As a coach, one thing that used to frustrate me was one player would make a bad decision, and that's all you would read about in the papers all over the country. We have so many athletes do so many wonderful things for other people, and you never rea...
I didn't get a ton of interest from colleges in baseball and football, but I was outstanding in track and had the sense that this would be my meal ticket... Track was a sport where I saw immediate improvement, and I had a lot of good support behind m...
My first and only experience in baseball, the coach signed me up; he didn't tell me there's a thing called the curveball. I didn't know that. So the ball's coming at me and I start backing out, and then it broke inside. And the umpire says, 'Strike o...
Unlike most youngsters who have school as their 'second home' where they meet and make friends, for me playtime has been at the Gopichand Badminton Academy in Hyderabad. When I am not playing a tournament, my days are spent at the Academy with my coa...
I understand how success is judged and calculated in the coaching profession. That's really all I care about. You go about this business a certain way. Everybody has a certain style and opportunities that are presented to them during your career. Whe...
A closing team is so important in the NBA. The last seven minutes is what you are always coaching to get to. Now you have your team set, you have the match-ups you want, you have your time-outs, your chance to finish the game, and that's my job, to g...
Why can't a seven-foot guy play a doctor? Why can't I be a teacher? Why can't I be a football coach? Why can't I be a cab driver? Anything. Anything else than that. I can cry. I can do those things that they think the big guys can't do. So just give ...
Last week I was in London at an awards show, then I flew home and was in an RV park with my wife and kids in our motorhome, this week I'm in NY doing a charity event, and tomorrow I'll be coaching my daughters soccer practice. I guess the range of ro...
I hope somebody falls in love with me - other than my fiancee. But that's what you want. As a player you want a team that really wants you; head coach, GM, owner, everybody that really wants you in their place and the players believe in you. I'm look...
I am training at such a high level that I actually could eat anything and get by. But as my coach always says, your body is like a car, and food is like your fuel. I am a race car, so I can't just put unleaded fuel in my car. I need that good premium...
Everyone gets surprised because neither one of my parents play golf. Like I said in my speech, my aunt and uncle really love golf, and we visited them, and she gave me two clubs. Like people think when they don't know who my dad is, they think he's m...
Thank God, I have sort of a pan-European accent rather than Russian, which doesn't sound very pleasantly to Americans. For them, we speak with a rather rude pitch, and that might be our actors' problem there. Now I've begun working with language coac...
When Jim Irsay called me five years ago, he told me, 'I want you to be our coach and help us win the Super Bowl.' He told me, 'We are going win it the right way. We are going to win it with great guys; win it with class and dignity. We are going to w...
You have a lot of ups and downs in coaching, especially, but I can't remember any bad times at this point. I mean, they're all good. A lot of tears when you lose, a lot of down times, but I can't remember any of them. They're all positive now. Even t...
I couldn't make it on the swimming team in high school. In fact, I got thrown off the swimming team and was forced to audition for the school play because they had at the audition about 35 girls show up and no boys, so my swimming coach suggested tha...
It's unrealistic to expect the person you go to for sage advice also to be the person you go out and have a good time with. And it's unlikely that he or she will be the same person who's pushing you and motivating you to do more every day, like a coa...
I'm interested in Dathan Ritzenhein's future in the marathon, and I believe that's where we need to address some issues he seems to have. He's had good marathon coaches - both Brad Hudson and me. He's figured out the fueling. He's got this incredible...
The pretty girls get all the good stuff. Oh, God. So not true. I unlearned this after years of coaching beautiful clients. Yes, these lovelies get preferential treatment in most life scenarios, but there's a catch: While everyone's looking at them, v...
My mental approach is totally different. My coach predicated everything on defense. He always talked about defense, defense, defense. I took it to heart that if you play defense, you can take the heart from an offensive player.
I've done my coaching badges, I've got my Pro Licence, but I enjoy what I'm doing now. I'm also the elite performance director of the Welsh FA. The main thing for me was always Liverpool Football Club and my country, Wales - and I'm lucky enough to s...
My biggest problem was to get the coaches to understand that I was a runner, and I wanted to prepare myself based upon the calisthenics I did and get myself ready. For example, I used my forearm when I ran the ball, so I didn't want to do pushups bec...
