elitefts™ Sunday Edition

This isn’t going to be about how great the LTTS 6 was..IT WAS! You know exactly how great, if you were there. If you weren’t there, well...YOU WEREN’T!

When I attend these, I come with the plan to give ALL I have to those that are wanting. The old saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” becomes apparent in each one of these. The participant has without a doubt heard many times the techniques we are teaching. But it may be my twist on the verbiage, or how we relate as a coach to the participant that makes the statements understandable. Aside from all that, I never seem to come away from a LTTS with what Pat Riley Hoops coach fame has called it in the past, “a thunderbolt." Thunderbolts are phrases or a word said that make your learning experience unique. It is the reason you went in the first place. Once a thunderbolt has been hurled and received, you can basically call it a day—you have gotten your fill.

MINE came when Dave Tate’s lecture turned into a personal message from him to me, regardless of the tens of thousands participants sitting in that room that day. He spoke directly to ME!

His phrase of importance was, “The most important time you spend (or as I paraphrased, INVEST) is the time FROM the chalk bowl TO the platform/bar”.

Think about that!

Your ATTITUDE is established in an INSTANT! From the chalk bowl to the bar, you run the lift through your head over and over 10,000 times. You see yourself getting the lift, as well as missing it. Which ever thought is strongest in your mind, at that short moment, becomes the reality of the exercise. You are at the point of bifurcation. Your attitude determines the success of the failure rate, if all the other issues are constant.

Your variables include:

  • Current skill level
  • Current strength or condition level
  • Current MENTAL attitude

At the moment your hands leave the chalk bowl, you can no longer increase your skill level at game time. At the moment your hands leave the chalk bowl, you can no longer increase neither your STRENGTH nor your condition level. The only thing you can change is your mental ATTITUDE from either success or failure, PERIOD!

If you have prepared yourself as best you can, then the lift is not as important as your APPROACH to the lift. Once you have chalked sufficiently and dialed up the best mental state you can be in, then the rest is left on the platform, or under the bar in an ALL OUT effort to succeed. From your “chalk bowl to the platform” can take on many different connotations. I am one that believes sport is a microcosm of society. What goes on in sport goes on in the world as well.

Many lessons are missed because of the lesser emphasis this plays, until you look at why automobile companies spend so much money on race teams. We put your dollar into a racecar not only for the advertisement, but we field test our concept, and make them available down the road later for the public to drive on our highways.

We do the same with athletics. What is the newest and latest product that the pro’s are using, become tomorrows mainstream product that every kid (me included) MUST HAVE. We even test our bodies, using sport as a guinea pig for the doctors, therapists, and trainers to use on mainstream citizens tomorrow.

Do you want a reason for my tangent?

In life we start our day at a chalk bowl of sort. My daily chalk bowl was the bathroom sink.

As I was washing my face after hearing Dave’s words the next morning, I thought to myself, my chalk bowl is right here, and I have control right now of my journey to the platform, or my objectives for the day. I have a choice of my mental state from this moment, until I come up against (ready for this?) my first RESISTANCE to my ideals, philosophies, morals, or a host of any other CHALLENGES that cross my path. I can properly prepare with a winning positive attitude or I can ready myself with the excuses of why I didn’t perform.

The choice is up to each of us, as we chalk up and get ready.

You determine it in an instant, when you make the journey to your platform, whatever it may be!