Mindset
I once heard this great saying, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Not that I advocate for eating elephants, we most assuredly need to protect these wonderful beasts.
But the idea of eating an elephant seems impossible, yet the only way to start, and to accomplish the feat is to dose it down to the simplest of terms.
One bite at a time.
The feeling that something is insurmountable, or impossible, or just too much to accomplish stops so many of us. We let the gravity of the accomplishment weigh us down, and so we do nothing instead of something.
That something is one thing.
One step, one action, one motion, one task, followed by another, and another, and another, and eventually the thing that seemed impossible is an image in your rearview mirror.
Someone shared a coaching approach they took with a client once to help them see past the impossibility of running a half marathon.
He said to his client, “I know you feel like running 21 Km’s is a big deal, how about you think of it this way, can you run one kilometer 21 times?”
The client looked at him curiously, and then exclaimed, “I can do that!”
Fait accomplice.
Sometimes you need to look back to recognize what you can accomplish.
This past weekend I went back to my Alma Mater, Concordia University, specifically the Recreation and Athletics Department where my career really began.
We were teaching our Reconditioning R1 Foundations course for the first time at Concordia since we began teaching the approach.
In 1990 I began working there as an Assistant Athletic Therapist and Lead Strength and Conditioning Coach. At the time, I believe I was the first S+C coach hired full time at a major university in Canada.
It was just me and the head therapist, Ron Rappel. We, along with a great group of students, covered and supported all the varsity athletes injuries and training.
We had an 800 square foot gym with limited equipment.
Every year, because I had no budget, I ran two beer bashes we called the “Pump You Up Bash”, affectionately named after the Hanz and Franz skit on SNL drawn from the caricature of Arnold Schwarzeneggar and the Terminator.
The Terminator with a beer bottle in his hand instead of a gun would become the Pump You Up brand image, LOL.
Each bash would net me around $1500 and I would use that money to buy strength training equipment for the varsity program. By the time I left in 2009, we had a pretty loaded, but still small gym.
It was not only the first time university athletes were getting professional coaching, but very much the first time female athletes were getting introduced to off-court, off-ice, and off-field training. Women’s sports were just beginning to legitimize their preparation.
Most certainly it was different in the States, but they were still way behind the men….the arms race for professionalization was beginning.
In the 90s I really witnessed the birth of women’s sports from women who simply played sports, to women who trained and lived sports. Women who aspired to create future leagues of their own.
This past week was so remarkable for so many reasons for me. I watched the NCAA women’s basketball semi-final and final games shatter viewership records of some serious men’s sports events. And watching them play was incredibly inspiring.
Then I watched the Canadian Women’s National Team win the World Championships in ice hockey witnessing an incredible escalation in the skills and physical abilities of these athletes. I still remember the first women’s world championship, and the first Canadian women’s university championship events being inaugurated.
Now to see and recognize that many of these women are playing in the Professional Women’s Hockey League! And the basketball women have been playing in their own pro league since 1997 which was the year before I left ConU to begin my career in the NHL. And the women’s football/soccer world cup?! What an incredible event!
Such incredible growth and change.
Segue back to teaching this past weekend. Here we were, standing in a room that used to be the gym, and now was a large varsity clinic, with a team of Athletic Therapists six strong, and one S+C coach who is part of a staff of four. We were two, they are ten! Five of whom are women!!
The Lead S+C Coach is a former ConU women’s hockey team member, and a woman I introduced to strength training back in the mid-90s. So cool to see.
And there were three ATs from a clinic group in Montreal who’s founders were ATs and Reconditioning grads. Made me think of all the great therapy and performance spaces operating here, and elsewhere who have been influenced by the practice of Reconditioning.
Had you told me 34 years ago as I began my career at Concordia, that this is what I would have to accomplish, and would be accomplished by so many others, I would not have believed it.
So inspiring!
But that’s how you eat an elephant……one bite at a time.
Don’t let the possible seem impossible.
