Is The Game Over?

   

Don't cross the bridge until you come to it

 

   

Don't cross the bridge until you come to it.

   

That is an old English proverb. It has been passed around long enough that most people nod at it and keep right on doing the opposite.

   

Here is what it actually means. Don't spend today paying the toll on a bridge you have not reached yet. Don't hand over your attention, your sleep, and your training to a problem that has not happened. Most of the weight people carry around is not for what is in front of them. It is for what might be waiting three miles up the road, around a corner they cannot even see yet.

   

And half of those bridges never show up.

   

You rehearse the disaster in your head. You run it fifty times. You lose reps, lose sleep, lose focus, and then you get to the spot on the road where the bridge was supposed to be, and there is no bridge. There is just more road. So you got scared and drained for nothing, and while you were busy being scared, you missed what was right in front of you the whole time.

   

I have spent many years learning this the hard way. Let me tell you where it started.

   

Is the game over?

   

I was a kid. We were out playing football in the street, the kind of game where the rules are made up, and the hits are real. I went for something near a storm drain and twisted my ankle. Seconds later, I was flat in the mud with the rest of the kids standing over me.

   

Loser. Girl. Pussy. Those are the words I remember most. Face in the mud, and they were still kicking dirt at me.

   

I pulled myself up and limped home. Tears in my eyes, mud everywhere, that whole feeling of the world being unfair. My mom took one look and suggested I go take a bath. My dad never moved out of his chair. He saw me limp in, and he called me into the front room.

   

By the time I trailed mud across the house to get to him, I was crying harder. My ankle hurt, sure, but the tears were not really about the ankle. What I wanted was for him to tell me how rotten those other kids were. I wanted the sympathy. I wanted somebody on my side.

   

He asked me one question.

       

I told him no. I told him I got hurt and had to come home.

   

He asked it again. "Is the game over?"

   

I did not know what to say. Then he told me something I have carried my entire life.

       

He told me to put my coat back on and go finish the game.

   

That scared the hell out of me. I could barely walk, and I did not want to go back to the abuse. But he insisted, and the next thing I knew, I was back out in the street finishing what I started.

   

Here is the part that matters. My dad was not really asking about my ankle. He was asking whether the thing in front of me was actually finished or just uncomfortable. I had already crossed a bridge in my head that did not exist. In my head, the game was over, the day was ruined, and the only thing left to do was go home and feel bad about a future that had not happened yet.

   

He dragged me back to the only thing that was real. The game was still going. My job was to go play it.

   

The bridge twelve weeks out

   

Now, let me jump ahead a lot of years and a lot of iron.

   

I have been hurt. I have been in rehab. I have had medical issues and stretches of my life where I honestly was not sure I could squat, bench, or pull 135. Anybody who has trained long enough knows exactly the place I am talking about. It is a dark spot. It is very easy in that spot to start building bridges you have not yet reached.

   

You start doing meet-day math in your head from twelve weeks out. You start worrying about a total you have no business worrying about because you cannot even hold the empty bar the way you want to right now. You get scared of a platform that is three months away while the actual work in front of you sits there untouched.

   

This is one of the biggest reasons lifters stall out. They get ahead of themselves. They break the phase because something down the road feels more urgent or more fun than the thing they are supposed to be doing today.

   

You have to know why you are doing the phase you are doing right now. Is it GPP? Rehab? Base strength? A peak? If you do not know that, you will jump the track every time something shinier shows up.

   

Getting back in shape to start training for a meet sucks. GPP sucks. Bringing up weak points sucks. You do all the things you suck at anyway, because those are the things that have to be done before you earn the right to think about anything else.

   

You do not cross the meet-day bridge from twelve weeks out. You cannot. It is not there yet. All you can do from where you are standing is to focus on the phase you are in. Do that phase. Do it fully. Do the parts that suck. The bridge will be there when you get to it, and you will cross it in a lot better shape if you spent the road building instead of worrying.

   

The work does not care how scared you are of what is coming. The work only cares whether you did it today.

   

The bridges business builds for you

   

Business will build bridges for you faster than you can count them.

   

When we started elitefts, and every year since, I have been told the same thing. The economy is bad. The future is a giant mess. It is all going to fall apart. There is always some reason it is supposedly about to end.

   

I do not watch, read, or listen to the news. So I press forward regardless.

   

That is not me pretending problems do not exist. Problems are very real, and they hit hard. Business is more competitive than sport. In sports, there is at least some sportsmanship. In business there are people who want to see you fail, who want to make you fail, who want to take what you have built and do not care how they get it. You will get knocked down many times. That part is true.

   

But here is what I learned. Almost none of the disasters I was warned about ever showed up the way they were sold to me. I spent years being handed maps to bridges that collapsed on their own before I ever got near them, or that were never really there.

   

There were plenty of days I did not want to go to the gym, and I went anyway. There were things in the business I did not want to do, and I did them anyway. There were risks I did not want to take, and I took them anyway. My answer when I get stuck in a spot I do not want to be in has always been the same.

       

I have dreams for this company that still seem so far off. I have had them so long that they are not going anywhere. The work always takes longer than I think and is harder than I imagined. There is always something creating uncertainty. There is always a bridge somebody swears is coming.

   

I keep pressing forward anyhow, and I handle the bridges when I actually reach them. Not before. You cannot fight a thing that has not arrived. You can only get so busy building that when the real problem finally shows up, you are strong enough to deal with it.

   

What this actually costs you

   

I want to be straight about this, because it is easy to turn a proverb into a bumper sticker.

   

Not worrying does not mean not preparing. My dad did not tell me to pretend the ankle did not hurt. He told me pain is part of the game and to go finish it. You still prepare. You still train your weak points. You still keep your books straight and your eyes open.

   

The difference is between preparing for the bridge and suffering over it. Preparing is doing the phase in front of you today, so you are ready for whatever is up the road. Suffering is standing here, miles away, already paying a toll on a crossing you may never reach.

   

One of those makes you stronger. The other one just drains you and steals the rep in front of you.

   

Think about what worry actually costs. It costs you the training session you are in, because your head is three months down the road. It costs you the conversation you are having, because you are running a fight that has not started. It costs you sleep, which costs you recovery, which costs you the exact strength you would need if the bridge did turn out to be real.

   

Worry taxes you twice. Once, for a problem that has not happened, and again later if it actually does. You end up paying for the same bridge two or three times over.

   

Cross it when you get there

   

Some bridges are real. You will cross them. Injury is real. Loss is real. The meeting that does not go your way is real. The business quarter that falls apart is real. I am not going to stand here and tell you the road is all clear, because it is not, and you would know I was lying.

   

Here is the honest version. You will hit real bridges. But you cross a real bridge one time, when you come to it. You do not cross it fifty times in your head first. That fifty is where all the damage happens. That fifty is what wears people down long before the actual problem ever arrives.

   

My dad handed me the whole thing at once, standing in the front room with mud on the carpet, and I did not understand it for years. The game was not over. I had already ended it in my head, packed it up, gone home, and started grieving a loss that had not happened. He just asked me to go check whether the thing I was so upset about was actually finished.

   

It was not. It almost never is.

   

So the next time you catch yourself worn out over something that has not happened, ask yourself this question. Is the game over? Or is it just uncomfortable right now?

   

If the game is still going, your job is simple. Put your coat back on and get back out there. Do the phase you are in. Do the work in front of you. Handle the bridge when you actually come to it.

   

You will get there soon enough. And when you do, you will be a lot better off if you spend the road building instead of bracing for a fall that never came.