Member-only story
When I think about practicing for performance, I can’t help but think about when I was playing pewee football.
I was around 12 years old, and my team was in the playoffs, getting ready to play in our conference championship game. Winning this game would put us in the league championship. We were preparing to play against Briarwood Christian School, a team that had defeated us pretty easily during the regular season. They were bigger, stronger, faster, and completely dominated us. Not because they were so much better than us, but rather, because we were afraid of them.
Our coach new that if we were going to have a chance, he had to get us past the mental barrier holding us back. We were obsessed over how big they were. Until we could get over their size, we had no chance of winning. So to help us prepare, he had several coaches from our team, and other age groups to suite up in practice gear.
It was one of our final practices before the big game. We had to a full-contact scrimmage with adults. We were expected to practice at full speed, as if we were in an actual game. This involved tackling and being tackled by our assistant coaches who were adult men in helmets and shoulder pads.
Like our upcoming opponent, they were much bigger and faster than us. But that didn’t matter. Our head coach expected us to practice…
