The answers are yes, yes, no, and I don't care.
This past week has been a great week for me, as a coach/trainer. Yes, I do physical fitness training and coaching. I know, I know, I seem to do it all. I am an engineer, a college planning Expert, a fitness professional, husband, father. But I am here to talk about the training aspect.
For months now, I have been training a group of athletes. And before I continue, let me state that I believe anyone I train is an athlete. They may be a seasoned athlete, or a new athlete, but they are all athletes. In treating them that way, and referring to them that way, the people I train perform better.
In this case, I have been training this group for a while. While each athlete may be doing a different workout on a given day, I believe that they are part of the fitness team. The problem with that? They are all STEM people. Why is that a problem? Because they are accustomed to spending their days on a computer, listening to their music or their podcasts, and disconnecting from the world.
Now two of the athletes actually team up well. Part of that is the fact that they are dating. It is much easier to team up with someone that you have had relations with. Unless those relations have soured, in which case it is easy to have a rivalry. But while those two team well together, they tend to get distracted by hormones and forget the others.
Another athlete is 100% a team player. I would put him as the team captain, simply because he has the right mindset for it. And the fourth athlete has all the grit that the others lack, but not necessarily the team leadership skill. As I write that, I should also state that this person is developing that skill.
But why does this matter? Because yesterday I gave them a team-building workout finisher. It was something like a relay, where everyone was holding a plank, would carry a weight, and hold the bottom of a squat. With it being a relay type activity, they needed to talk and strategize the best approach.
Once they finished, everyone was tired and sore. I told them to, as a team, walk to the post and back; the goal being for this to be a team recovery. One person decided to run. Another ran after the first, but that's because they happen to be the two in a relationship. What I did not expect was for the third and fourth athletes to start running. By the time they got back, everyone was laughing and smiling.
Why was this great? because it reminded me of that moment in a movie when the team finally starts to work together. You know that scene. Something happens, and everyone starts to work together, and the soundtrack gets really upbeat and inspirational, and then the scene cuts to a hard event or obstacle, and the team is facing losing odds, but they figured out how to be a team, and they all nod to each other and act in unison, and they beat the Russians and overcome the challenge.
It was like that, but without the music, or the event, or the challenge, or the Russians. Still! It counts.
Moral of the Story: I may have gotten my athletes to work as a team, even if two are driven by rampant libidos.
