This life ain’t about you. It’s about them.
“The strongest kid in my gym sat down with me after a workout & said this:
“The coolest part about all this: I’ll finish a carry and go throw the sand bag down & then I’ll turn around and see of the young guys go to grab it.”
This isn’t about training.
This is about life.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
The other day, I watched a boy put 515 pounds on a squat bar, take it down to a box, and come back up with it as the bar started bending and shaking from the force he applied to it.
He let the bar settle on his back and then walked it into the rack.
It’s safe to say the whole gym was shocked by this display of power, and for a 17-year-old boy, you can imagine this made him feel pretty good and he probably didn’t mind the “fan-fare” either.
He went on to finish his work out and then towards the end of the session, like we finish every session, we got rolling on our weighted carries.
I allow the kids to use whatever implements they want, sandbags, trap bars, kettlebells, farmers bars, cinder blocks, you name it. Not only does this build applicable strength, conditioning, and general preparedness, it develops grit in their bones as they challenge themselves to do hard things.
After the training session was finished up, I sat down on a large tire that came off a front-end loader that was used in Afghanistan during the war on terror and then brought to me from a friend when it was returned stateside, years ago.
The boy I am talking about sat down next to me. He was a bit shaken, but not in a negative way. I could tell something was stirring at this heart.
He said, “you want to know the coolest thing about all this is?” You’d think he’d talk about himself, squatting 500+ pounds, or being the strongest person in the gym, but he didn’t.
He said, with what I believe to be the Lord stirring in his heart, “the coolest thing about all of this is, I’ll go to do a carry and then throw the sandbag down, and then the young guys will come right behind me and try to pick it up and carry it.”
Now while this sounds like “meathead jargon” it’s much deeper than that.
It’s not about a weight or a sandbag. It’s about leading by example and inspiring others with your actions.
It’s the very reason I swing the bay doors of my gym open every day.
That’s what the whole damn thing is about, Brady.
