Winter Reading

[Robby Perkins-High]

A Christmas Eve present from Bob! Joyous Day!

As was mentioned previously, as part of our winter training we're asking everyone to do some reading to work on their mental game. Below you'll find a list of books that we're recommending. Here is what you get to do:

1) Pick a book from the list below, or pick your own book

2) Read the book

3) Send out a tidbit to this list that stuck out to you and explain why you liked it/thought it was relevant

It's simple, and will help you a ton. Here are some suggested options:

Highly recommended:

- The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey

Read this guy. It's very concise and will change the way you think about judging your play, particularly throwing.

- Values of the Game by Bill Bradley

Great book by Bradley emphasizing TEAM dynamics and what it takes to be successful. Also an easier read and a favorite of mine

- The New Toughness Training for Sports by James Loehr

This is more of a step by step guide for how to improve your mental game that Josh and I read for Sports Psych. It will increase your awareness of yourself as a player and competitor dramatically.

Other excellent options:

- Playing for Keeps by David Laberstam

- The Winner's Manuel by James Tressel

- A Champion's Mind: Lessons from a Life in Tennis by Pete Sampras

- Russell Rules by Bill Russell (the greatest champion of all time)

- Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden

In addition to the books, we'll be sending out some shorter readings. Attached is one of those, which is called "Toughness" by Jay Bilas. It's basically his definition of what it means to be tough. While it is written for basketball, it's very relatable to frisbee and gives a great image of what we should be aiming for. Read it over sometime in the next few days when you have enough time.

I hope everyone has a lovely eve, don't get too fat.

Love,

Robby and Gener (with some hefty help from Verbal and Dingus Kahn)

[Tyler Chan]

Sup Edudebroskis, 

      So for my winter reading I've been dabbling in The Art of War, written by Lao Tzu. Why did I choose this? Because Tzu is a boss, also because I just watched the Hobbit and I was really diggin the  battles and stuff; also because Gandalf doesn't give a fuck about anything. Back to the point, if you aren't treating every game we play - every single game regardless of who we are playing - then your absolutely doing it wrong. Our road to out goals is going to be a fucking war, so let's prepare for it.

-In order to carry out an attack, we must have means available. The material for raising fire should always be kept in readiness. 

-If we want to win our battle, we have to be prepared. That preparation has already started as we all should be getting into shape, working on our throws, and all the other good stuff that winter break is for. This one is pretty simple, but hard to maintain. Keep on grinding boyos.

-In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns. 

-There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. 

-Lao Tzu repeats this same sentiment like a million more times because it's incredibly important.  We have had a bad case of letting our games drag on too long. We always talk about coming out strong and putting teams in their place, but that energy has to carry throughout the rest of the game too. We lose when we let teams back into the game. Think back to our loss against Harvard at Brown. We let our feet off the gas pedal. This directly relates to the subjct of our energy:

-Thus the energy developed by good fighting men is as the momentum of a round stone rolled down a mountain thousands of feet in height. So much on the subject of energy. 

-We can never let our energy stagnate. Especially in unavoidable long games, our energy as a team is going to be what makes or breaks us. There's going to be times when we're down. There's going to be times when we're tired. There are going to be times when we feel like punching a teammate in the face, but we gotta keep our energy high and united. We gotta just keep on rrrrrrrrooooooooollllllliiiiiiinnnnnggggggg.

Finally: 

-On contentious ground, I would hurry up my rear. 

-What???!!!

I'll keep you guys updated as I read more. Looking forward to hearing what other people have been reading. 

Remember, our games are fucking battles. 

-TyTy

--
 
 

[Robby Perkins-High]

Something from the chapter on discipline in Values from one of my favorite basketball players, John Havlicek:

My toughest opponent, John Havlicek of the Boston Celtics, was a true genius when it came to using conditioning as a weapon. His goal was to get his opponent to give up, to stop overcoming fatigue, to stop pushing himself. Havlicek saw it as a matter of who gives up first. "You'll pass out before you're overworked, but most people don't know that," he once told Orlando Magic senior executive vice president Pat Williams. "They think they're overworked, so they stop. They could have kept going, but they didn't. They weren't beat physically; they were beat mentally."

