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Health & Fitness

Being an Athlete Means More Than Winning Games

In 1991 I went to college and was afforded the opportunity to play basketball. I loved being an athlete and I was good at it. When I entered college I was in the best shape of my life. I was flexible, strong and agile. In those years, I did plyometrics, before they called them plyometrics. (we called it jumping on stuff).  I did 500 jumps a day with my jump rope, and took 500 free throws. When I was a senior in high school I used to balance a broom stick between two chairs and I would jump over it back and forth steadily increasing the height. I would go running in the rain because it made me feel like I was sweating more and it was fun.  I loved the challenge of getting better and loved seeing what my body was capable of accomplishing. But most importantly, I loved everything that happened in between starting and ending my workout. My body and I were awesome close friends. We really liked each other.

 

 I never doubted I was an athlete.

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I sustained an injury after my first year playing and my career ended.  I put on 20 lbs the following year and I couldn’t seem to find the motivation to work out again and I felt less and less like an athlete.

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It’s almost 22 years later and, a few weeks ago after taking a Kettlebell class, I said the dreaded phrase“ I am no longer an athlete”.   This wasn’t because I couldn’t do the exercises and it wasn’t because I was couldn’t keep up. It was because I no longer felt connected to my body. I no longer felt like it was fun to challenge myself – I didn’t trust my own body. And that really ticked me off. But what it did do was kick me in the rear to find what was lost.

 

So, I went to a local gym to sign up for a membership and decided that I would check into personal training too! I have never had a personal trainer but I was always told I was very coachable and I liked being coached.

 I went up to the personal training desk and asked the young man behind the counter if I could speak with someone about personal training. He smirked and said, “I am a personal trainer, what do you need to know?”

 I explained that I wanted to work with someone to help me get back to enjoying fitness. His response: “Well, you probably don’t want to work with me because I am really intense and I often make people throw up the first session”.

(insert image of puzzled look)

My response,:  You are so correct I would not want to work with you, and I must be honest, I am not sure who would".  

At that time another personal trainer came to the desk and asked how she could help me. She reminded me of Sue Slyvester from Glee (love her!). She was wearing a matching track suit and a jacket over it zipped only halfway up. She had a commanding voice and I think she was rescuing me from Mr. Throw-Up.

She took me to her office sat down and said, “What’s your goal?” 

I asked her if this was in life or for the world?

Cold dead stare.

She asked again, trying to clarify, “what’s your fitness goal? Lose weight? Gain muscle? “

Ah!  Oh, yes fitness goal.  Right. “To have fun.”

Again, cold dead stare. She retorted, “You need a goal, having fun isn’t a goal. Do you want to lose weight?

Whoa… slow down here Sue.  Do I look like I need to lose weight???  I replied that I simply wanted to have fun and enjoy the process of working out by trying new things. She wasn't buying it and harped on how there was no setting on the treadmill for fun. ( too bad... there should be. I think You Tube already has a category all set up for "people having fun on the treadmill")

We parted ways understanding that we clearly had come from different places in this fitness thingy… 

See, I wanted to be an athlete again.  I didn’t want to lose weight, gain muscle, run a faster mile, be able to bench my weight etc… I wanted to connect with my body and enjoy being physical. I wanted to find the playfulness that made me want to be an athlete in the first place. You know that time when you are six years old and you make an obstacle course in your neighbors driveway with trashcans, old boxes,  spare tires and water jugs and you try to get through it faster than the time before (or until you neighbors come out and ask why you did this in their driveway and not your own). Now we call that bootcamp and most people just keep staring at the clock until its finished hoping they burning enough calories to eat the chocolate chip cookies they have waiting for them at home. (that reminds me, I have cookie mix that I don't want to waste. I should bake those tonight)

 

I’m not gonna lie, I have a love/hate relationship with the fitness industry (although hate probably fits it better) It seems that every other week someone is coming out with some new fad. I have friends that are members of the church of Crossfit, and others who have done Insanity 15 times, or the people who think they can do P90X in 60 days and end up hurting themselves by day 2. It infuriates me that we have become a nation that is either obsessed with-- decreasing our body size or increasing it-- for no function other than vanity under the guise of health.  

I make my living training coaches and we do the same thing in youth sports we have become so obsessed with the outcome of sport that we just disregard the process as something that gets us there. We forget that what is the most important aspect of playing is that it is FUN.  We disconnect ourselves from the feeling so when we lose, or don’t achieve our goal we discount the experience. 

I recently took a kettlebell class with a friend of mine Tony, who is a fitness trainer ( only the best on the planet) taught by Artemis  at Iron Body Studios and I finally saw what I had lost through them; a connection to my body and an excitement that drives me to push it, challenge it, and trust it.

 

So I thought about what were the common threads I saw in Tony and Artemis that I needed to make sure was part of my workouts all the time.  And this is what I came up with:

 

1.     Pay attention to how you FEEL, not how you look.  So many of us do a set then look in the mirror or finish a workout and wonder if those tight jeans will be lose. When I watched Tony do the workout, he was focused so much more on his form and how it made him feel. Not one time in the entire kettlebell class did he look at himself. (Ladies, find me 3 men at your gym who do that? Is three too many? How about one?)

2.     Spend time on taking care of the whole body and focus on the process.  Let me be clear, even when I was in top physical form I never stretched or focused on flexibility. Yo-Yo Ma could have played an entire concert on my IT bands. I didn’t want to take the time to become flexible because I couldn’t see the result. I was so focused on the outcome that I did whatever got them there fastest but it wasn’t something I could sustain.

3.     Find the PLAY in all your workouts. Don’t workout for a result, workout because you find it fun (guess what – you will still have a result) There is joy in those workouts that mirror the same joy would see a child experience on the playground. Running up the slide the wrong way is hard work, but you don’t think about it cause it making you smile. You have found the joy in it.

So as a former athlete who wants to get back to that place where fitness was fun, I am going to focus on those three things above, then when I have nailed those three things down, I’m gonna call Tony and challenge him to a deadlift contest.

He will win.

But what’s wonderful about doing it is that neither him or I will care because we both will do it for the challenge, the process, and the connection. 

That’s being an athlete.

 

Diana Cutaia is the President of Coaching Peace Consulting. You can reach her at diana@coachingpeace.com and follow her at @coachinpeace 

 

 

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