Happy Friday! I hope you’re gearing up for a great hockey weekend — let’s get into this week’s Playbook.
I’m going to start this week’s email in the same place as last week, i’m afraid and that is the setting of top level European football (soccer). For those of you not familiar one of stories of this season is that of Bodø/Glimt, a small team from a tiny town in the Arctic Circle, in Norway.
Remarkably they made a deep run to the Round of 16 in the Champions League beating absolute giants of the game, Inter Milan, Manchester City and Atlético ****Madrid on the way.
To put this into context for American sports this would be something like a Double-A baseball team not only making it deep into the MLB playoffs, but beating the Yankees, Dodgers, and Astros along the way.
It doesn’t really happen. At least, it’s not supposed to.
But that is roughly the scale of what Bodø/Glimt have done.
They are a small club operating with a fraction of the financial resources of the biggest clubs in Europe, and yet they have found a way to compete with — and beat — teams with budgets that are almost impossible to compare.
Teams with global fanbases, world-class players, enormous stadiums, and financial resources that, on paper, should make the gap almost impossible to close.
And yet, somehow, Bodø/Glimt have closed it. So naturally, the question is: how?
How does a team with so much less compete with teams that have so much more?
The answer, I think, is incredibly relevant for hockey players, coaches, and teams at every level.
One of the most interesting parts of Bodø/Glimt’s unique approach is that they do not set traditional results-based goals.
Not because results don’t matter. Of course they do.
We all want to win.
But their view is that the result itself is not fully controllable, and if you spend too much time focusing on something you cannot fully control, you start wasting energy that could be used far more productively elsewhere.
You can play well and lose. You can play poorly and win.
And if the scoreboard becomes the only way you judge performance, your learning becomes distorted very quickly.
That is true in football. And it is definitely true in hockey.
In hockey, players and teams can spend a lot of time and emotional energy focused on things that are not really within their control.
The opposition. The umpire. An injury.
The score.
The mistake they made five minutes ago. The teammate who didn’t make the run they wanted.
All of those things might feel important in the moment, and some of them genuinely are important, but they are not usually useful places to keep your attention for very long.
The better question is: What can I control now?
Your preparation. Your focus. Your intensity. Your communication.
Your recovery. Your next action.
Your willingness to learn from what just happened and move forward.
That is where performance actually starts to improve.
A lot of young players judge themselves almost entirely by outcomes.
Did I score? Did we win? Did I start? Did the coach notice me? Did I make the team?
And I understand that completely, because those things matter emotionally. It is normal to care about them.
But if that becomes the whole picture, development can become very fragile.
One good game, confidence is high. One poor game, confidence disappears.
One selection, everything feels positive. One disappointment, and suddenly the player starts questioning everything.
That is a difficult way to develop over time, because your confidence is constantly being handed over to things outside of you.
The best players learn to judge themselves more honestly.
Not just by what happened, but by how well they committed to the things that gave them the best chance to perform.
Bodø/Glimt hired an ex-fighter pilot, Bjørn Mannsverk to train and improve their mental performance and one phrase from an interview with him really stood out to me.
In the fighter pilot world, the idea was:
Train as you intend to fight.
I love that.
For hockey players, the equivalent is probably:
Train as you intend to play.
If you want to be calm under pressure, you have to train with pressure. If you want to make better decisions in games, you have to practice intense decision-making in training.
If you want to be trusted with the ball, your basic skills have to be reliable every day, not just when you feel good.
Because players rarely rise to a level they have never practiced.
More often, under pressure, they fall back on the habits they have built.
One of my favorite ever coaching quotes of all-time comes to mind, from the greatest College (American) Football coach Nick Saban:
“Don’t practice till you get it right, practice till you can’t get it wrong.”
The other big lesson from Bodø/Glimt is that culture is not really about slogans, posters, or team values written on a wall.
Those things can help, but only if they show up in behaviour.
Culture is how people act when things are difficult.
Can players share information with each other?
Can they help each other get better, even when they are competing for the same position?
Can they give and receive feedback? Can they reset after mistakes?
Can they stay loyal to the way the coach wants them to play, even when the scoreline or the pressure starts to pull them away from it?
That is culture. And, like anything worthwhile, it takes time to build.
Most teams say they want to win.
That part is easy.
The harder part is building a group that can keep focusing on the right things, especially when the result, the pressure, or the outside noise starts to pull them away from what actually matters.
Bodø/Glimt’s story is a reminder that overachievement is rarely accidental.
It comes from clarity. From consistency.
From knowing what you can control.
And from training those things every day, long before the big moments arrive.
Hi Adam,
It’s working!!!! Thanks for doing what you do. To Ross, too. Our girls are beginning to really apply their skills to the game & it was really evident this weekend. Everyone comments on their skills and I tell them it happens thanks to Leap & in our basement or messy toy room.
Just so grateful for this service that Leap provides as it makes field hockey much more fun for them!!