Author: Andrew Teitelbaum

Today marks my final of thirty-one blog posts for the month of March.  It also marks the end of my twelfth month as a BTL builder.  As I hand over the daily writing to David, so too will my apprenticeship as a builder be handed over from Gu to DD. Moments such as these offer … Continue reading Day 90 (Practice 231)…

My experience building teams has led me to the conclusion that you can’t run up the mountain of success.  You don’t have to ascend every ridge, but you won’t achieve anything sustained if you attempt to climb too far too fast. Even a dramatic overhaul of your roster won’t yield the cultural change necessary to … Continue reading Day 89 (Winners)…

While coaching at Ohio State, twice a week, almost without fail, we would put our athletes on the Concept II rowing machine (colloquially called the erg) for the same workouts.  I liked to call these workouts “opportunities,” although the athletes saw them as “tests.” They were great for improving fitness, and they also served to … Continue reading Day 88 (Beginning to believe)…

I finished the book American Spartan.  It’s Ann Scott Tyson’s tale of Major Jim Gant’s unconventional strategy to create security and turn the tide of the war in Afghanistan.  It’s an amazing story of a soldier as he confronts daily moments of truth, whose stakes are often life and death, while leading his men and … Continue reading Day 87 (Ghairat)…

Fear is a survival mechanism, an emotion deep in our limbic brain that exists to protect us from harm and pain. As Rachel connected in a team practice earlier this week, the opposite of fear is love.  In our moments of truth, it’s not that our fears go away, it’s that we have the faith … Continue reading Day 86 (Faith)…

So often when we project our minds into the future we do so with worry.  Rather than forecast with faith, we forecast with fear.  We call this dread. As a coach I would subscribe to the adage, “hope for the best, plan for the worst.”  Hoping for the best demands that we have faith, a … Continue reading Day 85 (Forecast with Faith)…

Only one day remained of the 2013 NCAA Rowing Championship.  For all intents and purposes, it was going to come down to two teams for the title: Ohio State and USC.  Fourteen previous trips to the Championship had never put us in a position like this.  It was almost thirty years into my coaching career, … Continue reading Day 84 (Energy)…

For the past eleven weeks I’ve been riding in Chet’s Peloton #tourdeisolation.  Every Tuesday and Saturday a group of BTL crazies and those they roped into the zaniness would race a 20’-75’ stage of this stationary suffer-fest.  Twice a week we would ride a lone.  Twice a week we would ride All One. Over eighty … Continue reading Day 83 (Excellence)…