Category: Dear Dad

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Hey Amber… Call the POLICE! I hear some GRUNTING!

A REAL Woman Weightlifting... 700lbs on her back“CBS) WAPPINGERS FALLS, N.Y. You can lift, strain, crunch and sweat all you want at the Planet Fitness in the Dutchess County village. But whatever you do, do not grunt.”

When I read this story… I could hardly believe my ears. They go on at Planet Woosey to justify themselves:

“We’re creating an atmosphere that’s not intimidating,” said Carol Palazzolo, the gym manager, who yanked Argibay’s membership ( they called the police on this dude) on Monday.

the Big One incher!“Carol” is an odd name for a gym manager… most of the one’s I know rhyme with Spike. Here’s the story. After checking out their web site… what you really have here is a ‘ladies’ gym that invites respectable men to join in order to help carry the freight… their moto — ‘the judgement free zone’ — is sweet and nonthreatening.

Carol and Planet Fitness… you are our Weenie Award Winner of the Day… the full one incher!

Well, boys, it goes without saying that Planet Fitness is not for you. I don’t blame the pink shirts at Planet Fitness… I blame you… open your eyes! Instead of rows of power benches and squat racks… they have rows of ‘steppers’ and ‘elliptical machines’… if they have T.V.’s, be assured that they are not tuned to anything resembling football.  This is not a guy place at all…. this is a place where you can go to talk to the girls and spend the day while someone else watches the kids. 

So, men ( and real women)… what can you do? You should join a real gym … or do as we do… build your own. Then you can GRUuUUUunNNntTT to your hearts content!

Here’s what a couple others others say:

found a place better than Planet Fitness
Too Good Not to Post!
 

Roger Freberg

 

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Halloween… a time for kindness

jack-o-lanterns

 

Maybe, it’s because I once worked for two different candy companies (chocolate)… or maybe it’s because I had my own ‘grim reaper’, ‘Spock’ and ‘fox’ canvassing the neighborhood each year, but I have always enjoyed Halloween. It is one of my favorite times of the year.

It is a time in which we can show kindness to children, stranger’s children and just plain strange children.

Year after year, our neighborhood grows grayer and with that less and less children come to call… or at least that is true of many of the homes in our neighborhood. This year, we had a steady stream of young people… some had ‘heard of our house’, or wanted us to remember they came last ‘year or years ago’. You know you are getting old, when your one time trick or treaters’ kids come calling.

See's Candy... simply the bestMany people miss the joy in the eyes and the excitement of children as they place their eyes on a big piece of chocolate…. and it’s free!

I buy popularity.

My secret? I buy See’s Chocolates in bulk… so it really isn’t that expensive… and as long as my ‘competition’ continues to hand out individual ‘tic tacs’… I can still be a hero. The cost of being a hero on this holiday is easy… as compared to Christmas.

Over the years, I have discovered what the REAL favorite bars are… you can see it when you observe what the kids take … when they are free…. and what they leave behind. Nutrageous is still king of the modestly priced bars.

If you are living in an affluent community… you might try Ethel M. Chocolates…. Forest Mars, Sr. really got this one right. Legend says that Forest Senior didn’t want to go down in history as the inventory of SNICKERS and M&M’s… but as a purveyour of quality confection… and in the company named after one of his two mothers ( both named Ethel).. he achieved perfection! Ethel M Chocolates

Next year… instead of watching kids look at their treats and say ,’yuck, raisins!”… go to the next level with something Chocolate that says, ‘thanks for stopping by!’

 

Roger Freberg

 

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October is Vegetarian Awareness Month… gotta have something for soccer players, former dictators and wackos

Let's have soe REAL FoooOOOoooOoD!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

USA TODAY via Yahoo.com had a fun article written by a guy who reported the funny fact that occuring in football season is ‘Veggie Month”…. the guy writing the article summarized the position of most real men….. thusly:

Two reasons why I won’t join the “Eat No Meat Club”:

•As a country boy in South Dakota, while in high school I worked in an old-fashioned “butcher shop.” Owner Tom Rosser paid me $1 a week and all the salami I could eat. He also taught me how to cook a steak rare.

•In Europe in WW II, we all knew that that Nazi nut Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian.

Please pass the meat.

There are many reasons that being a veggie boy is nuts. Besides taste, let me say, cobalamin is one of the only things that comes only from animal protein. Several surveys have shown that most strict, long-term vegetarians are vitamin B12 deficient. The Scandanavian researchers have demonstrated clear intellectual deficits from children reaised as vegetarians.. enough said.

I don’t want to pick on the vegetarians too much… I have fond memories of vegetarians giving me their tickets to ‘steak night’ while I was an athlete at UCLA… however, it does seem like it is a ‘religious experience’ for some women. Vegetarian men? Oh, they may exist… but they play soccer.

Other Strange american Holidays in October

Here’s a word from the veggie supporters:

Metroblogging HOUSTON
Horray for Female Vegetarians  huh?
YELP!

