Dear Coach,

National Select Camp Rosters.
Stress and Burnout.
Build a Pool Conference
Firstgov. A great web site to help non-profits.
The Leadership Coach
Do your actions match your values? From the GAS Ready Room.

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National Select Camp Participants Announced (10/31/2006)

Athletes selected for the 2006 National Select Camps have been announced by USA Swimming. The camps will be held at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs in November. The Girls' Select Camp will be November 9-12 with the Boys' Select Camp the following week, November 16-19. 30 girls aged 14 and under and 30 boys aged 16 and under are invited to attend along with their personal coaches. Athletes are selected based on both individual events and IMX rankings.

Click here to see the Girls' Roster

Click here to see the Boys' Roster

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Stress and Burnout: Burnout Symptoms and Causes

From Elizabeth Scott,
Your Guide to Stress Management.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

The Origins of Burnout

Those who are experiencing high amounts of stress in their lifestyle need to always be aware of the idea of burnout potentially looming in the future. While the term ‘burnout’ is often thrown around in discussions of stress, do you really know what it means, and how it’s caused?

The term “burnout” is a relatively new term, first coined in 1974 by Herbert Freudenberger, in his book, “Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement”. He originally defined ‘burnout’ as, “the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one's devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.”

While burnout isn’t a recognized clinical psychiatric or psychological disorder, there are some similar features between burnout and diagnosable conditions such as depression, anxiety disorders or mood disorders.

However, burnout is much more common; for example, it’s estimated that 25%-60% of practicing physicians experience burnout! It’s also less severe, more temporary in duration, and clearly caused by situational stressors rather than a biologically mandated chemical imbalance. (It’s kind of like depression’s non-clinical, less intense cousin that just comes for a visit and leaves when you reduce the stress in your life.) Classic symptoms include the following:

Depleted Physical Energy: Prolonged stress can be physically draining, causing you to feel tired much of the time, or no longer have the energy you once did. Getting out of bed to face another day of the same gets more difficult.
Emotional Exhaustion: You feel impatient, moody, inexplicably sad, or just get frustrated more easily than you normally would. You feel like you can’t deal with life as easily than you once could.
Lowered Immunity to Illness: When stress levels are high for a prolonged amount of time, your immune system does suffer. People who are suffering from burnout usually get the message from their body that something needs to change, and that message comes in the form of increases susceptibility to colds, the flu, and other minor illnesses (and sometimes some not-so-minor ones).
Less Investment in Interpersonal Relationships: Withdrawing somewhat from interpersonal relationships is another possible sign of burnout. You may feel like you have less to give, or less interest in having fun, or just less patience with people. But for whatever reason, people experiencing burnout can usually see the effects in their relationships.
Increasingly Pessimistic Outlook: When experiencing burnout, it’s harder to get excited about life, harder to expect the best, harder to let things roll off your back, and harder to ‘look on the bright side’ in general. Because optimism is a great buffer for stress, those suffering from burnout find it harder to pull out of their rut than they normally would.
Increased Absenteeism and Inefficiency at Work: When experiencing job burnout, it gets more difficult just to get out of bed and face more of what’s been overwhelming you in the first place. This may be an unconscious defense against burnout, but those experiencing it tend to be less effective overall and stay home from work more often. (This could also be due to increased illness resulting from lowered immunity, as discussed above.) This is part of why it makes sense for workers to take some time off before they’re feeling burned-out, and why it makes sense for employers to refrain from running their workers into the ground; they might not get back up so quickly!

What Causes Burnout?
Burnout has many causes. They fall into the main categories relating to job structure, lifestyle features, and individual personality characteristics. For more on the causes of burnout, read the following articles:

If you think you're at risk of experiencing burnout, you can take the job burnout quiz, and see these resources on self care and finding satisfaction at your current job.

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The U.S. government's web portal, may be one of the best resources for non-profits. Firstgov.gov has so much information available it will take a while to learn where to find the things you want. I use the search function to find specific topics and then bookmark the agencies that I find most useful.

http://www.firstgov.gov/Business/Business_Gateway.shtml

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Swim Clubs – get reimbursed to attend the

3^rd Annual Build-A-Pool Conference

www.usaswimming.org/facilities

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THE LEADERSHIP COACH

Almost every successful leader I have talked to is also an avid reader. Unfortunately, however, these days the importance of reading seems to be emphasized only to children. A common denominator among Fortune 500 leaders is that almost all of them read or listen to motivational material on a daily basis.

