Note to my Athletes

Note to my Athletes

A Facebook Post from four years ago popped up on my Facebook feed this weekend.  It was a pic of Lisa G. and my wife that we took working out on a cruise just a few months before Lisa passed away.  Lisa started out as a client of mine.  She was a nurse that wanted to get in shape.  It was so funny watching her in the beginning.  She literally couldn’t stand up from an air squat.  However fast-forward a year, and not only was she still training, but she was competing in powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting.  She could deadlift over 300 pounds and she was Clean & Jerking 176 pounds.  It was a real transformation.  It was one that I am most proud of.

She was so much more than a client or athlete.  She was a friend.  She was a part of my family.  Wherever Drew and I would go, you would find Lisa G.  At that point in my life, I loved my gym with all my heart.  My athletes consumed my thoughts.  I loved each and every one of them, and we had a community that most gyms could only dream about.  My athletes were my family as much as my family was. 

When Lisa G. passed, something inside me died.  It wasn’t just me.  The heart of our gym was broken.  We were all crushed.  I spoke at her funeral, and when I walked away from that church, the love for my gym was buried with Lisa G.  That was the same time that MuscleDriver USA offered me a full-time position.  I quickly took it because my gym was the last place on earth that I wanted to be.  We could all hear Lisa G.’s laugh echo through the halls of Mash Elite.

I tried to keep the gym going by hiring a manager, but the gym was built with me as the head coach.  People were there to be coached by me.  The gym quickly faded.  At first I was upset that people were leaving, but my wife reminded me that I was the one that left first.

When MDUSA started failing, I returned to my gym.  By the time that I returned, I only had my weightlifters and few OGs.  My heart was walled up to protect it from ever being crushed again.  The problem with me is that when I let someone in my heart, I let them all the way in.  I’d say that’s a good thing unless one of them dies.

It has taken me until now to finally let those walls down.  This weekend I was at Salem Lake with some of my athletes.  I was at the playground with my boys, and my athletes were off in the distance sitting at a picnic table.  I caught myself staring out at them, and I realized in that moment that I loved those boys and girls as if they were family.  They are my family.  I don’t know how my heart opened up again, but it did. 

When I walk in my gym, I look around at our members, and I feel that same feeling again.  A lot of our members are from that original gym.  Heck two of Lisa G’s training partners, Molly and Lisa S. are members of my gym again.  They are so very precious to me, and I am so thankful that God has given me back that love.  I have learned so much in the past years, and I can promise that I will never take that love for granted again.  I will appreciate and love each and every one of my athletes and members every day that God grants me the opportunity.

There is a moral to all of this especially for all of you coaches and gym owners that I would like to discuss.  I hear the word ‘community’ thrown around all the time nowadays.  It’s a catch phrase that supposed ‘experts’ use like some kind of  business tool.  People are not a marketing tool.  You can’t use some fancy technique to form a real community.  If that is really what you think, you are in the wrong business.  I baffles me that people like that want to be in the gym business.  If money is the priority, there are a lot of other easier ways to make money.

Do you want to know how to form a magical community, one like others can only dream?  You do this by loving your members, and I mean really loving them.  When I look at Hunter Elam, I see a young woman that dreams of the Olympics.  She wants it so badly that she moved from Oklahoma away from her family to reach that goal.  I want her to reach that goal as much or more than she does, but there is so much more that I want to teach her.  I want here to leave the sport of Olympic weightlifting a better person than when she began her journey. 

I want our general fitness members to fall in love with fitness.  I want to watch their lives transform.  I want to see Derek make it on Team USA.  I want Tate to surpass the accomplishments of his amazing brother.  I want Morgan to become the greatest strength athlete of all-time.  Once again I find my thoughts consumed with the hopes and dreams of my athletes and members.

Am I vulnerable again?  Yeah but I am so thankful for this vulnerability.  I wrote this to my athletes.  I want them to know that they cracked the ice away from my frozen heart, and I am thankful for each of them.  I am thankful for the laughter that December brings to the gym. I am so pumped that Hannah trusts me enough to move with her entire family to train with me.  I am thankful for the loyalty that Nathan has shown me over the past three years.

There is not one athlete at my gym that I am not 100% loyal to.  You guys might not have the greatest coach in the world, but you have a coach that won’t stop trying to become the best coach simply because he loves you with all of his heart.  You guys and gals have made the gym a place that I want to be once again.  I will do everything in my power to help each and every one of you reach your dreams.  I am so excited for the next few years.