Tag Archives: Success

Floorball – Hard days will always come, but never last?

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What other people think of you is none of your business (I think Mourinho could have said that), Leadership is about having an unshakeable faith in your goals, vision and in your power to make positive things to happen together with your floorball team, these are also the things, good leaders are able to feed back to the team, to give more energy and keep a clear direction.
Just remember that hard days will always come, but never last, but strong people always do. Hard times are just opportunities to learn for the future!
Hard times build great leaders and floorball players. During the hard times and pressure, your leadership ability and skills are tested. Are you, or can you always be in control of things?

Floorball deke ball control

“If everything is under control, you are going too slow” /Mario Andretti, race driver

“The only thing that we cannot control is our supporters” / José Mourinho

“Pain is temporary. Quitting last forever”. /Lance Armstrong

Great leaders and teams create castles of the stones others throw at them, but it’s impossible to build a castle of success on a foundation of excuses.

Floorball – Mourinho – Psychology and youth coaching

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According to Mourinho he values the psychological factors the team above anything else, he wants his players to play with controlled aggression and self-confidence. Mourinho’s approach to youth football is simple.
He uses small sided games with high amount of ball touches based on the Dutch system, but he works isolated with the parts of his tactical system.
His requirement before any youth player is promoted to the first team, is that they master the color box thinking, tactics and have been through the 36 football drills at least once. Otherwise the youth players will not be promoted to the first team.

Youth floorball practices and drills

José Mourinho’s leadership is charismatic, trustworthy, and respectful and he uses an attitude of invincibility, which he seems to be able to move into his players.
Many times he uses the media and newspapers to focus on him, in order to remove the attention and pressure from the team.

He also uses the media in some cases to create a negative view of the teams possibilities of success or to create an enemy outside the team before big games, in order to motivate the players.

Team and Individual Values – Norway

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To get the best team spirit and values within the team. The Norwegian National Team defined some team value words and the meaning of them in practice.

Norway scoring goal against Germany Hockey World Championships

“Can we control results or the outcome from a game? No, but we can control our physical preparation, our action and our values!”

Team Values – To beat the best teams!

– Disciplin (extremely good carrying through, we cannot afford careless performance)
– Engagement (We make each other good, and the opposite team bad)
– Enthusiasm (Positive body language)
– Clear roles and ownership of the role
– Desperation (work / practice hard and with discipline twice / day)

How do you show this when you step in to the changing room? How is your body language? What do you stand for?

Desperation Succesful Team Values Norway

Inspire your self and your teammates to success!

Norway made one of their best World Championship Tournament results in 2012, they were “unlucky” to meet the coming world champions Russia early in the Play Off’s, a thing they could not control (who they will meet), but they were well prepared, 2-2 in the third period…
Russia 5 – 2 Norway (Quarter finals)
Russia 6 – 2 Finland (Semi-finals)
Russia 6- 2 Slovakia (Final)

Floorball – Practicing is my secret

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10 000 Hours – 10 years

A number of studies have shown that it will take ten thousands of hours to become a master of what you are doing. This will apply for leadership, professional floorball players, football, work, hobbies etc. Each of us has the potential to master what we are doing, but it will require time, 10000 hours, or about ten years, you need to focus your energy, if you want to be the best in whatever you do. But too many of us don’t commit to the things we are doing well enough, but we still hope to be the best or recognized, sometimes we give up too early, wondering why we never become the best.  “I was a great talent, when I was young…” Ever heard that?

Floorball practice drill dribbling

Talent or a lot of practice?

Talent is a word we use to simplify the explanation of success and the difference between the best and the normal people or floorball players. We also assume that elite floorball, hockey or football is only for the people with right heritage and genes and unfortunately we were not one of those… that’s why we are leaders or waterboys ; )
What if it wasn’t like that, and it could be seen only as an opinion that hinders us from being the best? What if our success is only connected to the amount of hours we practice?

