you really bear down and see what you're made of. It seems to take an eternity, yet is all over before you can think what's happening.
It is said that courage isn’t the absence of fear but the fortitude to confront fear. And as long as homophobia continues to be an accepted element of the locker room culture and homophobic language a coach’s motivational tool, we can never dismiss the courage it takes for an athlete-on any level-to be openly gay. Bobby Blair may not be a household name, but his journey-from frightened collegiate athlete to empowered advocate-is one that has an important lesson for anyone who believes in the unifying power of sports.
Persecution has come upon us, right honorable brethren, and persecution in the severest form. Shepherds are persecuted that their flocks may be scattered. And the worst of all is that those who are being treated ill cannot accept their sufferings in proof of their testimony, nor can the people reverence the athletes as in the army of martyrs, because the name of Christians is applied to the persecutors. The one charge which is now sure to secure severe punishment is the careful keeping of the traditions of the Fathers.
Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) 'meet and exceed requirements' for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.
Individual and team discipline ultimately come down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time. Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence. Said in yet another way, discipline is to an athlete what scales are to a musician. Mastering the scales is what allows the musician to perform music. Mastering the skills of self discipline is what enables a person to become an accomplished elite athlete.
Religions have found that if you behave in a certain way, if you sort of perform certain rituals that expand your mind and make you realize that will make you realize and help you to seguey into transcendence and perform certain acts, adopt a certain lifestyle, you develop new capacities of mind and heart, just like the dancer, or the athlete that make you into a whole human being and principle after one of these disciplines right across the board in all of the faiths is compassion, the ability to feel with the other person.
It has been our experience that if a young man decides to go on a mission, he can not only play well when he returns, he will often play better. If an athlete could play well before he went on a mission, he will definitely play well when he returns; and, if an athlete could not play well before his mission, he probably won't play well when he returns. However, his chances of playing well are perhaps better if he goes because he will return with . . . better work habits, and a better knowledge of what it takes to be successful.
Oscar Pistorius is now infamous for reasons that I think everybody knows about, but when I hit on his story and put it in the book, what I found fascinating was a description, from one of the scientists who helped Pistorius, of what the Paralympics will become. Because they don't place any restriction on enhancements for athletes, in the very near future the Paralympics will bear a closer resemblance to NASCAR than to the traditional Olympics. There will be a human-machine melding that will result in crazy feats of athleticism.
This killing of Israel athletes is an act of war. And if there's one place that war doesn't belong, it's here. 1200 years. From 776 B.C. to 393 A.D., your fellow Olympians laid down their arms to take part in these games. They understood there was more honor in out running a man than in killing him. I hope the competition will resume, and if it does, you must not think that running or throwing or jumping is frivelous. The games were once your fellow Olympians answer to war – competition, not conquest. Now, they must be your answer.
In boxing, where most of the guys are from lower-class backgrounds and have darker skin than most of the fans, one might fear that the athletes are being exploited. But that narrative doesn't hold up very well in the world of MMA, where 99 percent of fighters are amateurs who will never earn a dime. They aren't seeking fame and fortune. For the most part, these guys are fighting because they want to and because it gives them an opportunity to strive for something big in their lives. It gives them a chance to become their best selves.
(About plan during Texas Relays) Have fun, be healthy, and enjoy the Relays for what it is. I'll just try to use the crowd and get some adrenaline and have a good time; just work on some things in this environment. This is almost a championship environment when you get down to it- with all of the fans, the energy and the adrenaline you get lining up. It's good rehearsal for the bigger stages and it's the season opener. This is the starting point. We're just looking for some starting points and to use some adrenaline to our advantage.
The sport has changed so much since 2004, it's incredible. If you look even at me, the way I'm fencing now compared to 2004, it's a completely different sport. They've changed so many things just with what [the referees] are calling, they've changed the timing of the [scoring] lights. You always have to be evolving as a fencer. The Olympics is interesting because it's such a small field compared to what we're used to. This world championships, I think we had a hundred and something [athletes]. The Olympics is going to be less than 32.
For those of us who take literature very seriously, picking up a work of fiction is the start of an adventure comparable in anticipatory excitement to what I imagine is felt by an athlete warming up for a competition, a mountain climber preparing for the ascent: it is the beginning of a process whose outcome is unknown, one that promises the thrill and elation of success but may as easily end in bitter disappointment. Committed readers realize at a certain point that literature is where we have learned a good part of the little we know about living.
