A Proper Response to Criticism

A Proper Response to Criticism

This past weekend at my church, Twin City Bible Church, we had an amazing conference, “The Legacy Conference”. Now don’t worry, I am not going to get preachy on you, as I am definitely not a preacher, so stay with me. The conference was focused on ‘Soli Deo Gloria’, which is the Latin term for glory to God alone. One of the speakers was Pastor Anthony Kidd, and he preached a sermon that changed my outlook on everything especially criticism that I might face within the world of strength. I’ll explain.

My mission as a strength coach and writer is to help people, and that’s it really. Of course I want to support my family, but really I just want to help people. I want to help people reach their individual goals whether those goals are the Olympics, NFL, or to learn the difficult movements of weightlifting. I also want to help people with the other aspects of life like a future career, role as a parent, role as a friend, relationships, and yes spiritually. I want my athletes to leave me as better men and women, and not just better athletes.

That’s it really. I simply want to have an impact on the strength world and the people that I come into contact with. However lately I have been aggravated with a couple of coaches, and the way that they talk about me to others. These are coaches that I hardly know, and worst part of it is they are coaches in my home state of North Carolina. They say things like that I am not a good coach, and that I am simply good at marketing.

These comments infuriate me because the data says differently. I have 20% of Team USA that’s set to compete in Turkmenistan for the 2018 IWF Senior World Championships with two men and two women. As example of one of the instances of these coaches was at the AO Series 3, where one of them tried to recruit one of my athletes telling her that he could do better job and that his athlete was set to break his personal records. That was the day before she destroyed her lifetime PR Total by 8kg while shattering the Junior American Record in the Clean & Jerk and Total. Oh and by the way his athlete went 3:6 and come nowhere near his best.

The point is that these coaches continue to make themselves look badly. My athlete and her father were disappointed in the actions of this coach. Not to mention that my athletes are continually getting better. If I were just a good marketer, then why are my athletes improving?

This isn’t meant to be a blog about me defending myself to these silly coaches. The coaches that matter believe in my abilities like Sean Waxman, Spencer Arnold, John Broz, Kevin Doherty, CJ Martin, and Kevin Simons. If one of them has an issue with something that I am doing, they tell me. Heck Sean Waxman is forever giving me advice, and I welcome it. These are coaches that I respect, and they are coaches that are producing. They are also my friends, so any criticism is out of love. I know that, and I get that.

So here’s the point. Why do I let the opinions of coaches that aren’t producing athletes of any significance get to me? This is where I have to look internally and admit some faults of my own. My pride has always been my biggest struggle. This brings me to the Legacy Conference this past weekend. Pastor Kidd explained that all Christians run the risk of:

1. Taking the position of God by setting our own rules, wanting to cast judgment, and wanting to take vengeance in our own hands.

2. Taking the praise away from God by wanting the attention of others and affirmation of others.

(Acts 12:18-23; Psalms 115:1)

All of this stems from pride. If you find yourself coaching or producing content to become famous or to make others see you as a great coach, you are in the wrong field. We are in a service industry. This is true whether you are a Christian or not. The main objective has to be helping and elevating your athletes. This is true for coaches and trainers.

As a Christian Coach, I have a chance to glorify God everyday in the way that I treat others, and in the way that I act. When I get mad at the silly coaches for badmouthing me, I am displaying pride. By getting upset this is me desiring to shine the glory deserved by God onto me. Who really cares what they say? If my priority is making all these coaches think that I am some great coach, my priorities are all jacked up.

The Legacy Conference helped to shift my focus onto my athletes and away from me. I’m not going to let the opinion of coaches that I don’t even know affect my mood in anyway. I am going to shift my concern away from glorifying myself and onto glorifying God. It’s a freeing shift as far as I am concerned. If we go through life trying to please everyone, we are doomed to live a life filled with disappointment. It’s easier to think about it in terms of the presidential election.

During the presidential election, the two most popular people in America are running against one another. That means that the most popular person in America still has half of the country that hates them. If half of the country hates the president, all of us are doomed to have people that hate them.

Personally I don’t care anymore as long as I am doing my all to help my athletes and readers. I want to see all of you reach your goals in sport and life. I hope that my actions in the way that I treat all of you and the way you see me treating my loved ones will bring God glory. I am going to mess this up enough, so I definitely don’t have time to worry about the thoughts of random people that don’t even know me.

I hope that this article helps to get you all focused on the things that matter in your life. I hope that it helps to put to bed the bad feelings that come from people that don’t even matter. If all of use put our thoughts and desires on loving others, life in general will be much brighter.

