There’s always something crazy going on in this industry. At any moment, there’s a maniac in a weight room taking a dangerous lift and a shady businessman in an office finding a way to turn dirty profits. The posts you find here in my log are the musings of a mashed-up meathead — the reactions I have as I spend my whole life watching this industry. I will share my thoughts with you here, unedited, uncensored, unfiltered, and Under The Bar. If you are offended by profanity - do not read this.
CHALKING UP
Chalking up is awesome, isn't it?
That's living, man.
You chalk up and you go to a bar, that's when shit gets real. Your adrenaline's running. You have passion. You love it. You're looking at possibly breaking the PR.
Getting better.
To me, that's what you want to strive for and why. If you want to strive for getting your hands in the chalk box and moving forward. You can spend all your life in the warm up room talking about things and trying but to me that's not living. Living's chalking your hands, getting ready and taking that step from the box to the bar because that's not one step so few people take because that step isn't easy and with that step comes risk.
When You Lift a Heavy Weight.
One of three things are going to happen, you're going to make it, you're going to miss it or you're going to get hurt. Two of three are not good but one is awesome. That's why you want to strive for the chalk box. Get the hell out of the warm up room, find something that empowers you like that chalk box to be able to move forward with your career, relationship, family, business, whatever it is. Because that's where life happens.
If you're too afraid to dig in, chalk up, that's fine. That's your choice. That's the majority of society. I like to empower you to be better. Learn. Learning is extremely important in all levels.
Trust me, I have the worst educational past. Not the worst, there's people who didn't graduate, people who've never got past high school, middle school or even grade school. Mine's not so great and I don't want to go into details about it but it took me way too long to graduate from college. I barely got out of high school. We'll just leave it with that.
Bullshit Alert
I'm asked routinely is, is a college degree worth it if you want to be a personal trainer or strength coach? I have my own answer to this but what I usually ask back is what do you think? 8 out of 10 times I'm told, "Actually, no." I don't use anything that I learned in college now that I'm coaching or working in this profession. I agree. For the most part, that's probably true. Then I'll ask the next question. When you're in a seminar or a lecture or reading the book or listening to somebody speak, does that bullshit detector ever come on? You know what I'm talking about. Somebody's speaking and all of a sudden, you think what is that? You think maybe that might relate back to anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, all those courses that you learn through college?
You may not know why that sounds like complete utter bullshit but something inside you is telling you, that's bullshit. The follow up question to that would be, do you think you would still have that same bullshit detector right out of high school? Think about that for a second. This is one of the reasons why I motivate and try to empower people to continue with that education. Because we are in an industry that very well could be the biggest industry of bullshit in the world. I can't think of very many others outside of that that do better job than we do of false claims, BS, and all those kinds of things.
The Squat
We're in the fitness profession. If you were in political science or history, would that bullshit detector come on faster when you're listening to politics? Because we already know with politicians, actually we know this for a dead fact, most of people who vote have no clue what the hell they're voting on. They have no bullshit detector. You think they might? If they were more educated. Education can come from many facades. Think of a Squat. When you're the guy under the bar, you're the one that's got to hold the load. Ultimately, you're the one in your life who's responsible.You're responsible for your education. You're responsible for your success. I don't care what excuses you throw out.
You give me any excuse in the world, give me a couple minutes, let me search Google. I will find somebody who had to overcome far more shit than you did and is better than you. Excuses are meaningless, we all know that as coaches, trainers, we know it so don't use them because they don't work.
First of, nobody cares.
Secondly, all you're trying to do is to justify your own inadequacies.
You should embrace them and try to make them better. With the squat and I am a powerlifter by trade, I can't compete anymore but it's like you want you to be the meathead, you're stuck in meathead mode for the rest of your life and you do stupid shit forever. I have to remember that. It's ingrained. It doesn't go away and I don't know why. I try, I doesn't go away.
When you compete, you have a head judge, side judges, spotters, and a back spotter.
