In Pursuit Of

My first internship assigned us a book to read. Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. It was an Olympic Sports Internship. I had no idea what I was getting into, and at the time, I didn’t realize how much this book would define what I would witness throughout my career.

I remember how much I wanted to be an Assistant Strength Coach. One day an Assistant Director. One day a Director. Your social status defined by an arbitrary title designating nothing more than how long you’ve put up with the bullshit and how good you are at playing politics.

In my second internship, we’d spend time calculating imaginary salaries. Counting how many Strength & Conditioning jobs there were in Power 5 Football, hoping that one day you would be lucky enough to call yourself one of “The Five.”

Strength & Conditioning is a rat race all its own. The sacrifice, the grind, the competition. Then you get your first paid job. The titles, the logos, the Instagram posts. You network blindly. You’re introduced to “Strength Coach Trees.” These brotherhoods made Middle School girl clique wars feel like a safe space. You ignore the toxicity because you care about the mission, but a decade later that shit takes a toll.

I’ve realize there are two types of people who work in sports. The ones in search of knowledge, and the ones in search of experiences. Strength & Conditioning is a service industry. We are in service to our athletes, our coaches, our programs. Our goal is simply to create a space where our athletes can maximize their potential as human beings. Somewhere, the service got lost in the pageantry. People want to work at the bigger school to have the better resources, the better gear, the cooler games. The logo you walk around in defines your success.

Those in search of knowledge want the harder challenges. The increasingly difficult problems to solve. The higher stakes. I’ve learned that to win at the highest level you have to be perfect. And then when you lose, you have to accept that you were nowhere close to perfect and have to tear it all down again and rebuild. Being that close teaches you one of two things: the ultimate ability to self-analyze and pivot, or the complacency that if you just keep doing the same thing, you’ll keep getting close to the mountaintop.

“You are either getting better or you are getting worse.”

Those in search of knowledge do this job for the mission. The teamwork. The athletes. They are in service to their program. They break themselves down and build themselves up year after year just to ensure that they are doing everything in their power to help their boys on Saturdays.

Those in search of experiences do this job for the glitz and glamor. The power. The trips. The gear. The salaries. Their titles are their standing. Their logos are their identity.

I still have to remind myself to be grateful when I walk into a football stadium. I walk to the top of every stadium pregame to take a moment to reflect on the fact that my job is actually pretty fucking cool. I take in the calm buzzing of the stadium crew and the sheer amount of energy it takes to prepare to play a football game. I do understand that it’s not an experience everyone gets to have. Those 30 minutes of relaxation are earned from spending the days from the previous game thinking about nothing except how I can make an impact, maybe help one player feel a little better on game day.

I take my moment to enjoy the experience but it’s not why I do this job. It’s not a job. It’s a calling. How can I get the best out of people? My team, my coworkers, my staff. I hope I can help you unlock something you didn’t know you had. That’s all that matters. And the day that feeling stops, I promise everyone I will quit.

You spend a lot of time early in your career with imposter syndrome: thinking that you’re not good enough. But if you’re not careful, you also spend a lot of time later in your career with imposter syndrome: thinking that you are good enough.

Ryan Holiday states in his book, “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”

So while I am thankful for my experiences, I am more thankful for the people I’ve met along the way who taught me that being a lifelong student is the only way to be the best version of yourself as a teacher.