The Business Athlete

World class athletes report they fulfil over 90% of their potential. That's our job as coach. We are also here to help corporate leaders and teams do the same.

[Frank Dick @frankdickcoach]

Vigilant observation is as much about being aware of what is not seen and what is not heard as what is. Then understanding what that means.

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

Love to see the human spirit to overcome...

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

Impossible is nothing.

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

Excellent lesson!

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

Be humble and kind. But know your worth.

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

Dab. And table tennis tops the list I believe. More frequent cadence and spin variation than tennis. @MurhadHussain

[Frank Dick @frankdickcoach]

Athletes should not measure achievement as being selected to wear the Team’s colours. Achievement is when they deliver performance excellence wearing them.

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

The problem is not people being uneducated.

The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, and not educated enough to question anything from what they have been taught.

—Professor Richard Feynman

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

Anyone can be great occasionally. When everything comes together and you're in the zone, performance is easy.

What's really hard is being pretty darn good, day after day.

Raise the floor. Not just the ceiling.

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

As with many things, excellence plus elegance can appear like ease, and then assumed as easy to achieve.
But there are more steps to excellence than most realise.

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

The problem with making it look easy is that people think it is easy.

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

Is the often-brilliant Frank (a mentor of mine) right or wrong on this one? There are both philosophical and technical issues for us in this one...
It can be true, but is it always?

[Frank Dick @frankdickcoach]

If losing doesn’t hurt, winning doesn’t matter. Behind the mask of adversity is the face of opportunity. Find it and find a way to win consistently.

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

Overcoming adversity is what so much of life is about...

[Frank Dick @frankdickcoach]

Make time regularly to remind yourself that you are a winner; that you’ve constantly overcome adversity. Self belief matters and it’s down to you. If you don’t believe in you why would anyone else?

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

Distributed leadership is vital, but has to be nurtured in advance.

[Frank Dick @frankdickcoach]

The character of the contest can change In a moment in the international arena. So Team leadership in game management cannot come down the Captain alone. Responsibility must be shared by a vigilant leadership Team communicating constantly.

[Frank Dick @frankdickcoach]

The components which together determine performance do not progress in unison but in harmony. It’s our job as coaches to orchestrate that.

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

This is what it looks like when you take pride in your work

[Frank Dick @frankdickcoach]

The quality of the performance in the arena is directly proportional to the quality of the Coach/Athlete or Coach Team relationship. The relationship quality must never be assumed. It should be regularly reviewed and worked at.

[🧬Maxpein🧬 @maximumpain333]

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENT

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

One key differentiator for elite performers?

They don’t see it as a sacrifice.

Going to bed early, skipping the party, putting in hours of practice...

That’s not giving something up.

It’s living in alignment with what they care about most.

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

Recovery is a training principle.

https://t.co/53mJg48AtA

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

The longer you hold on to things, the heavier they become. Learn to let go.

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

Oh, indeed. Those who stay brilliant are the playful, curious ones. Just think of the examples in many fields. Don't grow up too much!

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

Expertise leads to emotional numbness.

Researchers found as individuals achieved expertise, they had less intense emotional responses to the thing that once brought them joy.

Their brain became desensitized. The researchers concluded: "Emotional numbness was a result of the application of domain-specific knowledge."

The better you get, the less you feel.

You've got to actively protect the joy that got you started.

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

@stevemagness Good points Steve. All 26, thanks! 😊

[The Business Athlete @busathlete]

This is very good.
Learning the boundary conditions of one's assertions has become a lost art (oops - science!).
All ideas have their extents and limits. Examine for both.

[Carl Hendrick @C_Hendrick]

The science of learning isn't about prescriptions, it's about probabilities. And this is where knowing the boundary conditions of any principle matters so much. Knowing when not to use it can be as important as knowing when to.
This is my problem with every lesson starting with retrieval practice "because science".
A principle applied everywhere becomes dogma; a principle applied within its limits increases the probability of it being effective, because it honours the conditions that make it work in the first place.

Retrieval practice is a key driver of learning but there are a lot of contexts where retrieval might be counterproductive: introducing new concepts or when prior knowledge is insufficient to make retrieval attempts meaningful rather than random guessing.

The boundary conditions matter precisely because they reveal the mechanisms underlying the effect. Retrieval practice works through the effortful reconstruction of knowledge from memory, which strengthens retrieval pathways. But if there's nothing meaningful to retrieve, or if the retrieval demands exceed working memory capacity, the mechanism breaks down. The practice becomes ritual rather than science.

Interleaving benefits discrimination between similar concepts, but becomes less valuable when categories are already easily distinguishable. Spacing enhances retention through forgetting and relearning, but may hinder initial acquisition when foundational knowledge is still forming.
Senior leaders saying "use retrieval practice when learners have established some initial knowledge of the material, when the cognitive demand matches their capacity, and when errors can be corrected through feedback" is less compelling than "start every lesson with retrieval practice." The nuanced version requires professional judgment; the simplified version offers algorithmic certainty.
This is where we need to move away from "what does the research say" but "under what conditions does this research apply/not apply to my context and how can I apply it?"