An important lesson from the Navy Seals

“If you know how to ‘shoot, move, and communicate’ the rest will fall into place.”

Mark Owen, in “No Easy Day” the story of the Osama Bin Laden mission.

Owen talks about the planning and preparation that goes into a mission like that.

An immense amount of training of the basics of close quarter combat, and then more training in pressure situations.

However, when you have no idea what is behind that closed door, or behind the next hedgerow “the plan always changed, so it was easiest to keep things simple.”

Too much time spent on the plan leads to the appearance of “The Good Idea Fairy”, whose basic premise is to weigh the Seals down with too much kit by trying to account for every eventuality.

We see this in sport a lot with ovecomplicated play books or training programmes, but the athlete can only shoot with one foot and has trouble getting out of a chair hands free!

Owen says combat becomes more like “pick up basketball” and the team who shoot, move and communicate the best are able to adapt.

Rather than fuss about miniscule matters and burden your athletes with pointless information (I guarantee no fighter in the last round is worrying about his AMPTk protein affecting his endurance) try working harder on the basics.

Then challenge these basics in imaginative and stressful situations.

As Vern Gambetta says “We want adaptable athletes, rather than adapted ones”