Finding Connections - Dynamic Athleticism
My philosophy is about integration. Strength mixed with speed. Speed mixed with skill. Because it’s in the integration that dynamic athleticism emerges.
Coaching is a profession built on connections—between people, between ideas, and between disciplines. Yet too often, we keep ourselves locked inside the boundaries of sport science, tactical coaching, and our own experiences, missing the richer insights that lie just outside our domain.
For most of my coaching career, I searched for better answers inside my own little ecosystem—more drills, more ways to refine what I already knew. But over time, I realized that the real breakthroughs came when I stepped outside of sport altogether. A book on psychology reshaped how I thought about motivation. A conversation with a teacher reframed how I approached skill development. Even watching my own kids play taught me things no certification or clinic ever could.
The truth is, some of the most powerful lessons for coaching don’t come from coaching at all—they come from psychology, philosophy, education, systems thinking, and even the arts.
My aim in writing this series of articles is to bring different worlds together. By exploring a wide variety of research and connecting it back to sport, we can uncover ideas that deepen our understanding of how athletes learn, adapt, and perform. Each idea adds a new perspective, helping us see the connections between movement, mindset, and environment with greater clarity.
Ultimately, this is about equipping coaches to think differently. When we learn to borrow from other disciplines and reframe them to fit our own discipline, we sharpen our ability to design training that is more creative, more adaptive, and more aligned with how athletes actually perform. My hope is that this journey expands not only your knowledge, but also your imagination for what coaching can be.
Robert Greene, in Mastery, says of da Vinci, “His mind, he decided, worked best when he had several different projects at hand, allowing him to build all kinds of connections between them.” 1
That way of thinking—drawing connections across experiences—remains one of the most valuable traits in coaching. This is the essence of an integrated approach to learning. Developing ability to see patterns, reframe problems and broaden the athlete’s perspective.
Integrating maneuverability, agility and quick repositioning techniques with traditional ball skills expressed in creative ways.
When we add a ball, we have to adapt and reposition around every touch, looking to create an advantage. This is where it starts.
Explore – Innovate – Reimagine
During the Renaissance, greatness wasn’t about narrow specialization—it was about integration. Artists were engineers, scientists were philosophers, and thinkers were doers. Each discipline enriched the others, creating breakthroughs that were greater than the sum of their parts. Figures like Galileo, da Vinci, and Michelangelo weren’t defined by a single skill but by their ability to fuse insights across fields.
Psychologists call this a polymath: someone with expertise across domains, driven by curiosity, continuous learning, and the ability to apply knowledge in diverse contexts. Carlota Corzo expands this definition, describing polymaths as intrinsically motivated to add value—creating, rethinking, solving—while constantly refining their skills across disciplines.
These same qualities are what we should strive for as coaches—and what we want to nurture in our athletes. An athletic renaissance means developing athletes who think broadly, see patterns others miss, and solve problems with confidence in the moment. Athleticism, then, is not just strength, speed, or skill, but the ability to perceive opportunities and act decisively under pressure.
For coaches, this means drawing on diverse experiences—whether from psychology, teaching, or other professions—and weaving those perspectives into the way we design training and communicate. For athletes, it means engaging with multiple sports, roles, and even creative outlets like music or art, all of which expand their ability to adapt, connect ideas, and express creativity through performance.
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