We shout the phrase “Don’t be baby!” around the gym a lot. What started out as a joke, though, has actually become one of our governing philosophies.
I guess the concept is this: there are a lot of grown-up babies running around the world. I don’t mean people with a childlike sense of play or wonder. I mean the people who moan about insignificant problems and let trifling matters dominate their minds. They allow adversity to get in the way of achieving their goals. Even worse, they often allow adversity to prevent them setting foot toward those goals in the first place.
You know what? Einstein probably had a few lattes with insufficient foam. Nadia Comenici probably suffered from the odd hangnail. There’s a reason you don’t find records of them bitching about these issues, though; they had more important things to concentrate on.
As strength coaches, our job is to help people realize their potential. This means a finding a point between pushing limits and avoiding injury. Too much in one direction and performance can be derailed — perhaps permanently. Too much in the other direction and progress can be unnecessarily slowed. It’s a delicate balance. So when a client has an ache or pain, we take it very seriously. We need to know with a fair degree of certainty that we are not contributing to injury. We err on the side of caution. Something being merely difficult is not a good enough reason to quit — or even slow down. The expression I use is that I have all the empathy in the world (I’ve been there, after all), I just don’t have any sympathy. In other words, suck it up and get to work.
When I first started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I did not do things the smart way. I didn’t go to classes or study things ahead of time. I started showing up for open mat (free sparring) classes and getting absolutely mauled by a bigger, stronger more advanced and far more talented student. A mutual friend called me an idiot on many occasions for enduring this. However, something very important came out of this process. No one else ever scared me after that. I’ve been beaten up and beaten down many times, but nothing has ever seemed as bad as those first couple of months. While getting manhandled on several occasions, I’ve actually thought, “That’s it? I’ve had it way worse than this.” The noise seems to be permanently turned down for me on a whole host of issues.
My experiences with strength training have been similar. When you have pushed yourself to the point of utter exhaustion . . . When you have stopped making excuses and learned how strong you actually can be . . . when you’ve endured brief bouts of absolute agony for a purpose . . . well those lattes and hangnails don’t seem like such a big deal anymore. This is what we like to show people. This is the idea behind not being a baby. We’re trying to spread the word.
Geoff