Coach Travis Mash 

A Few Words to Team USA

A Few Words to Team USA

Team USA is just days away from boarding our planes and heading to Germany for the World Team Training Camp. They’ll spend a week there, and then it’s off to Turkmenistan to throw down with the best in the world. There is a whole new feel in the air because this is the first meet that counts for the 2020 Olympics. I’m sitting here thinking about the blood, sweat, and tears that my athletes have put in to make it to this point. When I started focusing on weightlifting in 2014, I never would have guessed that I would have four athletes heading to the Senior World Championships to begin the battle for 2020. Yet, here we are!

I’m so incredibly proud of my four: Hunter Elam, Meredith Alwine, Nathan Damron, and Jordan Cantrell. Each one of these athletes have fought their own battles, and overcome their own struggles. God only knows how much sleep I’ve lost over each one of these athletes: Jordan’s glute, Nathan’s neck, Meredith’s hip, and Hunter’s weight. Yet here we are!

These four have overcome all of their struggles, and now they’ve earned the right to begin the march for 2020. However, this blog isn’t about my four. They’re a part of it, but this is a letter to the entire team, the coaches, and all the staff. It’s a new era for USA Weightlifting, and it’s time that we all start acting like it.

That feeling of accomplishment!

Thanks to Phil Andrews, USAW CEO, and the staff at USA Weightlifting there has been a shift in culture. We don’t talk about making it to Worlds or making it to the Olympics. A few days ago, I was texting with Phil Andrews, and we were discussing medals. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be discussing the possibility of medals at a Senior World Championships.

I remember writing multiple articles and blogs in 2014 and 2015 regarding what it would take to medal at the International Level. I knew what it would take, but I didn’t think that it would be this soon. I didn’t realize that Phil Andrews would have such an immediate impact. Yet here we are!

I believe that the staff at USA Weightlifting is doing their part. Now it’s time that all of it members do the same. We have to start thinking differently, and we need to start speaking differently. It all starts with the athletes that are heading to the World Championships. Now I want so speak directly to these athletes.

This message is to the entire team. This is about Team USA now, not just Team Mash Elite. Each one of you is about to embark on a journey unlike any weightlifter in the USA has ever experienced because now we are trying to win medals, lots of medals. I remember coaching at MuscleDriver USA. Our athlete would talk about strategies for making the Olympic Team. They would look for the easiest route to determine their weight class. When I say ‘they’, I’m not talking about the entire team just a few people. I loved that entire team, but I hated this mindset. I wasn’t the head coach, so there wasn’t a lot that I could do.

Now I have something to say. This entire team is amazing. Each of you has the ability to accomplish extraordinary things during the next two years. I hope that none of you talk about ‘making the Olympics’. I hope that each and every one of you dreams about winning the Olympics. Guys if you can’t dream about it, you sure as heck can’t do it. There is no reason for this team to doubt themselves anymore. All of you are incredible, and now it’s time to shine. It’s time for China, Russia, and Bulgaria to see what America is capable of.

This is a message to all of the coaches as well. It’s time that we come together as one. I know that all of us going on this trip have a horse in the race, but dang it, it’s time that we agree to put our heads together to yield that absolute best athletes to battle at the top level. If we do this together, all of us can stop talking about the Chinese Method or the Bulgarian Method. Guys and gals, it is time to start talking about the American Method.

As long as the men and women that take that stage during the summer of 2020 in Tokyo are ready to earn medals, I’ll be happy. I’ve learned so much from my fellow coaches in America. Sean Waxman has taught me about culture. Kevin Doherty has taught me so much about meet day back room strategy. Dave Spitz is my ongoing business adviser, which gives me the ability to support my athletes in as many ways as possible. Ray Jones has been a mentor since 2016.

Heck I nerd out with Kevin Simons and Spencer Arnold on a regular basis, as I consider these two to be the best coaches in the world. If all the coaches in America could develop these types of relationships, we could develop a system of which the world has never seen. All of us have our unique abilities. If we put all these abilities into one system, we could help our athletes become the best in the world. Guys, it’s time for China to be asking questions about the American Method.

Coach Spencer Arnold helping with Hunter Elam

Yesterday, Coach Don McCauley posted a video of a surgeon talking on Ted Talks. The surgeon was talking about taking the athletic model of coach and athlete and applying it to all professions. The same surgeon had one of his medical school professors shadow him during surgery. The surgeon thought he did a good job and assumed that the professor wouldn’t have much to say. He was wrong. The professor had two pages of suggestions for the surgeon.

