After receiving a copy of Charity Butler’s “PrepSteps” book during the Women’s Strength Coaches Breakfast at the CSCCa National Conference in May I was intrigued to read it but out of skepticism. I have to be honest. I don’t buy into a lot of self-help books with the concern that the values that they hold and advice that they offer are not practical or are full of watered down ideas about the reality of what hard work and perseverance can bring. Honestly I had my doubts about this apparent ‘self-help’ workbook that I was holding in my hand. However after hearing Charity share with us from her personal experiences as a student-athlete and going through many of the same things my athletes do I felt encouraged to keep an open mind and give it a chance. There is no stronger testimony than personal experience.
I started reading through the book during my flight back to Pittsburgh later that weekend. I was pleasantly surprised with how much honest and valid advice was being given in this book! I thought the pages on helping the reader understand what their roles and values are- requiring you to honestly examine yourself- was a great start and thus enabling the reader to better understand their priorities and how they manage their time. When I got to the pages on nutrition and strength training my guard went up. As I read through those pages I was relieved to see true facts and practical advice being given. To be sure that I was being consistent I asked our dietitian to read through those pages and make sure that she approved.
Next I shared the book with some of our sport coaches to get their opinion on the book. To me it is very important to receive honest feedback from those that I trust and respect, this helps me check myself and what I’m doing. They all had positive things to say about the book and were supportive of anyways we could implement it with our student-athletes.
Here is how I have used the PrepSteps book:
I’ve chosen to focus on using the book with just the Gymnastics team for right now. Since we cannot require the girls to do the workbook we knew that some would not utilize it to its full value and therefore cause us to spend money that is not properly used. After discussing some ideas with Charity over the phone and receiving her permission I have selected 8 days from the book to introduce to the girls. Each week, on Thursday I present a new day from the book to the team and they each receive a photo copy of that day’s pages. We have done this for the last 7 weeks now and will be doing one last week next week! Here are the weeks we have discussed:
Day 1: Roles & Values- I felt it was so important for them to understand these two concepts and to really examine themselves and what they value. This also sets them up to better understand their priorities.
Day 4: Priority Wheel- We all know how important it is for our student-athletes to manage their time well; to do so they must recognize which of our daily activities are a priority.
Days 12 &13: Nutrition Myths- Talking about these myths and bringing to light the true facts is something our female athletes can’t hear enough of. They are so bombarded with information about diets their friends or family have tried, supplement claims thru the media, etc.
Day 18: “Girls Only” Female Athlete Triad- This was a must! I’m so glad Charity did such a great job at including all areas of this disorder. These young women need to understand how their hormones affect their entire physical make-up: body composition, bone health, recovery time, metabolism, etc. Unless they are in sports nutrition or human physiology class they may not get all this information. No doubt the female athlete triad is an issue for any women’s sports program regardless of what your training gear or uniform looks like!
Day 20: “Rest & Recovery”- I don’t think our athlete understand how valuable sleep is to their training and performance. Many have a “work hard, play hard” mentality. These pages really brought this into perspective for them.
Day 31: “Choices to Exceed”- It was funny to see the reaction of some of the girls when I revealed to them that choice “B” would yield them over $5million in 40 days! This caught their attention on the idea that we need to carefully consider consequences for our choices and to persevere through hard work to reach our goals.
Bonus Day: “Love”- This is my absolute favorite day in the entire book. So many of our young women have a false sense of what love really is- and some many never hear it and are crushed by the lies! No matter what the relationship is we need to remember that love is not how we feel about someone (or say we feel about someone), it’s about how we behave towards them.
No comments:
Post a Comment