For example, many floorball and football coaches talk about that they are able to spot talents, is that true? Or are they good at spotting players that already have been practicing more than the others?

You can have gifted parents, but it’s probably more realistic that the parents have put more efforts already from the beginning in to the practicing?

Tiger Woods, a golf talent, or is it a result of practice?

Tiger Woods has been seen as the greatest talent in golf, ever. In that case you need to know that Tiger Woods got his first golf set before he was one years old. He had been through his first full golf round at the age of two years. When he was five he had already practiced more than an average golfer will practice during his or her whole “career”. The same goes for Messi, Beckham and the other football stars. David Beckham used to practice in a little park, and he practiced for hours and hours every day.

“With hard work everything is possible, everyone can dream, and what you dream of you can reach, if you are willing to work for it” /Lionel Messi

When José Mourinho arrived in Madrid he commented Christiano Ronaldo, “He works incredibly hard, it’s impressing to see a player of his caliber to practice harder than nobody else”

If you map the hours the star football players put on practicing, it would not be a surprise, why they are where they are.

“Practicing is my secret, I have always believed in, if you want to be successful you need to work for it, practice, practice and then practice more”. / David Beckham

I’m not sure how many hours of practice, I can give you by reading this blog, but at least some valuable time and leadership knowledge, I hope.

Floorball – Unbeatable at home stadium

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Good team spirit creates a winning climate, good team moral and believe in the success of the floorball team, and the floorball players will make more sacrifices for the team and work harder for the success.

Floorball Team size

Research shows, that depending on sport, the size of ideal amount of team members vary between sports, a common rule is that you should be able to play on your practice (two teams) with limited amount or no substitutes. In all sports the participants felt that the team was too big or too small if the member amount was increased or decreased with 25%, compared to the first “rule”.

The size of the team will also affect your and your team ability to build up the team spirit. It’s easier to focus on the task in small teams but the social co-operation will be greater in bigger teams, but reducing the task focus and also allowing greater amount of social loafing (more of this later).

Your team size will also affect the communication, it’s harder to recognize and give feedback to everyone, which will also affect the team spirit. And as an effect of this, in bigger teams the leadership from the coach tends to be less democratic.

Floorball training drills practices and excercices

The larger the dream, the more important the team. A leader will never get greater results than the team will deliver.

Home and away games

Other aspects that might affect the part, team spirit is “home and away” games. You can talk about three different levels of territories, primary, secondary and public.

In the primary area the team has full control and other people are not allowed (or only very limited access) in this zone, it can be the teams own locker room and other facilities. This zone is often designed, coloured and “decorated” with important symbols or pictures to strengthen the team and also club spirit. The greater control the team has in their primary territory the more they are willing to “protect” it.

In the secondary territory the team has some control, but the facilities can be used by others as well, training facilities can be shared with other teams within the club etc.

In the third territory or the public territory, you can count public training facilities and also away games, your team will be placed in a non-personal or non-team related locker room.

Internazionale vs AC Milan locker room

Internazionale locker roomAC Milan locker room

To the left you have the locker room of FC Internazionale and below it, the AC Milan locker room. It’s quite obvious who has spent more money on “decoration”. In AC Milan locker room each player has a Recaro skin seat and a LCD screen above their seat, in the middle you have two huge AC Milan logos. Inter has a long curved one piece wooden seat and one LCD and the team logo on the wall. Maybe it’s the strategy of Internazionale or José Mourinho to make the moving between the territories easier. In other words the step from a home game to an away game will not be that big for Inter, the locker room in an away game will look almost the same except for 18 missing championship plates and will therefore affect the team spirit either. While moving from luxury to a normal level could create some complaints among the players?

Unbeaten for nine years at home stadium

José Mourinhos teams have been unbeaten for eight consecutive years when playing at home and this season Real Madrid hasn’t been beaten at Santiago Bernabeu, so José Mourinho is heading for his 9th season without a loss in the home games. That makes at least a huge impression on me, what about you?