Here’s my point. None of us coaches in America is the perfect coach. If we were perfect, we would have Olympic Gold Medalists to our credit. I know that all of us things that we know everything about programming and technique. I agree, some of us are pretty darn good, and some of us are lying to ourselves. Either way, there is a lot more to coaching than programming and technique: recruiting, sports psych, generating revenue to support our athletes, etc.

All of us can improve, and we need each other to do that. We need constructive feedback, and we need to process that feedback with humility and an intention to put the feedback to use. It’s hard! I get that. No one, including the surgeon in the video, is above constructive criticism. None of us has coached a perfect athlete, and guess what, none of us knows a perfect coach. It’s time to do our part in making American Weightlifting great.

I’ve heard so many coaches, including me, talk about what everyone else needs to do to make weightlifting in America competitive at the International level. I’ve never heard a lot of us coaches talking about what we need to do. It’s time y’all. I’m willing to throw my hat in the ring. I want to get better.

I’m lucky enough to have friends like Sean Waxman and Spencer Arnold who aren’t afraid to tell me when they think that I am messing up. They know that’s exactly what I want. I want to get better. Yeah it hurts my ego for a second, but I get over it and I get better. You know what? I do the same for them because I want to see my friends successful. I don’t give them suggestions because I think that I am a better coach. I give them suggestions when I see something that might help them become a better coach. It’s all about one’s motivation, while helping their fellow coach. It has to be done with a heart set on helping someone get better not in a way as to seem like a superior coach. Like I said, until one of us produces an athlete that earns Olympic Gold, all of us have work to do.

As we all pack our bags and board our flights, I want you to think about this. This time we go as Team USA. This is not about Mash Elite Weightlifting or Cal Strength. This time we go as a unit ready to take on the world. I want all of us to remember this in the words we use and the way that we treat each other. I want all of us to remember this when we communicate with each other. I want our athletes remember this when we train together.

I want our athletes to remember that we are Team USA when they take to the platform in Turkmenistan. I want them to remember that we are capable of being the strongest country in the world, and now it’s time to become just that. I’m willing to put my pride aside and do whatever it takes. Are you?

I’ll see all of you soon. I can’t wait to sit down with each of you and discuss making this the best team in the world. Phil, Gattone, Pyrros, and Lorene have shown their commitment to this very thing. Now it’s time for us to show our commitment.

P.S. If you want to help support our 501c3 non-profit team, go to:

==> https://www.mashelite.com/donate-to-the-team/

or checkout www.mashelite.com to learn more about our team. A percentage of all purchases goes to help support the dreams of our athletes.

Who Would Have Thought

Who Would Have Thought

Last night, I was out to eat with my friend Leanne from Australia. As we sat there chatting about the differences and similarities between Australia and America, I realized what an important role God has given me in this precious life here on earth. Sometimes I feel like I am living in some kind of dream. I grew up spending most of my summers barefoot and dirty deep within the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. If you follow me on a regular basis you probably already know that. However, it’s an important part of this story.

Most people in that beautiful part of the world grow up with an idea of the work that they are going to do, and they very quickly move towards that work and raising a family. Normally it’s a very beautiful thing. Several of my old high school friends have been married to each other since right after high school or maybe college and have a beautiful family filled with amazing children. Off the top of my head, I can think of Chad and Paige, Kevin and Amy, Charlotte and Jimmy, and Tammy (my beautiful cousin) and Steve.

I miss this area and the closeness of the people. My friend Chad has been with the same company since high school, and now he basically runs the place. Most of them have been with the same company since high school, and now they are set to retire and enjoy their lives. I’m not saying that their lives are without stress, but they took very calculated steps to avoid creating chaos in their lives. There is a part of me that is very envious of all of them, as they appear to have lives like you might see if you looked in the dictionary under “The Perfect Upper-Middle Class American Family”. If you ever watched “Leave It to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best”, you know exactly what I am talking about.

West Jefferson, NC photo cred Dale Carlson

                                                  

As they were planning to have the perfect American Family since what seems middle school, I was growing up with a restless spirit. From the first time I traveled, I knew that I was going to explore this world someday. Minus the attraction near my home, I didn’t travel all that much. Up until high school, I had only gone to Myrtle Beach once, Maryland to visit family once, and I actually moved to Michigan with my mother and stepfather a couple time in my youth. Later in Middle School and High School, I was allowed to venture out to places like Washington D.C. and Orlando Florida my senior year in high school.

