Winners vs. Losers
by Jack Bissett, SSC | August 05, 2025
Let me let you know a story of two lifters: Bob and Kelly. Bob is an
accountant, he’s in his mid-thirties, he’s married to a
stay-at-home mother, and he has two children and a canine. Kelly is a challenge
supervisor in a tech firm, she’s additionally in her mid-thirties, she’s
married to a soldier who’s typically away for lengthy stretches, and she or he
has one youngster.
On the face of it,
these two individuals dwell fairly comparable lives. They’re each in
high-paying jobs, they’re of an identical age, they’re each married
with children, they usually each selected to pursue barbell power coaching.
Regardless of their similarities, and the truth that they have been operating the
identical program (NLP), they achieved very totally different outcomes. What was
the essential distinction between these two athletes? Their perspective.
Kelly has a successful
perspective that makes her a delight to teach. Come what might she exhibits
up on time and able to practice. Pushing by means of in instances of illness,
harm, grief, solo parenting, and altering jobs. Generally displaying
as much as coaching operating on fumes, she however all the time tries her
greatest to hit the numbers prescribed for that session. It doesn’t
matter if she’s drained, it doesn’t matter if the burden on the bar
scares her, she grits her enamel and digs in.
Bob, alternatively,
drags his toes by means of the door and really seldom exhibits up on time or
with something that would even be thought-about near an enthusiastic
perspective. He spends most of his session complaining about his job, or
his children, or another a part of his life, and solely ever actually places
40-50% of his effort into any given session. On notably “dangerous
days” he’ll attempt to renegotiate the burden on the bar, and is
typically unwilling to even strive what’s been written. On a couple of
event he allowed himself to fail a set he may have accomplished
as a result of it “felt too laborious.” Bob is a loser.
Each handled the
identical life stressors. Each would present up drained, hungry, and overworked
every so often. Kelly would take that in stride, by no means permitting
this stuff to cease her from making an attempt. Bob would enable this stuff to
defeat him earlier than he even tried – “I’m too drained for that
at the moment,” or “I haven’t eaten nicely this morning, I can’t do
this at the moment.” The distinction is solely one among perspective and
outlook.
Don’t get me improper,
it’s okay to have dangerous days, weeks, and even months when life is
bearing down on you. What’s not okay is to surrender and roll over
whenever you meet bumps within the street, not if you’d like outcomes. Everybody
who has a busy job, a partner, and youngsters wants extra sleep. Everybody
may very well be consuming higher than they’re and each single one among us will get
ailing and will get damage. You’ve got two choices when confronted with this actuality:
shrug it off and check out your greatest anyway, or surrender and cellphone it in.
The defeatist perspective will get you nowhere, and it’s one of many
most irritating issues to cope with as a coach.
To the extent {that a}
coach may also help domesticate the suitable perspective, I believe it’s a
balancing act between encouragement and whipping. Some circumstances
deserve sympathy, others don’t. Some individuals reply nicely to a smooth
contact, others don’t. Usually, I’d say that it’s the
accountability of the coach to make the lifter strive the prescribed
exercise. Whether or not that’s achieved softly, by sympathizing with the
difficulties the lifter is experiencing and engaging them to strive
anyway, or by taking a tough line and telling them to man up, is as much as
the person discretion of the coach.
More often than not this
will work, and the lifter will study that they’re extra succesful than
they initially thought. It will construct confidence and momentum that
will finally result in the successful mindset we’re after.
Sadly, there shall be laborious instances, like Bob. Individuals who will
surrender mid-set for no different purpose than that they have been now not
prepared to push. These individuals must be rebuked with a stern speaking
to and never be let off the hook for the reps. Make them end, no
matter how lengthy it takes. It will hopefully assist them change, however
there are some hopeless instances. Like Bob.
He solely lasted 3 months
within the fitness center earlier than I fired him. His fixed negativity and lack of
effort irritated me an excessive amount of and commenced to sap my very own enthusiasm. Kelly
alternatively is into her third yr of coaching with me. She’s
the strongest she’s ever been, she’s received two strongwoman
contests, and now has her sights set on qualifying for nationals in
powerlifting.
The TL;DR model is
this: if you wish to be a winner, be like Kelly. When you’re content material
with being a loser, be like Bob.
