A Note from Coach H

Most editions, this newsletter looks forward. New research, new tools, and new ways to think... This time we're doing something different.

This is the first of what I'm planning to make a regular feature: a "best of" edition. Every several editions, we'll pause the usual format and circle back through what's already been published, pulling out the pieces that mattered most. If you're new here, this is your shortcut to the archive. If you've been with us since Edition 1, think of it as a second pass at the ideas most worth keeping in your back pocket.

Nothing here is filler. We went back through the first five editions and pulled the strongest Huddle stories, the science that held up best, the stat most worth remembering, and the four Build Session tools we'd hand to someone first. The goal is to make sure the best material doesn't just scroll past your screen once and then disappear forever. Expect this same format to show up periodically going forward.

Thanks for reading, and to my fellow Americans, have a fantastic Fourth of July!

Let’s get into it →

🧠The New Frontier: Reading the Brain During Competition.
Science can now watch an athlete choke before it happens. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) wearables measure oxygen levels in the prefrontal cortex in real time, giving researchers a direct window into how much cognitive load an athlete is carrying mid-competition. When a player chokes, the data shows a spike in brain regions tied to self-consciousness, not the regions tied to actually executing the skill. In other words, researchers can now pinpoint the exact moment a player starts thinking too much instead of just playing. For coaches, that's no longer a guessing game. Imagine being able to see, not assume, when an athlete's mind has started working against them. (https://www.isst.co.in/2026/05/27/ai-and-wearable-tech-in-sports-science/)

🤖The World Cup Just Became the Biggest AI Test in Sports History:
The 2026 World Cup turned into the largest live AI experiment sports has ever seen. Google, Lenovo, and FIFA each deployed AI tools across team prep, fan experience, and stadium security, testing all of it on the biggest stage in the sport. Argentina, the defending champion, used Google's Gemini to break down film and analyze performance data on both their own team and their opponents. The takeaway applies far beyond the World Cup: at every level of sport right now, the programs treating AI as a real preparation tool, not a gimmick, are the ones pulling ahead.(https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/the-2026-world-cup-is-running-on-ai-from-kickoff-to-final-whistle/)

🧠How You Lead Shapes How Tough Your Athletes Become:
Mental toughness might have more to do with you than with your athletes. A season-long study of 301 collegiate volleyball players found that coaches who led with a transformational style, building a shared vision, investing in personal growth, creating a task-focused team climate, produced measurably tougher athletes. Two things drove the effect: the overall environment a coach builds for the team, and the individual relationship a coach builds with each player. The practical move is simple. Give individualized feedback, set personal goals for each athlete, and measure their growth against their own baseline instead of their teammates'. (https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/5865/coach-leadership-athlete-mental-toughness)

McGill's Big 3: The Core Training Science Athletes Actually Need

Ask most people what core training is for, and you'll hear some version of "ab work." McGill's research says that's the wrong question entirely. His review reframes the torso's job description: the core exists to stiffen, acting as the transfer point between hip power and limb action, not to crunch, flex, or rotate. Every spinal bend under load spends part of a finite budget before tissue damage starts to accumulate, and most athletes have no idea how fast they're spending it in the weight room.

That reframe has real consequences for program design. Sit-ups and gym ball curl-ups replicate the exact motion behind disc herniation: repeated lumbar flexion under load. Abdominal hollowing, still a go-to cue in plenty of programs, actually works against you, reducing the stiffness the spine needs to stay protected. The fix is the abdominal brace, contracting everything at once rather than hollowing it out, and the difference between the two cues is measurable in how much load the spine can safely handle.

This is where the Big 3 earns its name. The modified curl-up all but eliminates lumbar and cervical motion. The side bridge builds the lateral musculature, including the quadratus lumborum, a muscle most programs forget exists. The birddog trains posterior chain stability with a neutral spine, sidestepping the compressive load a "superman" exercise doubles down on. Keep isometric holds under 10 seconds. Endurance comes from reps, not white-knuckling a single hold until your obliques file a complaint.

The bigger idea worth keeping: a strong core and a mobile one aren't the same thing, and chasing the wrong one can backfire. McGill's data shows athletes with more spinal range of motion actually carry higher risk of future back trouble, and strength without control can raise injury risk rather than lower it. Whether your athletes are nursing back pain or just chasing better performance, these three exercises are the foundation to build before any loaded progression enters the picture.

McGill, S. (2010). Core training: Evidence translating to better performance and injury prevention. Strength and Conditioning Journal, 32(3), 33–46.

A tired mind and a tired body both lie, but in opposite directions… Fatigue doesn't just slow your players down. It lies to them about the clock, and it lies in two different directions depending on what kind of tired they are. A 2026 study in Frontiers in Psychology tested 34 basketball players across four time windows (6, 12, 18, and 24 seconds), inducing mental fatigue with a cognitive task on one day and physical fatigue with a plyometric protocol on another. The split was clean. Mentally fatigued players underestimated how much time had passed, so the clock felt like it had more time left than it really did. Physically fatigued players did the opposite, overestimating elapsed time, so the clock felt like it was running out faster than it actually was. Both effects got stronger as the window grew longer, peaking at 18 and 24 seconds.

