by Mandy Green, Busy Coach
As we are all hopefully enjoying our summer breaks and preparing for our upcoming seasons, I wanted to send you a few friendly reminders about how you can completely change the energy that you bring to everything you do when your seasons starts up again.
You might be asking, “Why is Mandy talking about my energy levels again?” For me, managing my energy levels really has been key to my productivity and getting things done. If you want a great book on the subject, read the book The Power of Full Engagement, by Tony Schwartz.
How is your health these days? Can you wake up before your alarm and do what’s important, handle all the demands of the day, and put out the inevitable fires, all without ending the day exhausted and out of breath?
It’s a fact that the state of your health and fitness is a huge factor in your energy and success levels— especially for coaches. Doing what’s required to keep your team performing at a high level while staying on top of the whole recruiting process requires a ton of energy.
Like the athletes in the sport you are coaching, as a coach, you need an almost endless supply of energy and stamina. To do all those practices, be constantly prospecting for new recruits, and ensuring each and every student athlete is having a good experience and staying on course to graduate can be exhausting. If you are overweight, out of shape, and constantly out of breath, setting bigger and bigger career, recruiting, or team goals is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster.
The great news is that this is completely within your control! Here are three practices of top performers that you can use to ensure that your health, fitness, and energy levels fully support your program, recruiting and career goals and objectives:
Eat and drink to win. Put very simply, everything you ingest either contributes to your health or detracts from it. Drinking water puts a check in the plus column; 8 cans of Mountain Dew everyday probably won’t. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables equals more plusses. Rolling through the drive-through to wolf down some fast food, not so much. I know you know the drill. This isn’t rocket science, but you do need to stop fooling yourself. Become aware of what you’re eating and how it’s affecting your performance as a coach or recruiter. If you are interested in really seeing how your eating is actually affecting your performance, check out my new Tracking Journal.
Sleep to win. Getting enough rest is as critical to coaching performance as what you do or don’t have in your diet. A good night’s sleep provides the basis for a day of peak performance, clear thought, and recruiting calls after successful practices. You probably already know how many hours you need to be at your best. Reverse engineer your schedule so you are asleep in plenty of time to get all of the rest you need to perform at your best.
Exercise to win. It is no coincidence that you rarely see top performers who are terribly out of shape. Most invest 30– 60 minutes of their time each day to hit the gym or the running trail because they understand the importance that daily exercise plays in their success. I try to start the day with 5– 10 minutes of exercise or yoga, I also recommended that you engage in 30– 60 minute workouts at least 3– 5 times per week. Doing so will ensure that your fitness level supports the energy and confidence you need to succeed in this profession.
If you are interested in seeing how your food, exercise, and sleep really are affecting your performance, you can do that by using my energy tracking forms.
In these energy tracking forms, you just keep track of some very simple information:
- Write down how much sleep you get.
- What you eat for each meal.
- How much water you drink.
- What exercise you get for the day.
- Pay attention to how your energy is throughout the day and record it on the tracking pages.
- Then at the end of each day, make note of what went well and what you could do better.
Based on the information you collect and the results that you get, you need to keep adjusting and tweaking until you find the right amount of sleep, food, water, and exercise that will get your energy to the level you need to be at to perform at your best day in and day out.