Tag Archives: Performance

From Routine to OMG!

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Life shifts can happen at any time. The key is to have a plan of attack no matter what the challenge.

May 8, 2015    Arielle has a routine primary care appointment to get a referral for the podiatrist. During the routine evaluation, the primary care provider (PCP) begins to think that Arielle is exhibiting signs of Marfan Syndrome. Marfan syndrome is what caused Isaiah Austin, the Baylor basketball star, to withdraw from the NBA draft in 2014.   The PCP requests some tests: x-rays for spinal deformity, genetics referral, and an EKG to check for the cardiac component of Marfan Syndrome. The appointment ends and life goes on.

Shortly after Arielle’s EKG, I receive a call from the Pediatric department to set up an appointment with the pediatric cardiologist. I am instantly concerned because I think of all the things going on in the next few weeks. Arielle is the TX-5A Region 1 Champ in both the Long and Triple jump and is heading to Austin for the first time ever to compete in the State track meet. She has goals and plans for her future in athletics at the college level. Coaches are jockeying for position to get her attention in both volleyball and track. I didn’t want her plans for athletics to be derailed by Marfan like Isaiah’s. I set the appointment and decided to wait to tell Arielle later so that she wouldn’t worry.

Arielle’s track season takes off like a shot. She goes to state and takes 2nd place in the Triple Jump. She is invited to compete in the Great Southwest Outdoor Track & Field Meet in June. She qualifies to go to the USATF World Youth Trials in Chicago for a chance to compete for Team USA in the IAAF World Youth Championships. She is oblivious to the fact that she has a cardiac appointment in a month.

The appointment weighs on me heavily, however. What if she has the cardiac component of Marfan Syndrome? With that diagnosis her entire sports career is over. It’s high risk for sudden death that makes her untouchable by any D-1 school athletic program. No track, no volleyball, no nothing. How do you tell your child that she can no longer compete collegiately as she had planned? It is sheer agony.

Every time I get up the nerve to tell Arielle about this cardiology appointment some other great event happens. Right after she qualifies for the youth trials in track, she receives an email saying that she made the high performance volleyball team for the region. It is quite an honor to make this team. She’s excited and I am deflated because now is still not a good time to tell her.

While preparing for the Border championships for summer track, Arielle is notified that she is El Paso Female Track athlete of the year! It’s another reason to be excited and STILL not a good time to tell her about the cardiology appointment.

Finally, I tell Arielle about her cardiologist appointment once we return from World Youth Trials on July 2, 2015. The appointment with the cardiologist is July 9, 2015. She instantly asks if something is wrong with her heart. I say no, that they just want to be sure. Being ever the optimist, I even scheduled her school sports physical for the same day. I was so sure the cardiologist wasn’t going to find anything and she would be cleared on her physical to start volleyball practices.

That was my plan. The universe, however, was not cooperating.

July 9, 2015. Appointment Day we go to Arielle’s appointment and the first thing they do is take another EKG for Dr. Black, the cardiologist. And we wait…and silently pray…and awkwardly try to act like everything is fine. Dr. Black comes in and tells us that Arielle does not have Marfan’s. Whew! Then comes the but…but she does have Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome (WPW). What in the world is that? He immediately calls us to a place of calm and begins to explain what WPW is and what it entails.

WPW is a syndrome where an alternate pathway develops in the heart in utero.  Normally, the electricity goes through one designated pathway and is slowed down prior to entering the different chambers of the heart, so that the heart pumps properly. This alternate pathway allows the electricity to pass through the heart without being slowed down at all. This unchecked electricity can cause irregular heartbeat, atrial fibrillation, and sudden death with high intensity cardiac events…like sports!

WHAT?!? Arielle and I both begin to pepper Dr. Black with information and questions. She has USATF Junior Olympic Nationals coming up, what does WPW mean for that? Volleyball season is coming up, how long will she be out of commission.  What about this, how does that play out with that? I am feeling frantic and so is Arielle.