This isn't just a fun fact about perception, it's a real factor in late-clock decision making. Multiple sports live and die by the clock. In basketball, for example, the players making split-second decisions late in a possession are usually the same ones who just defended a tough set or burned a long defensive possession to get there. This research suggests fatigue doesn't only slow players physically, it warps the internal clock they're using to decide what to do next. A mentally fatigued ball handler might hold the ball too long, genuinely convinced there's more time on the clock than there is. A physically gassed player might rush a shot they didn't need to rush, reacting to a clock that feels far more urgent than it actually is.

The fix isn't a drill, it's awareness. If late-clock decisions are falling apart for a particular player in a particular stretch of the game, fatigue type might be the missing variable, and the right response depends on which kind you're dealing with. A physically gassed player might just need a breath. A mentally fatigued one might need an actual verbal cue on the time remaining, since their internal sense of it can't be trusted in that moment. Either way, the clock in a player's head and the clock on the wall don't always run at the same speed, and knowing which one is lying might be the edge you're looking for.

Put the research to work. Hands-on tools and drills you can use right now:

Quiet Eye Training

The best performers aren't seeing more, they're seeing better. Researchers call it the "Quiet Eye": the final, locked-in visual fixation on a target right before a movement begins. Across sport after sport, the pattern holds. Experts hold that fixation longer and steadier than novices, and that one habit quietly separates clutch performers from everyone else reaching for the same shot.

The training is almost suspiciously simple. Have athletes lock their eyes on a target for one to two seconds before they move: the rim before a free throw, the ball before a putt, the target zone before a serve. No equipment, no extra reps, just a deliberate pause most athletes skip without realizing it. Small habit, real payoff: better accuracy, more consistency, and a visual system that holds steady exactly when pressure tries to make it wander. (https://youtu.be/qIG1ZT3-a_A?si=y634csw5TMNsc3FA)

Nordic Hamstring Curl

It looks deceptively simple: an athlete kneels with their feet anchored, lowering their torso forward as slowly as control allows before pulling back up. What's actually happening is one of the most evidence-backed injury prevention exercises in sport. The Nordic curl loads the hamstring eccentrically at long muscle lengths, exactly the position where sprinting strains happen, and it's been linked to reductions in hamstring strain rates of up to 51% in team-sport athletes.

The harder question has always been how much is enough. A 2025 meta-analysis settled that by comparing high- and low-volume Nordic programs in soccer players, and found the lower end of the range, 2-3 sets of 6-12 reps, one to three times a week, still produces real strength and architectural adaptations. A program tight on time doesn't need to overload the exercise to get the protective effect, it just needs to show up consistently. (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2025.1631205/full)

If-Then Planning

Most athletes have a routine for how the game starts. Almost none have a plan for when it goes sideways. If-then planning closes that gap by having athletes pre-load a response to their most likely stressors before competition even begins. Something like "If the crowd gets loud and I lose focus, then I take one breath and reset" turns a reaction that used to be a scramble into something automatic, decided in advance instead of improvised under pressure.

The research backs up the simplicity. Competitive tennis players who built individual if-then plans before matches were rated by coaches and teammates as performing better than those who only set general goals. The whole exercise takes minutes: have athletes name two or three scenarios that typically throw them off, then pair each one with a specific, ready-to-go response. (https://theperformancepursuitconsulting.com/blog/5-steps-to-enhance-your-performance-through-pre-performance-routines)

Constraint-Led Games

The instinct when something breaks down in practice is to blow the whistle and explain. Skill acquisition research suggests that's often the wrong move. Constraint-Led Coaching reshapes the environment instead, tweaking the rules, space, time, or scoring rather than stopping play to lecture, so athletes get nudged toward the right behavior without ever being told what to do.

The adjustments can be small and sport-specific. A basketball coach might award bonus points for paint touches before a shot. A soccer coach might cap players at two touches. A volleyball coach might require every attack to start in transition. None of it tells the athlete the answer directly, it just makes the wrong answer harder to reach for. Constraint-led games build decision-making, adaptability, and game transfer, all while keeping practice competitive instead of clinical. (https://www.skilledathleticism.com/post/constraints-led-coaching)

Attentional Focus: Flip Your Cues

The words a coach chooses shape what an athlete's brain actually does with them, and most coaches are unknowingly picking the wrong words. Research on attentional focus is remarkably consistent: external cues, ones aimed at the outcome of a movement, beat internal cues, ones aimed at the body itself, for both performance and how fast a skill gets learned. "Snap the wrist" is internal. "Put backspin on the ball" is external. Same movement, different result, because the brain processes the two instructions in entirely different ways. One review found over 80% of cues given to elite sprinters were internal anyway, despite external cues winning study after study.

The fix costs nothing but attention to language. Pick two or three cues you lean on most and rewrite them around the effect instead of the body part. "Drive your knees up" becomes "attack the ground." "Keep your elbow in" becomes "throw through the target." Same coaching point, better wiring, since athletes move better, learn faster, and retain more when their attention points outward instead of inward. (https://coachathletics.com.au/coaching-education/you-havent-coached-until-theyve-learned-why-attentional-focus-is-your-essential-coaching-tool)