The judges I see in this scenario of education has been your advisers, people in your life who helped to advise the direction and the path that you're going. Seminar, lectures, college, any education that comes from formal type of setting, books, lectures, degrees those are the judges. They impact if you're going to make that lift or not. They set the base on how it's going to be judged. If you don't think you're judged based upon what your education is, think for a minute. When you submit your resume, what are people looking at? You are judged based upon your education. If you're not judged by that, you're going to be judged by what comes out of your mouth. If what comes out of your mouth sounds like somebody who's a stupid idiot, obviously you're going to be a stupid idiot. Education's going to determine how you are judged.
Spotters, right side's family, left side's friends. Family and friends are influential in your education as well. Birds of the feather flocks together, that whole kind of thing. How many times have I read on Facebook, you know I try not to read the news feed, I'm sorry if that ever happens. How many times you read things or articles about the pusification of America. Men are now weak. Men don't have balls. Da da da da da da da da da. I read it and I think, who the hell are you associating with because everybody I know, they're striving to get better. They train hard and they have balls. If you're complaining about this, maybe you want to look at who you're hanging around with.
You see where the problem could be?
Do you want to contribute to the problem or do you want to make it better?
If it's coming from news, quit watching the shit. Watch Bugs Bunny. Watch something that's going to be a positive influence instead of a negative.
I don't think the pusification of America is going on. I see a lot of people right now, today, trying to make themselves better. That's what I see. That's the positions I try to put myself in. I don't want to be part of that problem. Let's be the solution and try to help it.
The back spotter. Let's just say that's faith. I don't care what your faith is. What your beliefs are. What it is. To a certain degree, everybody has to have some type of self belief or faith that no matter what happens, if you get knocked back there's going to be a way that you're going to come back. There'll always be a way to come back up. There'll always be a way to get back up when you get knocked down, to get back up when you're pushed back, to get back up when you stumble.
You have to believe and know there's always going to be somebody back there, your belief, faith, whatever it is to help you. You have to have that belief, faith, that no matter how hard you get hit or what happens and this isn't going to be a rocky thing you can't overcome, you can move forward, will move forward. Because with age comes wisdom, but only, if you learn from where you screwed up and how you got yourself in the situation in the first place.
My advice is as I've gotten older, you go through more shit. I think that just comes with life. You can't try to take a path to avoid that. That's a path of avoiding getting on the platform and getting under the bar. That's avoiding the path of actually making a lift, having success.
You will miss. Without a doubt, you will miss.
You will screw up.
You will make mistakes.
You will have people stick a knife in your back.
You'll have people screw you over.
We've all been through it. Our life, we're no longer that innocent child. Innocence gets stripped away real quick. That's not bad. That's growth.
However you WILL miss every lift you NEVER take!
Lastly, you're the guy under the bar, you're responsible for how much you want to load it. How much you want to try to push yourself. How far out of your comfort zone you want to be able to go, to become better, to develop better athletes, to develop better clients. That's continual education and learning. That does not stop when you graduate. It's constant and it has to be across several platforms. As I said before, I've learned a lot from my experience as a powerlifter that I've been able to take over into business. I wrote a book on it. At the same time, now after being in business for 17 years, I could write a book on what I've learned about business that can transfer over to training.
Unique Perspectives
Key point here, you get outside your realm of your education, there are definitely lessons you can learn and bring back to make you better at what you do. That's going to make you a better individual, a better trainer, a better coach and you're going to have a unique philosophy nobody else has. I know of many coaches that do not have degrees in exercise science. Many have degrees in education, history, business, philosophy, etc. Their perspective on training (once they add this to a strong education in exercise science - training) is going to be completely different than somebody who's only studied exercise science. He's going to be able to fallback on both perspectives (exercise science and their first degree) and create things that may have never been seen before, that are unique, that will become his own training philosophy.
At the same time, as with training the more you learn in any trade and any genre, the more you realize you don't know. The best coaches I know and the best people I know in this industry will tell you they're astounded by the amount of information they don't know because you start studying one topic or you start working down another topic, your brain starts to hurt because now you just fell into a whole domain you didn't even know affected, the athlete, the trainer or your own training.
Just because you are a professional in your trade doesn't mean your learning is over... It really has just begun.