The MONSTER GARAGE GYM/MAROSCHER COACHING LOG is a weekly Coaching Log by MGG owner, 2-Time WPC World Powerlifting Champion, Eric Maroscher, and is geared to the new to intermediate powerlifter. LIVE, LEARN and PASS ON.
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THIS WEEK’S Monster Garage Gym/Maroscher Coaching Log: QUAM MINIMUM CREDULA POSTERO
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This Week’s Coaching Log:
Over the years and decades of change in our great sport of powerlifting, one thing remains constant for the true powerlifter come meet day. That constant is the undying, unrelenting drive to seize the day, or to get all Latin on you, carpe diem.
I think most have heard the term used by the Roman poet, Horace, (December 8, 65 BC – November 27, 8 BC). But Horace’s phrase is actually longer than the familiar, shortened, carpe diem. In full the saying is, “Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero,” in essence translating to "Seize the day, put very little trust in tomorrow (the future)". The point Horace was trying to drive home is that things to come are not a given, they are not guaranteed, you can’t just trust that everything is going to fall into place, and you must take action for the future, today.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0zP8M3i9Yw&feature=youtu.be]
Within the ever growing influx of new-to-the-sport-powerlifters, there are those lifters who enjoy the experience of entering a meet with their friends, and creating a lasting memory between them of this common experience that they engaged in together. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact, more power to them for living life, creating a goal and acting on it.
That said, there are levels of depth for all things we do in life and in the world of competitive powerlifting, there are indeed levels, layers of depth in this great sport.
For those who take their powerlifting to the deepest of levels, the competition is where the goals, the work, the planning and the unbridled drive to better prior meet totals while working to chip away at, and provide foundation for achievement of life-long goals in our sport. The meet’s outcome, its success or failure for the lifter who reside in a deeper level of the sport, is a measuring stick for the lifetime of work/training they have put in thus far.
For those rare lifters who reside in those deeper levels of the sport, but who are additionally, students of the sport (the rarest breed of powerlifter, one could successfully argue), and who possess that rarest of abilities, to see things through the lens of perspective as they know the greater history of the sport and what came before them, they take an extra step. They heed those powerful and prophetic words of Horace’s Latin aphorism. Those lifters are never going to leave the potential for future success to chance, as any greatness in the future is based within the deep roots of the here and now. These lifters know that each subsequent meet is the most important meet as it takes them further down the road to their best meet, but also ultimately to their final meet as each lifter has a finite competitive shelf life.
As students of the sport, those who have studied the great lifters of the past, know that once their final deadlift has been laid down on the platform and their final meet has come to fruition, the lifter’s legacy is set in stone. Some have a great legacy, or like the mighty Ed Coan, the greatest of legacies. But this can’t be the destiny for all lifters are there is only one greatest, thus the term itself. For some their legacy is a pride-filled legacy where each meet, they seized that day and each meet was a successful culmination of their hard, hard work and training that led them to the next successful meet day and to the next and so on. Their personal legacy could include meets where mistakes were made, but again, in a successful personal meet legacy, the mistakes were never repeated, but instead learned from and worked to further catapult them forward toward a bigger total over and again.
For others, their legacy will be sadly and thus starkly different. They will not have understood the words of Horace, of seizing the day, of not having blind faith in tomorrow. They will have missed the point of making tomorrow take the form you “will it” to have by creating a vision, creating a mission and putting the hardest of work into today and every training and competition day. For those lifters who choose not to heed the words of Horace, there awaits a hollow legacy of missed opportunity after missed opportunity, meet training that yielded zero results, and a realization of their sad allegiance to the false beliefs that, “there is always tomorrow, there is always the next training day, the next training cycle, the next meet, and somehow it’ll just magically come together come meet day.”
For the powerlifter with real skin in the game, and with true and honest self-reflection and perspective, they know meets are finite, injuries are inevitable and at the end of the day there will either be the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. For lifters cut from the cloth of “carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero,” meet training in the here and now is the most serious of business as real work today is the bedrock for future success. For those who seize the day and make their own destiny, “to the victor go the spoils.” They will look back on their journey with pride. They will look back at a body of work on the platform where their success on those days was forged in the fire of the gym, working hard while others were hardly working.
Only you know where you are in the depth level of this great yet humbling sport of powerlifting. Only you know if you are truly seizing each training day as a means to an end, the end being a successful competition day. Only you know if you are building your success potential for tomorrow, today, or following the false prophets of “somehow it will all come together come meet day.” Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero!
Video: Footage from the 2018 APF IL State Powerlifting Championships.
Wishing all of our weekly coaching log readers the best in your training and competitions. Ever Onward, Eric Maroscher, Owner: MONSTER GARAGE GYM
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