Here is my contribution.
It’s not from the arena of the training room, dojo, or gymnasium.
It’s from the places where as a younger man i had my battles.
Mountains and oceans !.
Years ago (some 25+) i was a yoiund and inexperienced sailor crewing on race boats in the local club circuit and offshore race circuit. I wasn’t a talented or skilled sailor,didn’t grow up with it but was wildly keen and enthusiastic.
That enthusiasm came out in strange ways…like spending hours under a boat sanding the keel for smoothness.
One day a boat owner that i sort of knew invited me to come out and crew on the boat he was buying : he was moving up a size and just neede to recruit a larger crew pool , i think as well that having seen me do the dirty work around boats that i might be a good bet for getting work done as well.
Well it was a step up onto a larger and more powerful (but more complex ) boat, i got thrown at the foredeck for our first race, first time out.
As is fairly predictable it was a bit of a shambles, i fluffed a few foredeck moves, we didn’t ver seem to have botaspeed, manouvres were chaotic with lots of shouting …got shouted at a bit and we came last in the race.
In the yacht club bar after the race i was pretty miserable, some of the other guys on the boat degintely had their teeth into how it was the mistakes on the foredeck that cost them the race.
Next weekend wasn’t a race, owner invited me out o help cruise the boat to it’s new birth and i spent the trip working out how everything worked at my end of the boat, re arranged and simplified a few things , even got to play with the sail trim and steer for a bit.
Next time out racing i had it a lot more together, sails went up and down at the right time , we tacked and gybed a lot more smoothly but still did badly in the race.
In the bar i noticed that the talk…and blame was on the sails, that they were old/ stretched etc, i didn’t think we were getting the best out of them etc.
Next time out with the owner we just spent some time messing about with the sail trim settings and working out what we needed up in what conditions and .
Next race we did reasonably well-, aside from the cahos and shouting.-still didn’t place or win, talk in the yacht club bar was that we still weren’t winning because the bottom was rough/dirty.
At the end of the season i walked off the boat, just couldn’t deal with the acrimonious atmosphere on board, the shouting and blame culture that seemed to permeate the middle of the boat.
During the winter the owner invited me over for dinner, asked me why i had left the boat and and i basically said that i didn’t feel that we were working well as a crew, and was totally fed up with the constant excuses for failure we making .
The owner then totally surprised me…he asked me if i would come back if we stopped making ‘excuses to lose’…in fact if we found out whet those excuses were and nailed them one by one.
Excuses to lose !!.
Ok… so we sanded the bottom super smooth, invested in a couple of crucial sails, re-tuned the rig, crucially had a crew meeting and laid down a ‘no shouting’ rule. We established communication routines from cockpit to foredeck and back. We established a jobs roster and a crew roster.
We went out and trained /practiced together.
We started winning races.
We stopped making excuses to lose, if there was a problem we worked on it.
We simply stopped blaming and making excuses.
The analogy 25 years down the line is of course about not making excuses, i could easily make excuses…i have a list here of things :
Too tired
Not working hard enough
Not enough time
Don’t have the knowledge or equipment
Havn’t eaten properly
Not getting enough rest.
Ad infinitum.
For me i have to consciously think about what excuses i am making to fail at my training and keep on top of them.
Seems to come down to :
I have to turn up and do the work…it;s not always pretty and it;s not always fully focussed but ‘there’ is better than ‘not there’.
I have to organise and shop well simply to have decent food
I have to have discipline and focus.
I have to work to my best effort, i have to not cheat and sell myself short.
I have to put the mental effort in and learn about this.
When i train—i train.
When i rest–i rest