Dr. Black immediately reassures us that WPW is totally fixable and that she should be able to continue with her sports career once it is fixed. But…

But?!? Another but. But what? I did not realize that I was holding my breath until I started feeling light-headed. This was a lot to take and we had plans and finances tied up in Arielle going to Jacksonville to compete in the Junior Olympic Nationals. This was her year of redemption etc. However, Arielle’s health was most important. We both knew that and wanted to convey that to Dr. Black.

Dr. Black listened patiently to our concerns and told us that Arielle was not allowed to do any competitive athletics until her heart diagnostics were confirmed. There was a possibility that with high intensity work-outs that the alternate pathway could possibly automatically shut itself down once the heart rate was raised to 150+ beats per minute. But in order to determine that Arielle needed to get a Holter monitor and do a stress test to get the diagnostics.

A plan is then mapped out a plan to get things moving as quickly as possible in light of our plans for Jacksonville. He needed Arielle to wear a Holter monitor to track her heartbeat for 24 hours. Once the diagnostics were received he would know how to proceed. If the alternate pathway shut itself down during high intensity workouts, then she is out of the woods and can continue as normal. That was definitely my hope because I really want her to be OK and to not have her season derailed.

No such luck. Arielle wore the monitor during two track practices, played Just Dance on X-Box, and went roller skating. The results showed that her heart rate during exertion got up to 170+ beats per minute and the pathway did not shut itself down. So we had to prepare for the next procedure which was an electro-physiology study and cardiac ablation. It is not open heart surgery but anything dealing with the heart is always of major concern.

Arielle and I had a talk in light of this new development and decided that she would compete in Junior Olympic Nationals in spite of the diagnosis. The thought process was that she had competed this long with WPW not knowing that she had it and this was her last track event of the season. We would finish the season and then deal with the WPW.

This response was made not from a place of panic but it was calmly discussed and all of the possibilities analyzed. From an early age in sports, we have always taught Arielle to know what her priorities are before entering into any venture. This makes the decision making process more streamlined and easy to navigate. If you don’t know the priority, then any challenge can likely throw you off course. We know that “track is life” and we were going to see this great season through to the end.

While at the Junior Olympic Nationals, it was very scary for me to sit and watch her compete. I generally enjoy watching Arielle get all intense with the competition. I generally encourage her to push herself to her very limits. This time, though, it was a little different. Although I wanted her to make All-American and do really well, I had this growing apprehension of “What if…?” I watched her compete and put on a brave face, but it was one of the hardest things for me to ever do so far. When she finished both her events as an All-American, in spite of the WPW diagnosis, I could not have been prouder.

All-American at Junior Olympic Nationals were the final feathers in a great season’s cap. Arielle finished the 2015 track season as:

  • EPISD District Record Holder (Varsity) in Triple Jump (38’11.5”)
  • 5-A Region 1 Champion in Long Jump (18’7”) PR
  • 5-A Region 1 Champion Triple Jump (40’ 6”) PR and Burges High School record
  • TX State Silver Medalist in Triple Jump (40’ 3.75”)
  • Great Southwest Outdoor Triple-Jump 6th place finisher 2015
  • El Paso Times Female Track Athlete of the Year 2015
  • USATF World Youth Trials Competitor 2015
  • USATF Border Champion in Long Jump 2015 (5.57) Border Record for 15-16
  • USATF Border Champion in Triple Jump 2015 (11.93)Border Record for 15-16
  • USATF Junior Olympic Nationals All-American Long Jump 2015
  • USATF Junior Olympic Nationals All-American Triple Jump. 2015
  • Milesplit TX Female Track Athlete of the Year Nominee 2015

Now on to deal with this WPW.

The Theory of Specialization – Sports

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How does the Theory of Specialization relate to sports? Is it real and why is it gaining traction across the country?