My general rule, which I have followed throughout my coaching career, is that everyone doesn't necessarily get treated the same way, because I'm not sure that's possible. But everyone has to be treated fairly. Moreover, they have to know and trust that they will be treated fairly. Dennis Green, NFL Coach There's nothing worse than the feeling of wishing you had another chance at a play because you weren't ready. Every athlete has those feelings to mull over, and over, and over... Don't even expose yourself to the possibility of being caught off-guard.
I never really knew what it meant, to win, until one day I was flying on the Phoenix Suns airplane, the team plane, on the way to Chicago. I was talking to Danny Ainge on this flight, and he was talking about the concept of knowing how to win. And so he proceeded to give me from his perspective as an athlete, and now he's a coach, what the whole concept of knowing how to win is, and he said part of it is rooted in experience, the experience of winning, but it's attitudinal, it's the belief that you should, it's the belief that you can, it's the belief.
Recently I donated money to the establishment of the Muhammad Ali Foundation in Louisville. I regard that as a kind of payback. He smoothed the way for us. He wasnt just a great person who had conviction, but made the sport of boxing great. He was the first superstar, he made our stock rise. Without him we wouldnt have earned so much. Americans from every walk of life have contributed to the foundation: Bill Clinton, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt. Unfortunately I was the only American athlete to make a donation. Theres not enough respect in our business.
I hated motivators - never been a motivator. Motivation is like a warm bath, and you should take a bath probably, but you need more than that; you need strategy. I was a strategist, but nobody responded to that, so I was, like, "OK, what am I? I'm a coach. I'm not a guru." As an athlete, I had great coaches, and I was a better athlete than many of them, but they still were better than I was as a coach because they could see when I couldn't see. I thought, that's great, because I'm not better than anybody, but I do have the skills that I can help people.
One answer to why public interest in men's tennis has been on the wane in recent years is an essential and unpretty thugishness about the power-baseline style that's become dominant on the tour. Watch Agassi closely sometime...he's amazingly absent of finesse, with movements that look more like a heavy-metal musician's than an athlete's...what a top PBer really resembles is film of the old Soviet Union putting down a rebellion. It's awesome, but brutally so, with a grinding, faceless quality about its power that renders that power curiously dull and empty.
The letter from Dan Gilbert, the booing of the Cleveland fans, the jerseys being burned -- seeing all that was hard for them. My emotions were more mixed. It was easy to say, 'OK, I don't want to deal with these people ever again.' But then you think about the other side. What if I were a kid who looked up to an athlete, and that athlete made me want to do better in my own life, and then he left? How would I react? I've met with Dan, face-to-face, man-to-man. We've talked it out. Everybody makes mistakes. I've made mistakes as well. Who am I to hold a grudge?
I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
Experiencing this pain in my muscles and aching and going on and on is my challenge. The last three or four reps is what makes the muscles grow. This area of pain divides a champion from someone who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens. I have no fear of fainting. I do squats until I fall over and pass out. So what? It's not going to kill me. I wake up five minutes later and I'm OK. A lot of other athletes are afraid of this. So they don't pass out. They don't go on.
(About importance of focusing on one sport at a time) I've never tried to do that, we have more of a holistic approach. We want to become better decathletes and better competitors. I think for us that means just toeing the line at whatever it is we're doing that day and being confident in preparing as best as we can. Later in the year, late in the season when we have all of the thousands of reps under our belt, we can try to maybe focus on one or two things and leave some stuff off one week. Really, we like to keep everything inside the routine and part of the process.
[T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously-after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth.
The reality is that there are half a billion kids in India, in villages, who have a pre-determined life. If they're very lucky and they're a gifted athlete, maybe they can compete for the Olympics, or maybe they can get into the military. But if you're not a gifted athlete, then you're going to end up working for your family and you're going to perpetuate what your family is. It's gotten to the point, in villages, where there's no hope. And the first spark of hope is when you ask yourself the question,"What gift did God give me that I can develop and use to better my life?"
It's the same when you listen to any kind of successful athlete. My older brother has a useful name for them - he calls them lottery ticket careers. I are engaged in what he calls these lottery ticket careers. On the one hand it's very, very unlikely that you're ever going to hit it. On the other hand if you do hit it, you really hit it. You have to be engaged with it, though, maybe you're entire life. And if you never actually do hit it? You kind of jovially lie yourself along the way and recognize that it may produce things outside the hitting it kinds of goods, I suppose.
Often when people are claiming that they are not creative, they mean that they are not artists, writers, athletes, or any other media types demonstrating creativity. Or they know someone who always seems to have a lot of ideas and know that they can't match that. We all have a tendency to idolize those who create what we see in the media. I think it's better to use these people as models rather than idols, especially when these people have aspects of their lives that are similar to us. Then we can take their inspiration as we go on to be creative in our own way in our own lives.
