Friday Fuel

Raising Game Changers in Sport and Life.

Author

Ben McFarlane
February 06, 2025

Good morning all! Welcome to Friday Fuel - our weekly newsletter to help fuel you and your athlete in their sporting journey.

This Week:

  • 🏆 A quote we love

  • 🐺 Starting the season - Are you raising a Wolf or a Sheep?

  • 🎙️ Podcast incoming - send questions now!

  • 🥑 Nutrition Hack

  • 📖 One Great Book to Read

🏆️ A Quote We Love

This weeks quote comes from Kobe Bryant. To be better we need to incorporate new skills into our game or traits into our character. With so much judgement in our world today it can be hard for kids who think they might look bad while trying something new. This quote shows them it is not only ok to feel this way, but it is essential. And if it was good enough for Kobe…

❝

“If I wanted to implement something new into my game,

I’d see it and try incorporating it immediately.

I wasn’t scared of missing, looking bad, or being embarrassed.

That’s because I always kept the end result, the long game, in my mind. I always focused on the fact that I had to try something to get it, and once I got it, I’d have another tool in my arsenal.

If the price was a lot of work and a few missed shots, I was OK with that.”

Kobe Bryant.

And while we are talking Kobe - these 10 rules that he lived by are pretty great too.

🐺 Starting the Season

In the Southern Hemisphere many of us and our athletes are about to head into the start of school and club sport seasons - it can feel like heading into a storm.

/ Like Ted Lasso says though…

And enjoy the ride.

My wife and I sat down this morning to look at our upcoming schedule with football, futsal, basketball, volleyball, leadership camp, and tutoring coming up. She let out the biggest sigh looking at it! It’s a lot and we will be busy but when we realised that our 16 year old, Sam, only has 2 more years left at home with us we sort of had to take a moment and change our mindset. We love watching our kids play sport, compete, try their best, fall down, learn, achieve and fail. So we have decided to sit back and really enjoy these next two years, and try to be a better sporting parent.

I love what Asia Mape is doing in the US. She is a journalist who has been through this journey already with her children and has learnt a lot from making loads of mistakes. This article has given me some inspiration to be a better parent this year and maybe it will you too. Her website is also a treasure trove of great information.

Am I Raising a Wolf or a Sheep

I’ve always subscribed to sports being a microcosm of life and a fantastic way to turn our youth into great human beings as well as wonderful sportspeople and teammates. It can teach them so much. But only if we let them stand on their own two feet and we don’t save them. I have definitely got my parenting wrong on occasions and done things for my boys when I should have let them learn the lesson the hard way! This is a great (sometimes uncomfortable) article with 5 great actions to help save you from well meaning intentions that can actually hinder the character growth we truly desire. Click the pic below and the picture of Coach Bartley in the article to hear him speak on this.

🎙️ Podcast Time!

So exciting! We have booked our first podcast and have Zane Winslade from Flow Sport joining us for a chat on Monday 17 February. Zane is a former professional sportsman who turned his hand to Mental Skills and has become a performance coach for youth and elite athletes and teams. Zane is going to be speaking on:

  • 🏋️ Courage, mental toughness and overcoming setbacks

  • 🧠 The foundations of mental performance, resilience and confidence

  • 👪️ The role of the parent in success

  • 🔨 Simple tools for athletes and parents to use to increase performance in specific situations

If you or your athlete have a specific question around mental skills and performance then we would love to hear from you so that we can get Zane to answer it.

Just hit REPLY on this email and send your questions through!

🥑 Nutrition Hack

This weeks nutrition hack comes from Dr. Katie Schofield, a former NZ representative track cyclist who now works as an nutritionist with High Performance Sport NZ as well as seeing personal clients. This weeks hack is something nearly everyone loves…Pancakes. This is a healthy fuelling version - see the side bar for recipe and extra ingredients/toppings to make it pop!

📖 One Great Book to Read

This week I am rereading David Galbraith’s book Unleashing Greatness. I loved it the first time around and after sitting on the shelf for a bit I dragged it out a few days ago and have gotten so much value out of it second time around.

David is quite the character and after spending decades in high performance sport as a performance and mental skills coach for athletes such as Lisa Carrington, absolutely knows what he is talking about. This probably says it best:

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One thing I’ve learned from decades of being immersed in the highest echelon of High Performance sport is elite athletes are ordinary people doing extra ordinary things.

And these extra ordinary things come from extra ordinary habits.

Habits that have nothing to do with sport, and everything with mind and soul.

The good news is: You can learn these High Performance Habits too.

David Galbraith.

It is a super easy read filled with fun anecdotes and simple tasks to get you or your athlete to live with courage and embrace the high performance habits to live in what he calls Pathway 1.

I cannot recommend a better book to get your athletes focused on what is really important and what really creates high performance and happiness in all aspects of life.

You can find it here:

Have a great week everyone. If you are not already a part of The Game Changer Facebook Community but would like to be then come on over and join our wonderful group of people taking on the youth sports journey together.

Take a deep breath, throw a smile on your face, and enjoy the season(s) ahead! It’s all worth it.