I usually write my blog posts a few days in advance – and that’s the case with today’s blog, which I’m actually writing on Friday night, May 29. It’s 10:31PM, and I’m not going to lie: I’m absolutely exhausted (and, I guess it technically should be called “tonight’s blog,” even if it’s published four days after I write it).

My fiancee had a pre-graduation party of sorts to attend with some classmates, and because I was covering the gym until 5:30PM (and Friday traffic in Boston is a pain in the butt), I wasn’t home in time to tag along.  Since I’m pretty beat and I missed out on my chance to have some fun tonight, I decided to make lemonade out of rotten lemons.

Sure, I wrote a few programs for athletes and answered a few emails, but the “excitement” for my night was a chance to get better as a coach.  You see, I delved into the folder I keep on my desktop entitled “Overhead Throwing Journal Articles.”  Essentially, this folder is full of PDFs of all sorts of studies relating to baseball – from injury prevention, to performance, to characteristics of successful athletes.  Call me a dork, but it’s a Friday night, and I’m psyched to be reading this stuff.

Why?  Well, I want to be the best in the world at developing baseball talent – for my sake, my family’s sake, and most importantly, for the athletes who trust their development to me.  Baseball players account for 74% of the Cressey Performance clientele, and I feel it’s my obligation to them to be as on-top of things as is humanly possible.

I don’t want this to come across as a “hooray for me” post, so I’m trying to choose my words wisely – but I can honestly say that I HATE not knowing something.  It’s a hatred that’s driven me to read everything I can get my hands on and make the most of the valuable experiences I’ve been afforded and relationships I’ve cultivated with bright minds in related fields of study.

A few weekends ago, during the Q&A section of the Perform Better Summit in Providence, Al Vermeil – quite possibly the best strength and conditioning coach of all time (has won multiple Super Bowl and NBA Championship rings) – came right out and said (paraphrased, as I recall it), “I’m tired of hearing about people in the fitness industry asking about how to make more money.  The only thing I ever focused on was becoming a better coach.  Get really good at what you do and then you’ll make enough money.”

It really rang true for me, as my mindset all along has always been to just keep getting smarter and smarter: something that’s easy for me to work toward, as I genuinely love what I do.  I often get asked how I have accomplished so much by age 28, and the answer is that I really love it, and work has never been about a paycheck.  It’s been about gathering, interpreting, utilizing, and disseminating information – to my athletes and reading/viewing audiences.

So, I guess you could say that a Friday night with a collection of journal articles isn’t such a bad thing.  I’m guessing Al Vermeil had plenty of “Journal Fridays” along the way to all those rings.  When was the last time you set aside a Friday night (or several of them) to get better in your chosen field?