137/86 HR 60

138/80 HR 57

130/87 HR 57

124/80 HR 56

Probably a little hypoglycemic … No dinner last night. Slept 8 pm to 7

am. Night before last worked on websites and slept in Lazy Boy chair all

night. Considering affect of light on all night on hormones and affect

of upright sleeping on full rest and baroreceptors in neck.

– mb

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, consult.*

– Anonymous

Similar to …

Those who can’t do, teach. And those who can’t teach, teach gym. And of course, those who couldn’t do anything, I think, were assign to our school. (from Annie Hall)

– Woody Allen

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

– George Bernard Shaw

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* Of course, a cheap shot at teachers, coaches and consultants, in general, but probably true in some cases. The quote is interesting with respect to coaching because some so-called natural athletes that progress in their careers to coaching acquired their own athletic skills without really defining their skills. ‘Natural athletes’ understand forces and leverage and speed and motion and coordination without much involvement of the mind — or at least not much time spent in the mind relaying the senses of eyes, feet and hands; to mental processing; to the action of the muscles, skeleton, core, hands and feet, etc.

Some ‘natural athletes’ might not really have a language that describes how they do what they do. Therefore, they can’t really coach someone on how to hit a ball, for example, because they didn’t need a language to tell their own bodies how to hit a ball. They were hardwired. They just knew how to do it. So they don’t have the language to tell a batter how to follow the ball in (keep your eyes on the ball), or how to use the force of the earth’s mass to hit the ball with the proper timing of kinetic and biomechanical linking of the ground, the feet, legs, core, arms, wrists and hands into the bat. Many coaches are inclined to focus on team and game strategy as a priority over player skills. There is another talent in coaching that can identify performance problems with an athlete and use the right language to help that athlete understand how to improve performance, prevent injury or overcome injury.

So the reverse sometimes hold true for this quote:

Those who do (or did), can’t teach.

When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

— Jacob Riis

Jacob August Riis (May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914), a Danish-American muckraker journalist, police reporter, photographer, and social reformer, was born in Ribe, Denmark. He is known for his dedication to using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the less fortunate in New York City, which was the subject of most of his prolific writings and photographic essays. As one of the first photographers to use flash, he is considered a pioneer in photography.

Theodore Roosevelt was so deeply moved by Riis’s sense of justice that he met Riis and befriended him for life, calling him “the best American I ever knew.” Theodore Roosevelt was New York Commissioner of Police when he closed police-run poor houses after being moved by the photographic essays of Jacob Riis.

Contrarianism is creativity for the untalented.

– Dennis Miller

Dennis Miller used this phrase to explain how he felt about MoveOn.org’s emphasis on defeat of the Iraq War in 2007. Miller believes MoveOn.org derives some feeling of specialness by taking these amazingly contrarian stands.

Contrarianism is a big part of American culture today. Not just in politics. We see it in entertainment and sports and in reality TV. Culture glorifies raw criticism of people. Whether its Britney Spears’ abs gone bad, an athlete’s use of steroids, or a DUI charge; there are entire websites dedicated to showing how celebrities screw up.

On American Idol, mostly talented performers compete for the top slot, and in the meantime the audience clings to the raw criticism of judge Simon Cowell (Autobiography: I Don’t Mean to Be Rude, But …). It was Simon’s connections (his father was executive for EMI Records) that got him a job in the record industry. He left EMI and formed his own company that went bankrupt in the 1980’s and even had to move back home with his parents for awhile. After polishing his talent while signing up successful artists for BMG, he found tremendous success in criticizing and finding talent on American Idol.

Critics can judge unfairly. And there are plenty of everyday individuals who mimic the antics of a Simon Cowell. Many of the critics out there simply spout noise that distracts and hurts — if you let it. But some critics give valuable free advice. It’s your job to identify and emotionally avoid and disengage the contrarian, sort out the good from bad advice, and process and move on with the free education from the good critics.