8/17: WHERE TO YOU WANT TO BE?
This weekend I took a much needed break and travelled up North to a friend’s cabin. It had been about 30 years since I was last there, but it felt just like old times. We met as co-op students at GM, and for years had a group that was very close and hung out all the time. But as time went on and people moved away, it seemed that in a blink of an eye 20 years went by and we barely talked. The great thing about great friends is that a 20-year gap will get instantly eliminated when you get back together.
In our college years, my friend, Nick, was a nationally ranked racquetball player. He and his doubles partner placed second one year in the national doubles tournament, and he was invited to train at the US national training center. Up until my opportunity to spar with Caio Terra, Nick was the highest level athlete I ever completed against in their chosen sport. I played racquetball in college and was pretty spry, and figured I could score a half dozen points on him. After it got to about 12-0 and I barely touched the ball and he seemed to never move from center court, I threw in the towel because it was kind of pointless to continue. It was a great experience to see the chasm between a decent pick-up player and essentially a pro.
Nick did have occasional wins over the best players in the country, but never consistently. He freely admitted that the difference was in their off the court training. Over the summers, Nick chose to spend his time at his family’s cottage, while the top players were working year round on their conditioning. That last 5% the top players were able to generate in their games made all the difference. However, it was a tradeoff that Nick never regretted. At some point at that level, you have to decide if your life is going to revolve around your sport 24/7 for as long as it takes, or whether you are going to enjoy other aspects of life. In his case, without racquetball being an Olympic sport, and without there being much money on the pro circuit, there was little incentive beyond bragging rights.
The message is clear, and we see it all the time when we watch the Olympics and hear the back stories of many of the athletes. The level of sacrifice that so many of them have to make is beyond what most people are capable of. I’m always amazed at the gymnasts that have to know by the time they are in first grade that this is what they want to do, and that they have the wherewithal to devote their entire childhood to chasing those Olympic dreams. So many will try, yet so few will succeed.
We have many talented students in our programs. Many better than the average bear. But if you want to be the BEST, there is no other option than to devote your entire life to that activity, because that is what someone else out there is doing right now! I go through those same internal battles all the time. I do want to be the top BJJ competitor in my age and weight bracket in the world, and while I do train more than most, it is not to the level of best in my bracket. But the reality is that to accomplish and maintain that goal, I would have to put many other priorities on the back burner, priorities that are more important than personal competition goals, and that’s ok.
When you start pursuing your goals, it’s very important to weigh all the pros and cons, and maybe the sacrifices required to be the best in the world are not the right priority for you. You will have to accept that you will probably fall short in that goal to be able to achieve whatever other goals you have. But remember, while many of the top competitors in the world have achieved that one goal, they are probably not as good as YOU in the multiple goals you have pursued.
