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!