- “Adversity causes some men to break; other to break records.”
– William Arthur Ward
- “No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not
matter truly slide.” – Fight Club
- “What are you waiting for? You're faster than this. Don't think
you are, know you are. Come on. Stop trying to hit me and hit me.” – Morpheus
Sometimes all you want to know is that someone’s got your back.
This may be why adulthood is so jarring for some people.
I remember when I was a child. Not all of it. But one thing was,
yes, my parents would get mad at me (and rightfully so, I am sure), but at the
end of the day I knew they had my back. I knew if I didn’t come home one day or
if I got hurt or if someone bullied me or something bad happened, they would be
there for me.
It’s like when you’re sick and some friend brings you chicken
soup, or when a co-worker does something pro-actively without you having to
even think to ask them to do it.
Sometimes support comes in another form. There is all sorts of
support, from the tough love of a parent to the honesty of a partner or
manager, because you never get better without constructive criticism. Criticism
to tear down is another matter, and one of the interesting parts of people and
psychology is to know what works the best for a given person: is it the
‘criticism sandwich’ or to be blunt? Is it to bully or encourage or shame? I
know what works best for me!
Motivation is like culture. You sure as hell can’t impose
motivation on someone else. My motivation, that of those around me, and the
intrinsic motivation of people in general is a perennial area of interest for
me, as is how we intentionally and unintentionally affect the motivation and
behaviours of others with our own actions.
I said in my last post how easy it was to go ‘cold turkey’ from
CrossFit and just start eating and drinking whatever I wanted. Especially when
you’re stressed, as most of us white collar workers get, and you tend to stress
eat on the one side, or, my own personal favourite, use caffeine as an upper
during the day and alcohol as a downer in the evening. This is one of the
reasons that I do train, so that I don’t need something like wine to relax me
of an evening, and so that if I do take it, I feel the effects in the gym and
that keeps me away.
So I go back to the gym for the first time in, oh, about two
weeks, and those two weeks of eating and drinking whatever and not always
sleeping very much. The end result? Rack jerked 70kgs like it was 50 … and then
absolutely hit the wall after two rounds of my metcon. I wanted to DIE. I
wanted to quit. I actually lay down between rounds 3 and 4 and considered doing
just that. Actually, worse … I did quit thinking I was done, it was my first
day back, I couldn’t bring the intensity that I knew was required ….. then I
got my head in gear at least enough to go out there for the final round.
My coach after asked me how I felt; I said terrible, and he said
well I looked terrible. I watched the videos after and the only round that
resembled how I should look was the first round. It’s …. Not fun to see
yourself like that.
I was realising recently that this 2012 Regionals dumbbell snatch
was actually more of a defining moment for me as a person than I probably
realised at the time. When I signed up to be on the team, I didn’t know it was
going to result in the entire team relying on me to do something I wasn’t sure
I could do.
To look back on it now, it was a strange position to be in: about
to enter a competition floor, having never completed a 32kg snatch with the left
arm, but be utterly confident that I would succeed. I can still remember that
moment in my car when the realisation suddenly came crashing down on me that
this wasn’t anything to do with me at all, and I would nearly rather die than
let my team down.
It was actually more visceral than that, even. It was: I am NOT
going to let them down. It is NOT going to happen.
Confident? Yes. Over-confident? Probably.
I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: when it comes to max
lifts or things you think you won’t be able to do, once your brain has decided
it’s impossible, once you lose faith in yourself, you miss every time. Same in
most things in life. The most dangerous Cape Town drivers are the ones who fail
to commit.
I went back to re-read my blog post, hence the first quote above.
I was not actually supported in this endeavour. My teammates wanted me to
succeed but there was this undercurrent of lack of faith. But … I actually didn’t
notice at the time. All I could think about was that stupid dumbbell and how I
wasn’t going to let everyone down. What the others thought didn’t matter.
Rather like in competition – you’re doing what you’re doing, and you don’t know
or care who is shouting for you in the audience.
So as I am returning now to training and to my sport and thinking
through support, and lack thereof. I now compete as an individual. What does
this mean for me in terms of motivation? What does this mean in terms of
support? One thing I can say, not for good or bad but it was what it was: I
competed at Regionals, complete with food poisoning, without a lot of emotional
support. I had friends, sure, but they had their own stuff going on. I didn’t
have that one single person who was specifically there to have my back. As I’m
now trying to hook Carla (who won Regionals) up with some support in the LA
area, it makes me wonder: is that why you have a coach? To give you that
support when you compete? Or is the anonymity better/easier?
