If you’re an athlete, you’re a machine when it comes to suffering. You’ll lace up for another brutal hill sprint with blood in your mouth and call it therapy. You’ll train until the floor starts breathing, just to get 100 more makes. Over the years you’ve made friends with the pain. You gave it a nickname, tucked it in at night, and called it growth. You know the body keeps the score, and you want to be on the scoreboard.It drains you of excuses, of illusions, of the cozy blanket you wrapped around your comfort zones. And you show up everyday for more.

We all know the work is hard. It’s soul scraping, bone aching hard. Like getting a liver punch by your own potential, repeatedly, all while smiling for the camera.

Underperforming comes with luggage. And it’s not a carry-on.

We (coaches, parents, athletes) tote this luggage replete with the history of our story. Dragging it from home to practice, practice to home, home to competition, competition to home.

It is tethered around our waist and we lug it everywhere we trudge.

Some of these items are our own.

Some items have been handed to us by others and are not ours to carry.

The articles occupying space in our soul were an unkind gift given to us at some point in our story.

When we value who someone is, we value them entirely. Not as a utility, not as a reflection of our pride, but as themselves. Fully.

No conditions.

No agenda.

No performance bonuses.

No unreadable fine print.

Just pure, simple support and love. The kind of love that doesn’t clock in or out.

But when we value someone for what they are, a title, a role, or a highlight reel, we aren't loving a person true to their full identity. We're applauding a performance. And in doing so, we unwittingly teach them that their worth lives in the product, not the producer.

After years of sitting in the trenches of deep conversation with people scattered across the vast spectrum of ambition, goals, anxiety, insecurity, pain, doubt, and performance paralysis, I’ve come to believe one thing with unshakable certainty:

What people crave in the depths of their being most isn’t reaching a goal. It’s to be seen. To be heard. To be loved, supported,  and empowered to be the best version of themselves.

To truly see someone, to hold space in a way that makes them feel like their existence isn’t just tolerated, but respected, requires something radical. A heart steeped not in agenda, but in something softer, bare-boned.

Being content with your skill level today isn't complacency, it’s strategy. It’s the conscious decision to anchor your mind in the present, standing on the shoulders of every gritty, unglamorous, unseen day you've stacked before this one.

It’s not as if your life is a movie with a rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. The pursuit of mastery isn’t born in a grand cinematic moment of glory. It’s built in the quiet repetition of showing up when no one’s watching.

My route to coaching wasn’t the same as most-there was no childhood dream, no coaching ladder climbed with a whistle in hand. Coaching was never part of my post college five-year plan. Neither was it the stranger softly knocking on my door asking for a moment of my time. It just barged in one day and said, “You’re doing this now.”

So when I landed in the muddy trenches of the coaching world, I quickly realized my approach didn’t quite… match the wallpaper. While others were focused on upholding the tradition passed down from generations before, I kept hearing this rebellious whisper in my head:

“But we don’t have to do it that way.”

Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of work to become an expert. I don’t know how many hours I’ve logged in this work, but I’ve loved every second. Or at least, I’ve convinced myself I have—because if I stopped to count, I might start questioning my sanity.

The truth is, the behind-the-scenes isn’t glamorous. It’s not dopamine. It’s not dopamine’s cousin. It’s spreadsheets at midnight, a wall of research papers that don’t know how to shut up, and the existential weight of athletes trusting you with their minds.

The more I’ve worked with athletes, coaches and business leaders, the more I’ve witnessed why questions driving people internal and at times shutting down the process of personal evolution. Why questions run the risk of causing us to feel like something is wrong with us.
Why do I keep making the same mistake?

Could be changed to…

What is it in this situation that I’m missing that is leading to me making the same mistake over and over again?

An athletes internal language/reality creates the perspective from which they see and experience the world. The perspective is being constructed daily.

It is a lifelong process of build,

tear down,

update the design,

rebuild.

While athletes are the builders, coaches are contractors in the construction.

Building a tradition of excellence doesn’t simply happen by accident. It takes strategy, care, love and most importantly - words spoken with grace and integrity. The most powerful words in a coach’s vocabulary are “I’m sorry.”

Every season as a track and field coach I felt the need to say those words. They came out from time to time in training, in competition and at times at the end of a long season.

Under performing comes with luggage. And it’s not a carry-on.

We [coaches, parents, athletes] tote this luggage replete with the history of our story. Dragging it from home to practice. Practice to home. Home to competition. Competition to home. It is tethered around our waist and we lug it everywhere we go. Pull it long enough and our walk will become a trudge without us knowing.

Over my time coaching I’ve had people ask about when kids should lift or start agility training and what the best methods might be for such an endeavor. But over the past 2 years I've had more parents than I can count want to get their son or daughter in the gym with us before they are 12 years old. I applaud the parents for being on top of their kid’s training but this athletic culture we live in today in the states is crushing young people. It is grinding them up and shitting them out on the daily. I only make a statement such as that because of my experience with years of mental work with high school and college athletes.

We’ve all had those days when we walk into the gym and we’re stoked about being there.  Even if we know the workout is going to wreck us, for some crazy maniacal reason we can’t wait to get in there and suffer with other athletes who have similar dreams. Even as coaches we walk into the gym and hit it. Those days when flow is achieved and the weight seems to move itself.

Yesterday, for me, WAS NOT ONE OF THOSE DAYS!

In a previous life I was a photographer. I FREAKING LOVED IT. 10 years ago if I wasn’t on a trail running into the middle of nowhere, I had camera in hand snapping photos. I have my own Photography business for a while and it has been a blast. Mostly I shoot weddings, engagements and a few solo sessions here and there but my passion was street and documentary photography.