The theory of specialization was first introduced by Plato. It is an economic term and basically states that the need of a state could be supplied by four or five individuals. This theory was advanced through history by Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Smith believed that specialization of labor allowed companies to produce more goods and increase each worker’s ability. This theory, although not applied to sports in an official capacity, has been gaining traction throughout sports in the league ranks and is permeating the high school ranks as well. It seems to have skipped the middle school areas because middle school sports are more about inclusion rather than exclusion.

The theory of specialization, as it applies to sports, relates to how a parent, coach or other significant adult in a child’s life would lead a child to drop other sports and focus one particular sport in order to be really good or “specialized” in that area. That makes sense to some degree, but when a child is still growing physically and the body is changing does specialization help or hurt the child?

The body needs to use all of the muscles all of the time in a growing child and especially in an athlete. And the most natural way to do that is to participate in multiple sports. This is why in schools PE teachers have the students participate in all types of activities. This is to work all of the muscles. Cross-fit, the new take on cross-training from the 80s, is the new craze in fitness. It works all of the muscles. It makes for a well-rounded athletic specimen.

Specialization too soon can hurt the child and lead to the following:

  1. Impaired muscles
  2. Injury
  3. Sport-burnout
  4. Resentment

You can put this list in any order that you want. No matter how you slice it, the results are not healthy or helpful for a child pursuing sports.

The body needs to use all of the muscles in order to grow properly. If a person begins to specialize in one sport too soon, using the same muscles repetitively year round in this sport, the other muscles begin to suffer. This leads to the non-dominant muscle becoming pulled in an abnormal way because the dominant muscles are so much larger because of repetitive use.

Since the body is built symmetrically, it is designed to be relatively the same on both sides. But you can tell even in small things which part of your body you use the most. Here is a mini-experiment to prove my point: Look at your hands. Notice that your dominant, or writing, hand is slightly bigger than your non-dominant hand. It’s the same thing with your feet. The one that gets the most workout is the one that is bigger.   And the same thing applies with your entire body. If you are right side dominant then that side tends to be bigger because it does most of the work.

When the muscles specialize, they tend to shorten to the specific task that they are required to do. However, when the tasks change on a regular basis then the muscles becomes more flexible and elastic so that it is prepared to do any task asked of it.

So, back to specialization. Am I saying that specialization is wrong? No. It becomes necessary if your child is going to advance in sports beyond high school or even as a career choice. However, specialization should be done based on the desires of the child, not the desires of the coach or even the parent. A child should be allowed to be in all of the sports that he/she feels capable of competing in until they decide on what sport they want to specialize in. After all, your child is the one doing the work. And with kids if the work is not fun, then it is not worth doing.

Also, just because you get some attention from a recruiter in a sport, does not automatically mean that you should drop everything and focus solely on that sport. *CAVEAT* If you know the reality of you getting recruitment looks and possibly advancing in the 2nd or 3rd sport is very minute beyond high school then by all means do what is best for your child.

As parents you do have to perhaps limit the sports to what you can handle financially.   However, even if you don’t do all the summer leagues and just narrow events down to one league sport for the summer, you can still keep your child going in the other sports with summer camps. My daughter plays three sports and is also in an elite triple jump program for track. She does volleyball camps and does summer basketball league. Her primary focus in summer is track because that is her sport that she wants to focus on in college and also wants to use to go to the Olympics.

All of these sport things are subject to my daughter’s schedule and what events take priority. However, she is in full control of what she wants to do and when she is going to begin to specialize. Its only fair because she is the one that has to do the work.  She knows her body and how much it is capable of enduring.  And as long as its fun for her she will continue.

Your child should be given the opportunity to play as many sports as he/she can so that they will have more chances to be really great at the sport of their choosing rather than the sport of the coach’s demand or the parent’s desire. Many times a child will incorrectly infer that they are not good enough for another sport if you want them to specialize too soon.

