Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Guys, We Don’t Own our Athletes


Guys, We Don’t Own our Athletes

Yesterday I posted a pic of a young lady highlighting her accomplishment in CrossFit. It was in my Insta Story. This already sounds silly, as I type the words. However bear with me, I will get to the point. In the story, there were random thoughts. Here’s the way the Insta Story read:

·      Highlighted a post
·      Two of my college football players
·      The infamous pic of the CrossFit athlete
·      A seminar attendee who bought one of my shirts
·      Then one of our Weightlifting athletes from Denmark
·      Hunter Elam Weightlifting
·      Nathan Damron dunking a basketball
·      Nathan Clean & Jerking a ton of weight
·      Jared Flaming Clean & Jerking a lot of weight
·      Highlighted Morgan’s Post, 170kg Clean & Jerk
·      Then a Post about the Online Weightlifting Team and Nutrition Team
·      A post Highlighting the upcoming Weightlifting Camp this weekend

The post of the CrossFit young lady was seven hours before the plug for my Online Weightlifting Team. Yet a coach from her online team, messages me on Instagram, “she’s not your athlete man.” That led to a few messages back and forth, which led me to this post. Maybe I am wrong, but it feels this world has gotten all messed up.

Other coaches, people, and companies repost my athletes all the time. Morgan (my 15-year-old freak) 14-years-old at the time, first squatted 220kg/484lb at CrossFit Krypton, and they posted the video. Should I have been mad by today’s standards? Well I wasn’t mad at all. I am in this to see my athletes flourish. If someone reposts them, I assume that post is going to help them build their popularity. Ian Wilson has reposted my athletes and their lifts. Should I be mad at him? Well, once again, I am not mad at all.



Here’s the statement that sparked this blog, “It’s not silly to be protective of your products.” My athletes will never hear of me calling them products. They’re my athletes. They’re people I care about. They’re not ‘products’.

This has gotten out of hands, and for the first time I am questioning the whole Online Team World. I mean, if I send someone a program, do I own that person at that point? Shouldn’t my goal be to help my athletes?

Let me give you some more background on this story. This same girl visits our gym periodically. My teenage athletes love being around her, and they consider her a friend. Heck, the whole gym considers her a friend just like all the other people that come to our gym. She just hung out with our team for a birthday party, while this coach was a thousand miles away. I’m sure that this young lady doesn’t even know that this has happened, as she and her family are the most down to earth people on this planet

I won’t name this coach because I know both of the owners of his company very well, so out of respect to them I’m not going to call him out. I won’t name the girl because I care too much for her. I can say with 100% certainty that no one has ever joined this team because I posted a pic of her.

I didn’t write this to call them out. I wrote this to shed light on what this is becoming. I mean, is this where we are in this industry? I coach multiple athletes online that still fly the banner of their home gym. There home gym still posts their accomplishments, and I say awesome to that. However, maybe I am in a world all of my own. Should I treat my athletes as property? Should I search the web to see if someone is posting about my athletes?



Let me explain why I do what I do. Maybe I am wrong in my thinking. If so, I want you guys to tell me in the message board below. I was an athlete myself. I played college football at Appalachian State University. I did Weightlifting for a while after that, and had the chance to train at the Olympic Training Center. I was a good weightlifter winning three world championships. Now this is not to brag. I just need you to understand this first.

After my own personal success in athletics, I wanted to teach my athletes to do it better. Athletics can lead people down a dark path especially when you’re trying to be the best at something. I wanted them to learn how to do it without being selfish and ruining all their personal relationships. When possible, I like sharing my faith, as that was the only thing that ever saved me out of the darkness.

I want my athletes to learn that inspiring others to do great things is more important than stepping on top of some podium. If you win the world championships in every single sport in the world, yet fail to inspire other, you have accomplished nothing. Yet if you set out to make the lives better of all the people watching you and that are around you, the taste of victory will be sweet like honey. That’s the only way you will ever accomplish anything. If you’re a Christian, winning is something that isn’t self-glorifying at all. However, that’s a deeper topic, and one that I will talk about down the road more in detail.

If you want to be a coach, you need to ask yourself a few questions first:

·      What is my motivation for helping other people?
·      What do I want to say to the world?
·      Is this about my athletes or about me?