Well, I also found a few sites that extolled the virtues of vegetarians with a philosophical and political message. I even found ‘poetry’… words like’ when I look into a plate of meat… I see a baby crying for her mother.” ….pllleeeeaaassseee!

So… to celebrate this month… I’ll fix an extra large TURDUCKEN next month for Thanksgiving… it’s a lot better than one made from ‘Tofu”.

Roger Freberg

 

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Power Of Positive Coaching!

the power of positive coaching

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Years ago, I wrote a small article on some of the obstacles, joys and pitfalls in effective coaching. After all, achieving results — long term and short term — is what it is all about. As smoeone once said, ” we pay you for results… not for trying.” The obvious is inexcapable.

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The role of a coach is similar to that of a parent or teacher.  Our common goal in these roles is to prod, motivate, and cajole youth to “be all they can be,” to borrow the Army’s slogan.  We’re not in a popularity contest, but there are both positive and negative ways to achieve our goals.  All we need is a little psychology.  In the United States, we have an unfortunate cultural tendency to ignore good behavior.  After all, we’re such good parents, coaches, and teachers that we’re ENTITLED to good behavior.  The problem with ignoring good behavior or performance is that it will undergo what psychologists refer to as “extinction.”  In extinction, unrewarded behavior simply stops.  At the same time, we tend to really pay attention to negative behaviors.  Attention can be a very positive outcome for young people, and our attention may actually increase the behaviors we want to reduce. 

 

Utilizing the Psychology of Motivation

 
How do we apply these principles to the coaching situation?  First of all, to be a good motivator, your opinion must matter to your athletes.  If they don’t care what you think of them, you’re not going to be very effective.  The key here is mutual respect.  Coaches who demonstrate respect for athletes will have their undivided attention.  Coaches who belittle and demean their athletes will be tuned out eventually.  Female athletes are especially sensitive to criticism.  The types of comments that males just take in stride can be devastating to a female athlete.  It’s also essential to be a good listener.  Many of today’s youth do not have adults in their lives with the time and inclination to really listen to them.  If you take that time to show you care how they’re doing in school and out of sports, you will have a much better idea of what makes your athletes “tick,” and they will view you as being on their side.  You will also gain the attention of your athletes if you are a regular source of positive feedback.  All young people do good things some of the time–catch them being good and make a big deal out of it!  It may be an athletic achievement, or just that they showed consideration to a teammate.  If you want them to do it again, let them know you appreciate it. 

CONCEPT 1
 
— Part of this process is setting realistic short-term goals. Goals that can be reached with a reasonable amount of effort in a short time are key. Goals can be set daily, weekly and seasonally. A reasonable question to ask any athlete is “where do you want to be by the end of the season?” From this point shorter and smaller goals can be set to reach the eventual goal. In field events, the concept of “inch by inch is a cinch” is the driving concept here.      

 

Finding an Effective Carrot

 
Now that we have their attention, how do we specifically use rewards to motivate better commitment and performance?  Coaches influence better performance through the process of “shaping” (the scientific term is the “method of successive approximations”).  In a nutshell, shaping means that you gradually raise the bar for obtaining praise and rewards.  We start novices by praising them for being alive and standing up on two feet! Seriously, at the outset, we have very broad criteria for gaining praise.  As the athlete progresses through skill levels, we become very gradually stingier and stingier with our praise and approval.  The tricky part is to know when to ask an athlete for more.  This is like walking a tightrope, and a mastery of this skill separates the truly great coaches from the ‘wannabes’.  If you are too free with praise, the athlete is not motivated enough to improve.  They’re feeling just fine at their current level of performance.  Try withholding your approval a little bit at this point and the athlete will immediately start searching for ways to regain it.  If you don’t praise enough, the athlete will get discouraged and stop trying.  Go back to square one and start praising the most important things they’re doing right, and they should get back on track.

CONCEPT 2
 
— Finding the right “carrot” is important. In my own experience, I once scratched a line in the dirt for a shot putter as a challenge. If he threw over the line, I would buy him all the Big Macs he could eat. Food was his life. I was shocked at how much he could eat! Soon, everyone wanted the same deal. It was a very successful and expensive year.

In addition, the successful coach knows each athlete very well, recognizes plateaus in performance, and caters approval and praise and reward to the individual.  It’s also very helpful to keep your athlete in touch with reality–subscribe to publications that list outstanding performances, watch your local and state lists, let your athletes know where they stand relative to everybody else.  There’s nothing worse than thinking you’re the greatest because you’re the state champion, when you don’t even make the national lists!

Using a Stick Carefully!

 

Not all the news we have to deliver to athletes is good news.  Once in awhile, an athlete will really have a disastrous performance that just can’t be ignored.  There are ways of making “correction” more palatable, however.  Instead of launching into a diatribe on flaws and faults, begin your discussion with a summary of what went right.  Something, even if it’s a minor thing, always goes right. 