I’ve heard the saying that people’s futures or realities are shaped
by their thoughts. That’s where ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ comes in. It is
possible that my thoughts and will single-handedly snatched that dumbbell for
me, in a way that I couldn’t get that muscle up this year even though I knew I
could do it and was shocked and baffled that I did not.
The other day, I was WhatsApping with a friend who was giving me
some advice for a meeting the next day and actually at one point I became a
little bit overwhelmed with the feeling of: how lucky am I? What on earth did I
ever do to deserve this sort of moral support at 9pm on a school night? Well,
four hours later still chatting and then I couldn’t train the next day because
I hadn’t slept enough … I have only my own decisions to blame for my lack of
sleep, but that’s another matter.
I guess what I’ve been thinking is this: I do, and don’t, care
about the peanut gallery. I do care that my coach basically just told me I
suck. But I’m not going to fix it for him; I’m going to fix it for me.
Other people are different. Some people are highly emotional. I’m
not the sort to scream & shout or knock things about. It’s not in my
personality and I don’t really think that’s how you get the most out of your
relationships.
It is so interesting to me, comparing my thoughts and condition and
experience with others, especially those who have been in my seat before. To
know you’re not in it alone and that there are people you can ask for help and
advice; but it must be the right advice. Every CrossFit athlete who’s been
doing it a while, and every athlete has an opinion. And you can’t waste your
time talking to everyone. You must find the ones who actually have the
experience or education to give valuable feedback.
Where to draw the line between ‘measure twice, cut once’ and ‘shoot
first, ask permission later’ is a difficult one, and there are no right
answers. To sort out my shoulder and to get to that next level I am now making
a dramatic change to my training, at least for a while.
Following a programme is like anything else. It must at least appear
to be a good programme for the individual. What I don’t need right now is
Smolov squat programme. And it must be followed for long enough to know if it’s
making a difference, and tracked and measured, and then evaluated at the end.
The funny thing is: now a year later, it doesn’t matter at all if
I snatched that dumbbell or not. I was talking with both Chris and John about
this in London: how strange it is that we have so much care in us about
whatever it is that we are working on at work, then a few years later we’ve
moved on and could literally care less? What does this tell us about our own
selves and lives? Everything is sooooooo transient. At the end of the day I
remember more what I learned and the fun we had, together, than the specific
details that seemed so important at the time.
There’s a lesson in that too, I suppose.
I have also a type of professional coach, and I asked him why he
does it, because in part I am baffled, as I told him: I’m an athlete. I’m a
doer. I cannot sit from the sidelines. I remember when I first moved from my
on-the-front-lines job at Jeeves into a higher level role, feeling separation
anxiety from the low-level details.
Knowledge is power, and you cannot debate on a level playing field
with someone who has more knowledge than you do. You’ll get caught out and even
if they are wrong, they’ll call you as ignorant and it’s game over. This is one
of the reasons I’ve had to learn Wi-Fi so fast. It’s actually not so funny when
you don’t understand a router from a switch or ADSL contention, what is
point-to-point vs point-to-multipoint, or what it means for fibre to be ‘lit up’
or what is layer 7 or interference.
Thank goodness all that is behind me: there’s plenty I still don’t
know, but I’ve got enough of the basics down that the plan is in place, plan
has been and is being validated by my WBA friends, and all that matters now is
the execution of said plan.
I am just realising also that I have turned into my first mentor. Wow.
The more things change the more they stay the same, huh?
But one thing I am eternally grateful for is my amazing friends
and acquaintances who provide moral support, advice, and even just that
confidence to prop me up. It did more for my confidence going into Regionals to
have one of the guys in the gym make an offhand comment about how he thought I
‘belonged’ up there at the top of the leaderboard than my own internal thoughts
could do.
One of my other dear friends asked me a question the other day and
when I was too slow to respond and it was clear I was hiding something, she
didn’t just let it go. That sort of friendship and support is what you need.
Not sure why, but sometimes that support makes all the difference
in the world. We may be individuals but we’re not alone.
- “Your shoulder is injured because of tension in your spine.” –
Byron
- “My life is going to be easier now that Ellie’s back.” – Rudolph
- “Can’t fix stupid.” – Jade
- “Wait …. This from the guy who wore a Meraki shirt to a Ruckus
training?” – Ellie (judgment!)
- “Oh yes. You need help.” – Willem
- “There is nothing on this planet that handles interference like
Ruckus.” – Rudolph
- “The road is littered with people who thought they were indispensable.”
– Rudolph
- “And when they understand it’s better.” – Cedric
- “You look like a girl!” – Bennii
- “You looked terrible.” – Chris
- “We’re all such singularities.” – Mark
- “Wait. Are you saying your dad’s horse is named after your mom?” –
Ellie
- “Of course they did. That’s how they roll.” – Rob