If you are doing this first to show the world that you are the best coach, you are in the wrong business in my opinion. I get it. This is just my opinion. You can do this business to get rich if you want. I just think that’s sad. Two coaches in my life affected me in a way that sent me down a better path. Those coaches were in the business to make the lives of their athletes a little bit better. That was the motivation for me getting into coaching. Obviously we can all do it for different reasons. I just think that the athletes, especially the teenage athletes, deserve coaches that care about them as people not that look at them as a ‘product’.



Who knows if the unnamed coach will ever read this? If he does, I’m not really mad at him. I just think that this is a sad state that we are in if our teenage athletes are our ‘products’ versus being our ‘athletes’ that we are trying to help.

I’d love to hear the feedback from all of you that might read this. Maybe I am wrong, and this is the way that I should see things. Let me know in the comments below!

Monday, August 6, 2018

Success Breeds Success


Success Breeds Success



I grew up with a tough mother. She taught me many lessons in life. One big one is that ‘you are who you hang out with’. I have watched talented people hang out with the wrong people only to be drug down by those less than talented individuals. I’ve also watched folks with little talent hang around some awesome groups, and I’ve watched those less than talented folks flourish simply because they were hanging out with individuals that brought out the best in them.

This one lesson in life is responsible for a significant portion of my personal success. Early on in life, I hung out with whom is now my best friend, Kevin Jones. I call him KJ nowadays, but no matter what you want to call him this guy brought out the absolute best in me. He believed in me, and I totally looked up to him. Heck I still look up to him. He’s just that guy. You know what I mean. He’s the guy that simply makes you feel like that you could climb Mt. Everest naked.

If you don’t know a guy like that, then you are one of two types of people.

1.  You are either that guy yourself,

2. Or you are hanging out with the wrong people.

This ability to bring out the best in people has catapulted this guy in the business world. He was the CEO of a company that was just acquired for over $42,000,000. That same company began as a $5,000,000 only 4 years ago. So how does a man build a company like that? Well, I can tell you. He surrounded himself with talented people. Then he used his ability to motivate individuals. Really, it’s not motivation. He’s able to look into their souls and find that unique talent or ability, and then he’s able to help them nourish that talent until they become better than anyone else at that one thing.


Think about it! After he’s been with a company for 2-5 years, he builds a team of unbeatable winners that would walk through fire for him. He did the same for me over thirty years ago. He taught me that ability, and now I am able to pass this on to my athletes.

Athletes don’t come to me to be average. There are several other places that athletes could go to just have fun or learn about lifting weights. In my town there are several great facilities to go just to have fun, and heck I would recommend them. However, when someone looks in the mirror and decides that they truly want to be great, well then our team becomes a good choice for that individual.

This year has been filled with wins for Mash Elite Performance. It’s becoming a habit. Let me give you a short list:

·      Nathan Clifton just placed 4th in the world at the CrossFit Games and won two events.
·      Haley Adams just dominated the CrossFit Games not only winning but also winning every event but two. Now I only work with her in the offseason on her strength, but I have to mention her. Plus our team loves her.
·      We have the 4th and 5th best weightlifters in the entire country, Nathan Damron and Jordan Cantrell.
·      We have the Youth Pan American Gold Medalist, Morgan McCullough. He won that Gold Medal while he was only 14-years-old.
·      We had three Youth athletes on Team USA at the Pan American Championships: Ryan Grimsland, Morgan McCullough, and Jared Flaming.
·      We have three that are sitting on Team USA for the Youth World Championships: Hannah Dunn, Morgan, and Ryan.
·      We have 2-4 more athletes that could make an International team for Team USA this year or next.
·      Tommy Bohanon had a career best season as the starting fullback for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
·      I have to mention our two High School Freshmen, Cam and Tate, that are starting on the Varsity Football Team for one of the local high schools in our area, Davie High

This is a very abbreviated list, but I wanted to get your attention. Did I mention that our gym is in a small little town here in North Carolina, Lewisville? We are not in some metropolis like L.A. or Miami. I’d like to think that would be an even bigger hit, but there is something about having a dominating team in a small town that makes me smile every night before going to bed. I’m sure that it doesn’t make some of the coaches smile that are located throughout the country that hate getting beat by a team in the middle of nowhere. Maybe that’s why so many people like to make up silly rumors. I’m sure it’s hard to understand why this team is killing it, so I am going to shed some light.