Every time that I traveled, the excitement would build leading up to the day of the trip. The night before I could barely sleep with the anticipation of visiting a new place and exploring the surrounding adventures. I loved traveling with my Aunt Brenda Osborne because her husband, my uncle of course, would get us up at 3am to get a jump on traffic. I loved getting this early start because I was so excited that I had trouble sleeping anyways.

I can remember seeing the ocean for the first time ever during my first trip to the beach the summer before 6^th Grade. It was simply mind-blowing staring out over a body of water that seemed endless. I get to see the Ocean a lot more often nowadays, but I have never gotten over the beauty of the Ocean. Every time I see it for some reason I feel like the possibilities of life are just as endless. I think that trip to the beach actually changed the direction of my life forever. As I stared out over that immense blue mass, I wondered what was beyond that horizon. What are the people like? What do the different countries and landscapes look like? Yeah you can get all of that from a book or on the computer, but there is nothing that can replace the experience of visiting these foreign lands for yourself to see and experience.

Beach with my Family

I never would have dreamed that I would affect the lives of athletes from all around the world. This brings me back to dinner last night with Leanne from Australia. She was telling us about using the programs from my books to coach her athletes and herself. So last night right in front of me was a lady from Australia telling our group that she has used my programs to win the 100% Raw World Championships in Powerlifting and to set World Records in Master’s Olympic Weightlifting. She’s also used them to coach her athletes at her club including Jaspa Hope, who won the Australian Youth Weightlifting National Championships and took Silver in the Oceania (a geographic region comprised of 14 countries) Youth Championships.

Yesterday, I found out that the Icelandic 94kg Weightlifting National Champion, Bjarmi Hreinsson, uses my programming. Mash Elite has athletes either on our online team or using our ebooks for programming from countries like England, Ireland, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands. A lot of these athletes are like Jaspa and Leanne in the fact that they’re National Champs, World Champs, and/or World Team Members. I so look forward to the World Championships coming up in Turkmenistan because I will get to meet and hang out with a lot of these athletes from all over the world.

I’m not writing all of this to brag although I am very proud and thankful. I am just writing all of this to say how very blessed I am. Things could have gone totally the other way for me meaning that I could easily be broke right now. I blindly followed my passions without any consideration for the future. So am I telling you all to do the same thing? Not really! I admire the peaceful life that my friends from home have built. Most people would say that I just got lucky. I’d say that God had a plan for me despite the way I was living my life at the time.

Now I have a chance to influence the lives of thousands of people all over the world including the few hundred at my gym in Lewisville, NC. They can learn to get stronger from me while hearing about my love for my family and God. Life is beautiful in that way. It’s like a living peace of art that all of us are creating each and everyday for our children and grandchildren to ponder years after we are gone.

More and more often, I think back to that young boy running barefoot on my grandparents farm tucked back so far in the Blue Ridge Mountains where most people will never know the beauty of such amazing land. I had an incurable wanderlust in my heart much like a thirst that one would acquire after spending days in the Sahara without water. It was a thirst that had to be quenched, or I would have probably died a young death.

The only regret that I have is the reckless approach that I took, and I am not even sure that it’s a regret. I am really just saying that I wouldn’t recommend my approach to my children or any of you. I literally followed my passions with a blindfold on without any consideration to the future. That’s why it’s so amazing that I can now affect so many people around the world and at home.

I mean let’s look at one major event in my life, which was me packing up my belongings and driving to Colorado Springs with $200 to my name. A lot of you have heard this story so bear with me as I tell it one more time. After college, I wanted to try the sport of Olympic weightlifting. At the time Colorado Springs was the place to be, since the Olympic Training Center housed the Nation’s best lifters.

I drove 23 hours straight to get to Colorado Springs. The only research that I performed was the best place to learn Olympic weightlifting. There was a gym, World Gym on 8^th Street, where two-time Olympian Wes Barnett coached athletes. I drove straight to the gym without a job and without a place to live. Within thirty minutes of arriving in town, I had my coach, I had a job managing the gym, and I had a roommate, one of the personal trainers Ryan Mitchell.

What are the odds? I am guessing 1 in 1,000. If that hadn’t of happened, I would have been broke within a day or two and on my way back home. I would never advise my children to follow in those footsteps. I want my children to follow their passions for sure, but I want them to consider:

·      Do I have enough money to survive?

·      What kind of life am I building for my future family?

·      What are the best steps for continued success?

I believe in my era of growing up parents simply encouraged their children to go college. As my children grow up, I want to help guide them a bit better. I mean at the end of the day that’s all any of us can hope to do, and that’s simply try to do things a bit better with the raising of our children.

