“No man is an island. – John Donne
We had a problem.
Beardo didn’t like doing cardio on his own. Neither did I.
The mere thought of running for 45 minutes on a treadmill in isolation put us to sleep. So, we skipped it. A lot.
Yet, we both needed cardio.
So, Beardo said something brilliant – let’s do it together.
And we did.
Week after week we met at the gym and suffered together. And trust me, the first few weeks were torture.
But lo and behold, by week 3, we started enjoying it. In fact, we started looking forward to it. We liked it so much we even added a second day.
So, with another bolt of brilliance, we thought if two was better than one then three or four would be better than two.
We started inviting other people to join us. One by one, we grew. With each new face, the workout became a little more tolerable, a little more enjoyable. The laughter, smiles, and jokes grew in number even as the intensity increased. It was as if the more we sweat as a group, the more diluted the pain became.
And then we upped the ante… We set a goal with a deadline.
We weren’t just doing cardio anymore. We were training for a Tough Mudder, something I had attempted to do on my own for the last 5+ years and failed.
That’s when the magic happened. That’s when our group became a team. That’s when a bunch of random people became part of something bigger, and as a result, became obligated to the goal and each other. All of the dynamics and camaraderie of the basketball locker room from high school were revived. We each became a single piece of a giant puzzle, and when one of us wasn’t there, we were genuinely missed by the rest of the team.
Of course, the pain during the workout was still there. The lungs still burned, the muscles still ached, and last night’s dinner felt like it was on a teeter-totter inside the stomach, never committing to one direction or the other. But, now all of that became part of the process. It was necessary. In a weird way, we almost looked forward to it because it brought us closer together.
One of my favorite movie scenes of all time was in the movie Miracle. The U.S. hockey team had a particularly lackluster performance in one of their games leading up to the Winter Olympics, and Coach Herb Brooks was furious. Immediately after the game, instead of showering, changing, and heading home to rest, he had the entire team back out on the ice for practice, still wearing their uniforms. Already tired from the game, Coach Brooks made them line up on one end, and on his whistle, skate as fast as they could to the other end. Rep after rep after rep. Between the heavy breathing and puking, the only thing you could hear was Coach Brooks – “Again.” It was so brutal that even the assistant coach tried stopping the drill. As a passive viewer, you cringed with each blown whistle. It wasn’t until the maintenance crew at the ice rink shut off the lights that the drill stopped.
At that moment, as you sat in your recliner and watched in agony the entire team bent over gasping for air in a dark arena, oddly enough, no matter if you were a former athlete or not, you wanted to join them. You wanted to be part of their suffering. You wanted to be on that team.
Why?
Because deep down, you know like I know, anything worth achieving involves suffering. That’s the cruelty and yet the beauty of life. If you’re going to strive for something, something that can truly change your life, you have to suffer. You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And a life without suffering for something just beyond your current grasp is not much a life at all.
So, if you’re going to suffer, if you’re going to live a life worthy of a well-deserved death, the only things that make it tolerable (and honestly enjoyable) are 1) doing it with others. 2) remembering your why (goal) throughout the process.
Side note: Interesting enough one of my favorite quotes is from author Mark Manson. “If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even mean anything. A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.”
So, what does this have to do with you?
You may not be competing for a gold medal or training for a mud run, but there’s something you want, and you just haven’t achieved it yet. Maybe you’re trying to lose 10lbs, run a 5k, compete in powerlifting, improve your overall health so you can play with your grandkids, or make any of the 1,000+ changes that can bring you happiness. You may think you’ve failed, that it’s beyond your grasp, just like I did, but in reality, you just haven’t found the right route to success.
If you really want to accomplish it, you need to do two things:
- Start your own team
I may not agree with a lot of what Crossfit does, but its ability to build a team-like atmosphere at their gyms is truly a life-changing environment for its members. In fact, when I think of Crossfit, the first thing that pops in my mind isn’t the Crossfit Games, kipping pull-ups, or Kinesio tape. It’s the camaraderie they have at their gyms. That’s its endearing quality.
But how many people do you need exactly?
As long as it’s more than one, it’s big enough to be called a team. The power of what I call “the other” is amazing. Just one “other” person can make a huge difference in your motivation and commitment.
And, don’t be discouraged if it’s just you and someone else at the start. With consistency, an outspoken goal, and some enthusiasm, it will grow. For 6 months or so, it was just three or 4 of us. Even today, we still have a workout or two where it’s just 3 or 4 of us.
More importantly though, although we all had a unified goal, your team doesn’t necessarily have to. You just have to be committed to showing up for each other. That’s what is most important – showing up consistently.
Although our early morning crew at the gym have their own goals, they’re still a team. I’d guarantee that every single early morning member knows Michelle Verity is training for a figure competition, and that Mike Heyen is training for a powerlifting competition. And more importantly, they’re all supporting those two, and in turn, those two know and are motivated by that. If Michelle missed two mornings, I’d bet she’d receive at least 4 different messages from members asking if she’s ok.
As a teammate, that’s all you need to do – show support, or more poetically said, actually give a damn about someone else.
I see you.
I’m cheering for you.
I’m here for you.
Now do the damn thing.
- Get the right people on your team.
Culture is everything.
When it came to endurance training, I knew I was weak. I knew if left upon my own accord, I’d find an excuse or “dog it” as soon as it got tough. And if it got too tough or too uncomfortable, I’d quit. For years I said I wanted to do a mud race and never did. I always found an excuse, a way out.
This year was different though. I knew if I was actually going to do it I needed people around me that would push me, challenge me, and motivate me. If I started slacking, I wanted someone to call me out. I wanted someone to say to me just like Andy Easton used to – “You’re better than that. Pick it up.” Most importantly though, I wanted people around me I was constantly chasing, people who were at a level I wasn’t at yet.
So, I purposely built workouts that would attract the right people, gunslingers as I like to call them. These were individuals who
Really think about who you want on your team. They don’t have to be anything like I described above. If you’re an introvert, you’ll probably want people that have a quiet yet intense focus like yourself. Or, you may want a team of friends with all kinds of personalities that can share memories in between sets. It doesn’t matter. The one thing I will say is that when you talk about your teammates, more than just a few conversations should end with a sentence like, “You know. People like us.”
That’s it.
That’s how you achieve things. That’s how you live.
For some odd reason when it’s come to our personal goals, we forget we were created to work as a tribe. That’s how great successes have always come about. Maybe it’s because we don’t want to burden those around us with our own selfish goals. Or, maybe we think it’s odd to use a team as a vehicle for something personal. Or, just maybe we are too embarrassed to fail, or better yet, we really don’t want it bad enough. Who knows.
See Sebastian Junger’s book Tribe, Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens, Dr. Henry Cloud’s Power of the Other, Jamie Wheal’s Stealing Fire, Daniel Coyle’s book The Culture Code, and the success of Weight Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous.
What I do know, especially when it comes to weight loss, is that you aren’t the problem. You just haven’t found the right team yet. No man is an island…..
P.S. Our Tough Mudder was this past weekend. About a mile and a half into our 3 mile race, our team, the Ageless’ Fuddy Muckers, decided to go ahead and do the 8 mile race instead. Needless to say, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t have made that decision. Luckily, my team was there, and it ended up being one of the best experiences I’ve had as an athlete.
