What Coaches/Mentors Can Learn from Keep Sharp
Marcus had run four training sessions back to back, demonstrating drills, correcting form, and keeping twelve teenagers focused through a hot afternoon, before realizing he hadn't eaten since breakfast or had water in hours. He'd spent so much energy managing everyone else's attention that his own needs had dropped off his radar. Driving home, he caught himself forgetting which parent he'd promised to call back about a schedule conflict, a small thing but unlike him. He was the person who remembered everyone's details, that was half the job. That night he set a phone reminder to drink water and eat something real between sessions, which felt almost silly to need. The next week, mid-practice, he noticed he still had bandwidth left at the end, enough to actually listen when a kid pulled him aside with something unrelated to the sport.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Movement beyond demonstrating drills
Standing and demonstrating during practice can feel like plenty of activity, but it's often stop-and-start rather than the sustained kind that most directly supports brain health. A coach's own conditioning matters separately from the athletes', and finding time for it usually means scheduling it outside practice hours entirely. Treating personal fitness as part of the job, not an extra on top of it, keeps a coach's own thinking sharp for the decisions coaching constantly requires.
During a heavy season, when every free hour outside practice gets absorbed by logistics.
Schedule one workout each week at a time practice can't claim.
Eating around practice and game schedules
Coaches often eat on the run between practices and film sessions, grabbing whatever's fastest rather than what sustains them through a long day. Steadier meals support the blood sugar stability behind the patience and quick judgment a sideline demands. A coach who feels unusually short-tempered by the end of practice may be running on empty, not just a frustrating session.
During tournament weekends, when the schedule leaves no real gap for a proper meal.
Pack a real meal for game days instead of relying on the concession stand.
Rest and connection beyond the roster
Coaches often absorb the emotional weight of every athlete's struggles, with few outlets built in to process any of it themselves. Sleep and real peer connection protect memory and mood in their own right, not extras earned once the season ends. A coach running on short sleep and talking mainly to athletes and parents is missing two supports that steady most demanding jobs.
During a losing streak or a difficult season, when the job feels too consuming to step back from.
Find one peer, another coach or a friend outside the sport, to talk to regularly.
Curiosity beyond the playbook
Coaching involves constant problem-solving, but it can still settle into a familiar system and a comfortable set of drills over a career. Learning something entirely outside the sport, a new skill, a different field, exercises different mental pathways than refining the same playbook again. It also models something valuable for the people being coached: that growth doesn't stop once someone becomes the expert in the room.
For a coach, personal needs routinely lose to whatever the team needs, often rightly so during a game. Movement gets confused with the physical demands of coaching itself, meals get squeezed by schedules built around athletes, and rest loses to a season with no real off week. The honest tradeoff is recognizing that a depleted coach has worse judgment for exactly the moments that matter most, so protecting these basics ultimately serves the team too.
Name one thing, honestly
- Which of these four areas do you sacrifice first during a demanding season? - Would the people you coach notice if you modeled better habits in this area? - Who do you talk to regularly who isn't an athlete, parent, or fellow coach?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Find one peer, another coach or a friend outside the sport, to talk to regularly.