ARE YOU IN SCHAPE?

If you fail to develop an every-day-every-play habit of precision, you just are not paving your way to championship performance.

I call it making sure you are in SCHAPE to play. S.C.H.A.P.E spells out six important ingredients.

• Spirit

• Communication

• Hustle

• Attitude

• Precision

• Enhancement

Spirit: Spirit is noise. Do you make noise while you are practicing and playing? To demonstrate spirit, you have to make noise with your mouth and your hands. You yell and you clap.

Communication: On the court, communication during sports competition requires the same ingredients that permit effective communication in a classroom or at a party. Make sure you use the ingredients consistently in practice and in games.

Hustle: This one doesn’t need much explanation except to say that it is something you have to measure every day on the court, not just during big games.

Attitude: Most everyone understands who has one, even if it’s a bit difficult to put it precisely into words. You gotta play and practice with an attitude. You can’t just go through the motions. Everything about your approach to what you are doing has to say “This matters, this is important, I care.”

Precision: It takes extra effort to be precise. That’s why so many athletes fail at it. It seems easier to cut off a few steps, to take a shortcut.

Enhancement: After all the instructions are given, throughout the criticism and encouragement, the winning and losing, a final question keeps popping into the championship equation for me. Are you out there every day actively trying to enhance what is going on? Making a drill run more smoothly? Trying to turn seven repetitions per minute into eight? Encouraging your teammates who are tired or in a slump? Trying to get your big slow guy to get some zip into his game? Trying to help the reserves feel more a part of the action? Trying to make the practice atmosphere more positive?

From "Think Like a Champion" by Dick Devenzio

(Thanks Coach Starkey)