Hey hey!
Having a good weekend so far? If not, well, there is still time to make something out of it. Maybe a good dose of doing nothing. Or hanging out with the family. Or by yourself. Or seeing some friends. Curling up by a book? There must be something that will perk you up. Off you go and do it. Right after you finish reading/listening :)
The 3 things for today are
in the early stages of my career, I made one huge mistake. I didn't separate out my lifting from my coaching. I didn't realise how much I squat has little to do with how well I can guide someone on their journey. This has helped me become a better coach and a better trainee.
3 quotes. On resentment, honesty, and mindfulness.
on doing things by yourself versus hiring an expert coach. It is not either/or. You can (and I argue that you must) hire an expert. But you have to do it yourself. You have to do the hard work. No one can do it for you. Don’t make it harder by thinking you are alone and have to figure out what’s already solved. Instead, focus on the doing and contextualisation.
on separating the coach from the trainee
fell in love with lifting
I love to lift. I enjoy the process of lifting weights, learning the skills, working on improving my lifts and all that. More than that, I found a lot of personal growth when I conquered my fitness. Because it was something that I thought was previously impossible.
I felt empowered. And it changed me.
making meaning
I realised I wanted to spread that joy. I realised I could empower other people with the same. And I realised I was rather good at it as well.
While every student is unique and what changes inside of us is different, there are a lot of similarities as well. The ones who can observe their metamorphosis and enjoy it get a lot more out of it. I was lucky to be one of those.
So, as a coach, I want to be a part of THAT. I want to coach squats and swings and all that, AND I want to be a part of your transformation.
defining myself based on my lifting numbers
But in the early stages of my career, I made one huge mistake. I didn't separate out my lifting from my coaching. I didn't realise how much I squat has little to do with how well I can guide someone on their journey.
I am not talking about being an armchair coach or trainee. But whether I squat 64 kgs or 72 kgs is irrelevant to my coaching skills. And as I realised, my failures in training improved me as a coach more than my successes.
Because every successful result or milestone was met with a "Well, of course. You better do this because you coach 100 people."
separating the two aspects
I learned to not define myself as a coach, based on how much I lift.
Of course, learning to lift 2.5x bodyweight on the deadlift, up from 2x is a huge learning journey. There will be ups and downs, failures to learn from, and tons and tons of insights that can feed into how I coach my students. And that learning can happen from being a good trainee. Success or failure is irrelevant.
Whether it is 2x or 2.5x also is irrelevant i.e. the actual numbers do not matter as much as am I still lifting with the right attitude and approach? Am I practising what I preach? Am I a good student and learning what my coaches are telling me?
This learning can happen in life as well, in other situations. Not only in the weight room. But I've always found the training to be a great sandbox for life.
closing thoughts
Standards are useful to set a low bar or minimum. That is, I cannot say I can goblet squat 16 kg and label myself a coach after passing some vague certification. At the same time, passing the StrongFirst Level-1 certification does not automatically make me a good coach. For starters, it separates the wheat from the chaff. It helps to ensure you practice what you preach, and not be a hypocrite and all that.
But beyond that, learning to separate my lifting persona from my coaching persona was a big learning for me. And as I am finding out, both aspects improved once I was able to do that.
So, even though I learn a lot from my training and a lot of it feeds into my coaching, and I am trying to lift better than I was - I've also realised that's one tiny aspect of what makes me coach well. Lifting etiquette and being a good student is who I am. How much I lift is about effort and time and life and bandwidth and all that.
Coaching, and making meaning, and guiding people on their journey though is well, unrelated to my lifting numbers.
I guess that's one good thing about getting old. You learn some pretty obvious things.
3 quotes for this week
No one likes to be pushed around, but people often put up with it for too long. So, I get them to see their resentment, first, as anger, and then as an indication that something needs to be said, if not done (not least because honesty demands it). Then I get them to see such action as part of the force that holds tyranny at bay - at the social level, as much as the individual.
– Jordan B. Peterson
We can all empathise with this behaviour. We do it so often. And we might not be okay with an action that someone else does to us but we put up with it. We feel it is just not worth it, that it is a waste of our time and maybe we just don't have to deal with it. But I love how he puts it - because honesty demands it. If honesty is a core value of ours, then it is our responsibility to stand up and call things out. Not just in places where it is convenient to take the moral high horse but in rather inconvenient and scary places as well. Oof!
Those unmindful when they hear,
for all they make of their intelligence,
may be regarded as the walking dead.
– Heraclitus
I don't know how often I am unmindful. I don't know how often I am not listening properly. There are so many instances when I replay an older conversation, it was rather clear what I was being told or hinted at. It was clear what I should've done. But arrogance or stupidity or whatever prevented me.
Walking into a conversation with an open mind and maybe even an expectation to learn something is something I keep repeating to myself. But sometimes I lose track because there are just so many things I am supposed to repeat to myself.
One rep at a time.
When you put a piece of bread into your mouth, chew only your bread and not your projects, worries, fears, or anger.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
I am certainly guilty of multi-tasking or attempting to. Even during my walk to class where I am due to coach, I am planning the day ahead or the training session (even though I am already prepared), or just churning some thought in my head. Instead of just walking.