You can still go after your dream just like I did, but I recommend taking a bit more calculated approach much like my friends at home. I’ve witnessed a lot of people in my industry not get so lucky as I did. It’s easy to end up without a job and broke in the strength industry. I got so lucky. I look back an think of countless times where things could have so quickly derailed. There isn’t one doubt in my mind that God wasn’t driving the boat the entire time.

I met the right people not because I thought they might help me in the future. I met them because they were cool and because I thought that they might help me get stronger. Now I am friends with some of the most amazing people in our industry. I get to host people on “The Barbell Life Podcast” like Cal Dietz and Mark Bell. I get to research the latest finding to write my ebooks. All of this adds up to knowledge that I can pass on to all of you, and it’s all because I wanted to be the strongest man on the planet.

So many times, I was told by people to get a real job. I know now that some of these people weren’t “haters”. They were actually people that cared about me and didn’t want to see me broke and homeless. In spite of it all, it worked out and here I am influencing lives from around the world.

I am thankful for this place in life that God has given me. I love working with so many people. I am so excited to take my four Senior Athletes to the World Championships in Turkmenistan next week. It’s a beautiful life I live, a crazy one as well. If you are a barefoot country boy exploring the countryside like I did with aspirations slightly different from all of those around you, here is what I recommend to you.

You need to find someone that can guide you along your path. I don’t recommend blindly following your dreams and passions. I recommend putting some thought into your future. If you want to have a voice in the strength and conditioning industry, I recommend committing to a PhD, getting to know all of the strength sports, and participate in a sport. You don’t want to be the great athlete trying to give advice without any true understanding of the body. However, if you’re a great athlete that also possesses massive amounts of knowledge, then you are capable of amazing things in the industry.

If you’re an exceptional strength athlete like I was, I recommend looking past the sport for what you might become. What’s the long term plan? I recommend chipping away at that goal while you are dominating the world in your chosen sport. It’s quite bewildering how quickly it can all come to an end. You might think that you have ten years left, but no one on earth is guaranteed anything. You could get injured on this very day and never be able to return to your level of strength and/or athleticism.

This advice applies to all aspects of life. When you think about it, pretty much anything amazing like being a doctor, a famous singer, President of the United States, or a Gold Medalist Olympian comes with risk. You have to ask yourself some hard questions like:

·      Do I really have the talent, brains, and/or support group to accomplish this goal?

·      If I have the talent, do I really have the desire to put in the work?

·      If I have the desire, do I have a solid plan?

·      If I have a plan, am I committed to that plan?

First off, if your answer to the first question is ‘no’, then you might want to consider altering your path. If anyone has ever told you that ‘anything is possible if you want it bad enough’, they are lying to you. I hate to be a bubble buster, but I am just being a realist. If you are 5’3” and slow, you are not going to the NFL. I am sorry, but that’s a fact. At some point, you have to be honest with yourself.

However, if you have the talent, but your answer is ‘no’ to any of the other questions, then you either have to sort that out or find something different. That’s another realism for you. I am all about dreaming big, but dang it you have to have the talent, desire, and commitment, or it’s not going to happen.

So what are the two takeaways from all of this?

1. I am so darn thankful that God has led me down this path. I am so blessed to be able to influence so many people from around the world, in my country, and locally here at home.

2. I recommend taking a more calculated approach to reaching your own dreams that I took.

I’m thankful for a mother that always supported her crazy son, raised him to be strong, and insisted that he be smart. I am thankful for a wife that continues to support me, believe in me, and most importantly that loves me. I am thankful for a friend like KJ that has always inspired me to be better. I am thankful for my friends like Ox that are still by friends even after times when I was the most selfish human on earth. Last I am thankful for my athletes that put their faith in me to help them reach their incredible dreams (we getting it done too y’all).

I love writing these personal blogs because I know that someday my children will read them. I want them to be able to look deep inside the heart of their dad long after I am gone. I wish that my father had kept a blog or journal, so I could read his thoughts. If you’re a dad out there, I recommend that you do the same.

God bless y’all, and may all your lives change the world forever in a way that leaves it better than you found it. I know from what the bible says that world will probably get worse, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try and make it better by spreading love with our passions.

Thanks for reading,

Coach Mash/Trav

P.S. If you want to hang out, I am teaching a Snatch and Pull Clinic at our gym LEAN Fitness in Lewisville, NC Dec. 15th from 11am to 2pm. Check it out at:

==> Mash Elite Snatch and Pull Clinic