CONCEPT 3

— By starting off on a positive note, you reaffirm your role as being in the athlete’s corner, and whatever corrections have to be delivered will come across as more constructive. 

Use objective methods, such as reviewing films, to make your points whenever possible.  You can’t argue with a camera, and there’s less need for face saving on the part of the athlete.  If you’re angry, wait until you’re calm to have your discussion.  Above all, the athlete doesn’t need your exasperation and despair in the middle of competition.  Nobody performs their best when they’re being yelled at.  It helps to remind ourselves that this is all about the kids–it’s their performance, not ours.  It may be difficult, as one of my friends related, to see your career being dribbled down court by an 18 year old, but the coach’s success is entirely secondary to the athletes’.

CONCEPT 4

–Our eventual goal is to make each athlete a ‘student’ of his/her events.  By modeling effective analysis of performance, and soliciting the athlete’s views, we are teaching our athletes important athletic and life skills.  The sign of a truly effective program is in the success of its athletes once they go on to the college level.

 

Becoming a Cheerleader at Competition

 
CONCEPT 5 

— Here, the teacher becomes a cheerleader.  The athletes are as prepared as they’re ever going to be when they enter the stadium.  This is not a time for last minute adjustments of form and technique.  Perceptual motor patterns operate at their best when they are on “cruise control.”       

 

Too much thinking about last minute advice will bring the automatic patterns back up to the conscious level, and everything the athlete does will slow down.  If you must fix something, try to restrict your comments to one area — in working with shot-putters you might focus on keeping their shoulders down in the middle of the ring, for instance.  Instead, a coach should focus on activating the athletes’ “fight/flight” sympathetic nervous system, which will provide the burst of energy our ancestors depended on for their very survival.  People really can do amazing feats like lifting cars off children when they are sufficiently motivated.  There are many ways to do this.  One of the most interesting is the “haka” used by New Zealand rugby squads.  By adapting traditional Maori prewar rituals, the New Zealanders recreate the “emergency” mindset needed for top performance, and they manage to scare their opponents half to death at the same time!  The functions of brain and body are intertwined–by assuming the facial expressions and postures of the prewar rituals, the athletes are telling their brains that an emergency situation exists.  The brain responds by shutting down low priority systems like digestion and putting all resources into heart, lungs, and muscle.  Outstanding performances are the result.

If possible, restrict your real instruction and feedback to the practice setting.  Your role at a competition is entirely different. 

 

Strengthening the Coach-Athlete Bond

 

In closing, we might remind ourselves that the coach-athlete relationship follows the rules of all human relationships. 

CONCEPT 6

— In successful relationships, positive interactions outnumber negative interactions by a factor of at least 5:1.  When positive and negative interactions approach a 1:1 ratio, the relationship is doomed.  Some of us are just naturally more positive people, but all of us can do a better job if we concentrate on bringing out our more positive sides.

CONCEPT 7

— You can strengthen the natural bond between you as the coach and your athletes by getting your veteran athletes involved in the ‘coaching’ process by assigning them mentoring responsibilities over the younger athletes. It is important to remember that before motivation can come from an athlete it must first come from the coach and the veteran athletes. It is the responsibility of the coach and the senior athletes to inspire and lead. You must provide the reason ‘why’ the young athlete wants to succeed.

 

It is important to realize that ‘motivation’ starts with having a dream. That dream may be as humble as earning a varsity letter or as grand as winning the Olympic Games. In either case, it is the responsibility of the coach and the veteran athletes to ‘inspire’ and provide support for the ‘dream’ within each of us. Good Luck in this great track season ahead.

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Roger Freberg
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Speak Freely…. unless you’re in college

 

freedom of speech is our right

 

It may sound strange that we have the ability to speak freely everywhere in America…. except on many college campuses. I remember during my college days of the necessity of writing a ‘perfect marxist essay’ in order to pass a class.

Today, universities are not so easily fooled and many have enacted ‘speech codes’ and other restrictions to curtail opinions that they have interpreted to be ‘offensive.’

There is– fortunately– an organization that represents Americans attending or working in our colleges and universities against the intrusions of the ‘thought control police’.

Thanks to thefire.org — ‘defenders of individual rights in education’ — college life is becoming better for those who want to think for themselves. Here are a few of the latest subjects that you can explore on their site:

FIRE Warns Department of Health and Human Services Against Supporting Political Litmus Tests on Campus

FIRE in ‘The New York Times’ on Free Speech at Columbia

Marquette Bans Dave Barry Quote from Office Door

FIRE’s Challenge to Ideological Litmus Tests at Columbia’s Teachers College in the ‘New York Post’ and ‘Sun’

FIRE’s Challenge to Ideological Litmus Tests at Columbia’s Teachers College in the ‘New York Post’ and ‘Sun’

Speech Code of the Month: University of Mississippi

Anyway… step by step, the rights that we value in our great country are being reinstated…. even on college campuses…. check out their site… you can help!

 Roger Freberg