Reading is a key component if one wants to be successful as a leader. First of all, it gives you a chance to be one step ahead of the team you are leading in terms of knowledge. Secondly, it gives you a sense of confidence. Knowledge eliminates fear. Third, reading taps into the creative side of your brain, and as a leader you will always be called upon to be creative. One of the major disadvantages of television and movies is that you are watching what someone else has already created and not creating your own pictures from the words that you read.

One telling statistic is that as soon as television replaced reading as the entertainment option of choice, the number of inventions plummeted. When you read, you stimulate the right side of your brain, the creative side. When you watch or look at someone else’s creations, most of the time the activity of the creative side of your brain is minimal. To quote Confucius, “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”

The Leadership Coach is Peter Burwash, president of Peter Burwash International, a company that manages tennis instruction programs at top resorts in more than 30 countries around the world. He can be reached at leadershipcoach@schneiderpublishing.com.

"Reprinted with permission from SportsTravel magazine."

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Do your actions match your values?

To celebrate her first Mother's Day as a prospective mom, Positive Coaching Alliance Senior Trainer Kathy Toon wrote the following essay.

Mothers Day will never be the same. Over the years I’ve been affectionately called The General, Sarge, and Mom by my players. From now on someone will be calling me Mom for real. I am adopting a little boy this summer and trading in my 18 years of college coaching for 18 plus years of carpooling. What will I be known for as a sports parent? I’ve spent most of my adult life across the court from sports parents - watching, counseling and consoling them. Now I will be one of them. As a Positive Coaching Alliance trainer, I half-jokingly say I teach adults how to behave at youth sporting events. Now I seriously wonder how I will behave from the stands in the heat of the moment. I think of the opening exercise of Positive Coaching Alliance's Sports Parent Workshop. The title is “What are YOUR goals for your child in sports?” Parents are given a hypothetical 100 points and I ask them to divide them among a list of items. The items include a good athlete, increased self-confidence, how to deal with defeat, how to make friends, and have fun. Then I encourage parents to use "targeted cheering" to reinforce their goals and avoid getting sucked into a win-at-all-cost mentality at youth sports contests. For example, if you want your child to learn the importance of effort, then target your cheering to focus on reinforcing effort regardless of whether the effort results in a score. I recently interviewed Donna Kenney-Cash, soccer star Landon Donovan's mother, about her sports parenting experience. She noted that Landon was so competitive that she felt the need to take some pressure off him. After every game she would ask Landon, "Did you try your best?" (Yes.) "Did you have fun?" (Yes.) "Good! Then you won. Now, what was the score?" She wanted Landon to know that "a 'winner' was someone who tried his hardest and had fun, not the team or player with the highest score." Now I ask myself, "Will I be strong enough to redefine what it means to be a winner that way for my son?" How will I divide my 100 points? Will I be able to stand for my goals in the heat of competition? Am I going to fall victim to reactive cheering in the stands and cheer only when my son scores or his team wins? Am I really going to practice what I preach and remember to use targeted cheering when the game is on the line? When I project 18 years into the future to the end of my son’s youth sport experience, what do I want it to look like? What do I want him to say about me as his sport mom? What are the Toon family values and life lessons I want to pass onto my son through sports? How do I want him to complete the sentence, Mom always taught me, ____? I am hopeful his answers will include: enjoy the process and not just the outcome; preparation makes a champion on and off the court; be on time and that’s 5 minutes early; how you do anything is how you do everything; what you do at home, in the classroom and community will show up on the playing field and vice-versa; the need to walk my talk; there are consequences to my behavior, both good and bad; the choice is mine. I hope he'll say, "She had a foot on my back side when I needed it and an arm around my shoulder no matter what." I’ve asked hundreds of coaches and parents, “What are your values as a coach? As a parent? Do your actions match your values?” I get up on my soapbox about the importance of knowing one's values and then I challenge coaches and parents to share them with their kids. I believe that if you put your philosophy out there for kids, they will hold you accountable. Now it’s my turn. My goals as a sport mom are to know the values and life lessons I want my son to learn through sports and to demonstrate them with my own behavior.

Oh wow, what if he’s not into sports?

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The material in this e-mail is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation or endorsement with respect to any company or product. One of the objectives of the USA Swimming Coach’s Blast e-mails is to make coaches aware of potential resources available.

Peter C Clark

Sport Development Consultant

Eastern Zone

719-866-3561 (direct office)

719-330-0743 (cell)

719-866-4669 (Fax)