I have extremely high expectations for my athletes. They will be the first to tell you. You can ask Hunter Elam or Derek Bryant, and they will tell you that my expectations can be quite overwhelming sometimes. That’s when I have to remind them that I love them no matter what, but dang it, they didn’t come to me to be mediocre. If I allow them to become mediocre, then I didn’t do my job. They are trusting me to maximize their potential, and both of them have unlimited potential. That immediately tells me that we have to set our sites on the Olympics.

Don’t come to be with this baby steps crap. I simply don’t have time for that nor do my athletes. Derek came to me with a 263kg total, and 10-weeks later he put up 300kg. This young man will be at 330kg minimum by next year. If you don’t believe my predictions, you should ask Morgan McCullough how dead on my predictions usually are.



Hunter is about to do something extraordinary that I am not at liberty to talk about, but I promise you will find out really soon. Now is this me bragging about my athletes? Maybe, I love my team, and I believe in them 100%. However, bragging isn’t my intention right now. I am trying to teach all of you what my team hears each and every day. Guys, if you can’t say it, you sure as heck can’t do it. You will never reach a goal that you don’t believe is possible.

It’s these expectations and it’s this culture that breeds my incredible athletes. If you want to be successful, you have to surround yourself with people like this. For example, if you want to win USAW Senior Nationals, you have to wonder if you are on the right team. Does your coach have the same goals for you? Does he or she believe that you can do it? Have others on your team already accomplished that feat? You better have answered at least 2 or 3 of these questions with a definite affirmative. I mean you might be the first person to win Nationals for your team. Someone has to be the first on a newer team to actually win. However if you are on a team that has been around for a longtime and no one has won in a very long time, you at least have to ask some hard questions. Heck maybe you are the person that needs to ignite the team to lift everyone else up. Whatever, but the culture has to fit your goals.

Now I want to make sure that you all know that I am not saying that a good club has to be one that always wins. I am not saying that. There are clubs like the one my friend Gabriel owns that helps people connect their mental health with working out. Some people want to own clubs that help people become active for the first time. There are a lot of great cultures out there that do a lot of good for a lot of people. What I am absolutely saying is that the culture has to match your goals and dreams.

I want to end with one story about one of our newer athletes, Kobe Thomas. His goal is to simply qualify for Senior Nationals. He doesn’t know it yet, but I am going to convince him to earn a spot in the A Session. This is an example of shifting a mindset. It’s a paradigm shift. It’s a reality shift. Kobe lacks confidence right now, but I see something special in this young man. I mean, he picked up everything and moved to North Carolina from Missouri. That tells me that he’s pretty darn brave. My job is to expose that bravery on the platform. I am going to. I have to.

He trusted me. His parents trusted me with their boy. I am not going to disappoint. No matter what happens, I am going to leave this boy with more confidence and a better mindset. I want him to one-day leave this sport with way less barriers in life. I want him to learn to identify a goal, make a plan, commit to that plan, and find a way to achieve it. I won’t rest until that happens, so Kobe you need to buckle up and get ready to get jacked.

I don’t know who will read this. As you can tell, I am in a great mood. My team is crushing it. However, most of you know that Coach Don McCauley is battling brain cancer and heart disease, so we need a lot of prayers. Our team needs your help as well. Lately, we’ve had a few of our sponsors that are struggling, so that in turn makes our team struggle. We are a 501c3 nonprofit team committed to helping our young men and women reach their Olympic Dreams. We are also committed to building up our local community with our at risk program. We need the funds to hire one full-time person for that purpose, and we need a van to bus in some at risk children. If you want to help, sponsor, or have suggestions, you can email me personally at masheliteperformance@gmail.com. If you want to donate, we have a few options to partner with our team at:


Teams like our team can’t survive without all of you. Whenever you support us, you are directly supporting our athletes and our efforts to impact our community. You do the same thing whenever you purchase anything from www.mashelite.com as our for profit business donates a percentage of all our sales. I just want to say thank you to all of you.

Sincerely,

Coach Travis Mash 
USA Weightlifting Senior International Coach
Head Coach Mash Mafia Weightlifting