After all, the child is the controlling partner in this investment. They put in the work, they go out and produce and they deal with the consequences of their actions on the field or court. Our job as parents is to guide the child to the best possible scenario for them, and teach them how to navigate their lives in such a way that the each decision made is driven by the motivation of giving them the most successful outcome for the work that they put in.

10 Steps to Navigating “The Bad Performance” Meltdown

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Compass and Map

We have all been there and we have all witnessed it…That moment when your child has an awful performance when he/she should have had their best. The meltdown is brewing just under the surface and you have to help your child save face. Here is a list of 10 things to help your child get through “the bad performance” meltdown moment.

1.  Remember: This is NOT about you!

  • I know you feel badly for your child and you wanted so desperately for them to do better. It pains you to see your child in turmoil, but he/she has just endured what feels like the upset of a lifetime…your focus is on them. You can grieve later.

2.  Get someplace private quickly.

  • My vehicle is my place of choice. No distractions, semi-private, and can be moved to a more secluded area for additional privacy.

**NOTE: DO NOT drive while doing these steps! You must be fully present in the moment and give your child your undivided attention.  Your child’s mental well-being depends on you in this moment. FOCUS on them.

3.  Give your child room and permission to let it out.

  • Let them know you are there to listen then keep quiet and do it!
  • No judgment, no censorship.

How you feel about what he/she is saying is not important. Your child is entitled to their feelings.

4.  Don’t rush the moment. Give it time.  

  • Let them find their own words. No prompting.
  • I know the silence is deafening and you want to fill it with all the many quips, quotes and “isms” to make it all better. NOT NOW! This is your child’s time.

5.  Let them vent.

  • Do not attempt to console them or make it better.
  • Trying to console them is our selfish attempt to assuage our own discomfort at their situation. It does not help the child.

6.  Listen to them! Really engage.

  • It is their moment, their feelings. Remain focused. Being distracted will damage trust if he/she asks you a question “mid-vent” and you haven’t been listening!
  • Make mental notes of things that you wish to clarify AFTER the venting is complete.

7.  Correct erroneous, derogatory or self-deprecating comments that your child makes about him/herself.

  • For example: “Yeah because I suck!” or “I’m a screw-up!”
  • Those must be addressed immediately.
  • Interruptions, at this point, are allowed, but do not steal the floor.
  • Help him/her distinguish themselves from the event.
  • Example: “Yes, perhaps you did not have your best performance today, but you are still the same person who set the record, hit the note that brought the crowd to its feet, choreographed that killer routine, got the sack, interception, TD, goal, free throw etc. just last week. And you are still that person right now. Tonight is an event in your life, it is not you.”

8.  Give them time and opportunity to grieve the moment.

  • I allow my child 5 minutes to do whatever he/she needs to engage and express the intense emotion that comes with a loss or disappointment.
  • She can scream, cry, roll around on the floor, jump around, yell or punch a pillow.
  • Profanity, self-inflicted pain, and property damage or destruction is NOT allowed.
  • Teach appropriate behaviors for dealing with grief.
  • While watching your child rolling on the floor may make you uncomfortable, it is a lot less painful than other things that your child may find to numb unexpressed pain later on.
  • This can become quite the comical moment, but try to remain focused on the gravity of the situation.
  • At around 2 minutes the grief subsides. (It does not last forever even though it may feel that way.)
  • At about 3 minutes she begins to feel silly because it doesn’t hurt anymore.

**NOTE: It is important that you emphasize that once he/she has this moment to grieve, that the pain and emotion of the situation is over. The event can only be revisited and used as a learning tool, not to be worn as a badge of one’s inferiority.

9.  Wash away the physical residue of the moment/event.

  • Once she is done with the grief, then it is time to get some comfort food, a good movie, ice cream, a hot bath or whatever lifts the spirit to a happy place.

10.  Find something good in the situation

  • Even meltdown moments have flashes of brilliance. Emphasize the good in the midst of the bad so that your child knows that all is not lost and he/she WILL live to perform another day.