Being in the best condition you can be is more a mental challenge than a physical one. You need to realize that you can push yourself harder, and realize that it is all on you to do so.

[Josh Adler]

Hey. Sup. This is a tad long, but you don't have anything to do, so curl up with a nice can of Diet Coke and get reading. Here's some stuff about team success; the "secret" to championships.

From Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball, although this is mostly quotes from Isiah Thomas (talking about his time as a player on the Pistons, not his terribly managed Knicks teams):

Isiah Thomas: “It’s not about physical skills. Goes far beyond that. When I first came here, McCloskey took a lot of heat for drafting a small guy. But he knew that the only way that our team would rise to the top would be by mental skills, not size or talent. He knew the only way we could acquire those skills was by watching the Celtics and Lakers, because those were the teams winning year in and year out. I also looked at Seattle, who won one year, and Houston, who got to the Finals one year. They both self-destructed the next year. So how come? I read Pat Riley’s book Show Time and he talks about “the disease of more.” A team wins it one year and the next year every player wants more minutes, more money, more shots. And it kills them. Our team has been up at the Championship level four years now. We could have easily self-destructed. So I read what Riley was saying, and I learned. I didn’t want what happened to Seattle and Houston to happen to us. But it’s hard not to be selfish. The art of winning is complicated by statistics, which for us becomes money. Well, you gotta fight that, find a way around that. And I think we have. If we win this, we’ll be the first team in history to win it without a single player averaging 20 points. First team. Ever. We got 12 guys who are completely committed to winning. Every night we found a different person to win it for us.”
We have had some very successful seasons the past couple years - it’s important that we don’t let the “disease of more” affect us. It’s doesn’t matter who is on our universe line, it only matters that our universe line scores on their universe line. It’s doesn’t matter who catches the goal, it only matters that someone wearing a Tufts Ultimate jersey catches the goal.

Bill Bradley in Life on the Run: “A team championship exposes the limits of self-reliance, selfishness, and irresponsibility. One man alone can’t make it happen; in fact, the contrary is true: a single man can prevent it from happening. The success of the group assures the success of the individual, but not the other way around.”

Thomas: “Lots of times, on our team, you can’t tell who the best player in the game was. ‘Cause everybody did something good. That’s what makes us so good. The other team has to worry about stopping 8 or 9 guys instead of 2 or 3. It’s the only way to win. The only way to win. That’s the way the game was invented. But’s there more to that. You’ve also got to create an environment that won’t accept losing.”

Thomas: “The secret of basketball is that it’s not about basketball.”

Bill Simmons: “And that’s what Isiah learned while following those Lakers and Celtics teams around: it wasn’t about basketball. Those teams were loaded with talented players, yes, but that’s not the only reason they won. They won because they liked each other, knew their roles, ignored statistics and valued winning over everything else. They won because their best players sacrificed to make everyone else happy.Year after year, at least one contender fell apart for reasons that had nothing to do with basketball. And year after year, the championship team won because it got along and everyone committed themselves to their roles.”
We have enough talent. The 2013 Tufts fucking E-men are good enough to win Nationals. It’s on us to put it together. It’s on us to know our roles, and to do what is best for the team. It’s not just about ultimate; it’s about how we work together as a team.

[Gene Buonaccorsi]

Fuck yeah Tyler and Jadler. That's some awesome stuff.

I read finally read The Inner Game of Tennis yesterday and there are a lot of important take aways. Here are a couple of quick hits.

"Letting go of judgments does not mean ignoring errors. It simply means seeing events as they are and not adding anything to them"

Everyone knows the feeling of a game starting to slip away and mistakes starting to pile up. Timothy Gallaway talks about how, once we acknowledge errors, we perpetuate them by trying to aggressively to avoid them. Instead he suggests that we witness the events of the competition, but do consciously try to compensate or overcompensate for our mistakes.

"Every time you swing your racket in a certain way, you increase the probabilities that you will swing that way again"

Well we don't have rackets but we do have throws. Muscle memory is important. Throw every day.

"Focus means keeping the mind now and here"

We talked about this a lot in the fall. There is no other point, or other game, or other opportunity. Whether it is in training or in competition, true focus means setting your mind to the immediate task and not looking forwards or backwards.

"Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a goal, but the value of winning is only as great as the value of the goal reached"

When it comes down to it, we are just a bunch of dudes throwing a piece of plastic. The value that we place in being successful is our own. The obstacles that we face are evident only to us. That is why it is important and that is why we believe in it. When we set a goal for training or for our first tournament or for our entire season, we are placing value in our collective achievements. The wins just confirm that we have met those goals. 

--
 
 

[mike bright]

Josh McDaniels
On whether Tom Brady's demeanor changes in the postseason
"Tom has a great approach and demeanor about his work every day. I think that’s really a great thing to have as a quarterback. If you can be consistent with the way you approach your job – how hard you work and the intensity with which you prepare for each opponent – I think that generally that sets a great example for your teammates and for anybody who is looking at you for leadership, in terms of how you would expect them to do their job too. We all get excited when you’re in the postseason, I mean this is really what we play and coach for, is to try to have an opportunity to play in these types of games and to coach in these types of games. I’m sure Tom is no different than any player who is really excited for our opportunity this week. But I think that Tom is a pretty consistent guy who has a great approach to doing his job every day as well as he can do it."

Today is a big day. Tomorrow is a big one too. And that is exciting! Go out and make your consistent approach consistently intense. And they will know us by the trail of dead.

--
 
 

[William H. Butt V]

Finally got around to finishing The Inner Game of Tennis before my flight back. A lot of it was particularly interesting for me because I played tennis in high school and could really see the similarities in the mental challenges. 

As Gene talked about, a lot of the book is focused on quieting your mind. What really stood out to me as I was thinking about this was that in order to truly quiet your mind and just let your physical abilities happen (let Self 2 take over, as Gallway says) you need to have practiced and prepared enough that you don't need to really think about what you're doing on the field, it just becomes instinct. As soon as you start thinking to yourself about when you need to cut, or reminding yourself to keep your throws IO instead of just doing it, you're distracting yourself. Gallway says peak performance only comes when the mind is calm and one with the body. If you haven't practiced and prepared enough that you can play with a quiet mind, you can't reach that peak performance. Everyone knows the feeling of working on something in practice or a game and getting so caught up in not letting up the around or putting more snap on their throws that they become distracted and their play suffers. 

I was a little disappointed that he didn't focus more on decision making in tennis because I feel like it's very similar to decision making when you have the disc. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this same need for preparation in order to achieve a quiet mind is just as important for decision making as it is for pure physical execution. If you have the disc and have to consciously think about about every possible throw, there's no way you can accurately evaluate every possibility. Instead, you need to have practiced enough that you can instinctively recognize what is the right throw.

Quieting your mind is really just what Gene would tell us in the fall - just go fucking ball. We all know how to play, we're all going to put in the work together this winter to be comfortable with every situation that's going to come up in a game and when it comes to actually executing, quiet your mind, focus and let your instincts and training take over. 

There's a great quote from Phil Jackson in the book that explains it well: "Basketball is a complex dance that requires shifting from one objective to another at lightning speed. To excel, you need to act with a clear mind and be totally focused on what everyone on the floor is doing. The secret is not thinking. That doesn't mean being stupid; it means quieting the endless jabbering of thoughts so that your body can do instinctively what it's been trained to do without the mind getting in the way."

Can't fucking wait to see all you guys and get back to work with all of you. 

--
 
 

[carter]

There are a lot of great sport quotes out there but this one is my favorite:

"Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is." - Vince Lombardi.

This is a mentality that I have always tried to follow. I also think that this is going to be very pertenent to our season. Most people want to win, but there is a huge difference between wanting to win a game and giving it your everything because you want to win so badly that it is a carnal need to win. I think that this is what separates true competitors from the rest. There is that extra burning desire inside them. There is a reason why commentators so often say "it's going to come down to who wants it more." Hard work beats talent almost every time. We have the capabilities to out work every other team in the nation. I've adopted my friend's mentality that he uses for all aspects of life: "Work hard and make it happen."

Less than a month to go before our first tournament. Let's gooo!

-Carter

> --
>  
>