This permeates into eating, of course. And into pretty much everything.
Focusing only on walking in my morning walk is a new thing I am trying. I still catch myself zoned out and thinking about something but again, one rep at a time. Maybe, eventually, it will leech over into the rest of the things as well. What I realise is that a flow state or being in the moment is not something that happens magically. Not thinking, not planning, not worrying about the next activity or wondering when the current activity will be done - that's a good place to start.
solving it yourself or hiring an expert
It is not either/or.
doing my own taxes
The first time I had to do my own taxes, I discovered a nifty piece of software that allowed me to do it while lounging on my couch, with my own laptop. I had to enter whatever information it asked for and voila - taxes were done and filed and all that. Even though I had very little idea of what was going on, the software took care of it.
This was a win-win for me as I didn't have to go and interact with anyone to do my taxes. Meeting a tax consultant meant paying more money. And interacting with people. And answering questions that I didn't want to answer - about savings, about financial planning, and about questions, I didn't know existed.
ignorance is not bliss
I was happy to hide in my own ignorance. And then I got married. This forced me to contemplate the fact that I was an adult, of sorts. Plus, it made taxes a bit more complex. So, I did what I usually do. Procrastinate. Push things to the last minute.
And so, I found myself one year, hanging out with my wife's family and not having done my taxes and with them being due rather soon. I was told to quit faffing around and hire an expert and that there were NRIs who specialised in taxes for other NRIs. Me being me found the nearest person, fixed up an appointment and went over there.
I had done a draft of my taxes on TurboTax. So, I kinda knew how much of a refund I could expect. And then, over the course of 30 minutes, the expert did their job and saved me about $4000.
I was stunned. No gimmick here. If memory serves me right, TurboTax costs $40 and the expert cost me $200. Both took about 30 minutes. One made me $4000 more even though it cost 5 times.
A happy coincidence was my new tax consultant went to the same high school as I did in Madras, and was my senior by a couple of years. Over the next 2-3 years, I continued seeing them for 30 minutes every year and saving more money than I would've done.
know when to defer to an expert
Having figured out my own health and fitness, I saw around me the tools to do that for everything, including taxes. What I failed to understand was that it was not my cup of tea. I wanted it to be done with. I was not treating my finances or my taxes the same way I was treating my fitness. I was in love with figuring out my fitness issues. I was obsessed with it. I was geeking out and experimenting and taking notes and figuring out new things and learning all the time.
With my taxes, it was something I just wanted to get done. A necessary but uninteresting part of growing up and having a job. Today, I realise even if I had developed an interest in taxes, I could've brainstormed with an expert to come up with even more of an optimal solution.
The same way I did with my fitness and health. The more I learned, the more I conversed and exchanged notes with Raj on it. The more I found out, the more I realised I didn't know, and so the more books I read. The more questions I asked my coaches. Not less!
Do This!
Sometimes, we go to an expert to get a set of instructions. Do This they say and off you go and do. But in many instances, that is not enough.
And in all instances, there's one common factor - the actual doing. The figuring out of how to navigate the questions, the logistics of it, the hardships, the ups and downs - you are the driver. Always.
The expert can help you. The expert can guide you. The expert can call you out and tell you to shut up when you need to be told to shut up. The expert has their experience and the experience of working with 100s of people.
solving it by yourself
You can figure things out by yourself. You have to. You cannot learn from other people's wisdom and do a copy-paste. It is unfortunately more contextual and experiential than that.
But by no means do you have to shun away an expert. In the realm of fitness and nutrition (back to my area of expertise), your coach will ensure you don't do anything stupid and get your effort to be focused on the right things. Because it is so easy to put effort into the wrong things. It just is.
Life is complex. Unless you have utmost clarity, frequent checks and bounds, it is hard to figure out if you are going in the right direction. Fitness is a lot easier than that.
You can let an expert coach guide you. Or you can have an expert coach tell you to "Do This!" and just follow (of course, they should be able to show you clear progress and reasoning. Not blind faith). What you will save might not be as instantaneous as $4000 but tons more than that.
It could be money. It could be time. It could be freedom. It could be a peace of mind.
Actually, it will be that and more.
Are you not hiring an expert for your fitness and nutrition because you do not want to confront your own ignorance? Past failures? Because you actually do not want a solution? Because you do not want to get out of your comfort zone?
Because it cannot be financial. You are privileged enough to read this on a device. You can afford a book that will cost less than Rs 500 that can change your life - you don't have to pay 1000s every month.
Think about it. Don't rationalise your decision yet. Think about it. Go a bit deeper. It will be uncomfortable. But interesting things happen.
One of the worst parts about not seeing results is when you put in effort but it is the wrong effort, going the wrong direction. Finding an expert is not as easy as it should be - on the right wavelength, the chemistry, the quality of the expert - but it is worth so much more. You could end up finding a guide for something larger.
That’s it for this week. I’ll see you next Sunday!
