DAY 10/90: Control Your Response

DAY 10/90: Control Your Response
GIVE TEAM RULE 09: Events and circumstances don’t define you. How you respond to those events and circumstances is what defines you.

13 July 2022
Orlando, Florida

MESSAGE BEHIND THE RULE: The only thing that defines you are the actions you take. If the events and circumstances in your life are the result of choices and decisions you’ve made, then you’ve defined yourself by those events. There are things that happen that aren’t fair. Sometimes you do all the right things, but bad things happen. The important thing to keep in mind is you can’t control what happened in the past, so control your thoughts, your words and your actions and make sure what your response is aligned with your ultimate mission.

“My alarm didn’t go off.”

“I forgot to plug my phone in.”

“I didn’t hear it ring.”

When someone commits to a workout the night before the workout but doesn’t show up to the workout (or doesn’t answer when Coach calls on the way to give a ride), these are the responses often heard. These things happen. They don’t define who you are. Unless they happen repeatedly and you don’t do anything about it.

It happened to me. The workout was scheduled for 6am. My alarm went off at 3:30am, and instead of SNOOZE I must’ve turned the alarm off. I woke up at 5:50am. My heart rate went from slow to burning hot in about 3 seconds. As it turned out, nobody else was awake either. Yovens woke up and we got in The Give Team 15 and some grip work.

Yovens used to be the person we’d have to drag out of bed for workouts. I’d pick up everyone else first, and Smith would knock on his bedroom window to wake him up. He was likely up until 3 or 4am playing video games, and had a tough time getting energy when we arrived. But he’d come.

He moved to Pine Hills entering his sophomore year of high school, and we didn’t see him much after that. Then COVID hit, and it was a different game everywhere. Later that year he reached out. He wanted to join workouts again. Pine Hill is about 20 minutes out of the way, but he’s part of the family so in 2021 we welcomed Yovens back to workouts. But things were different. He’d answer the phone when called to get ready for his ride. He wasn’t staying up all night playing games. He’d call asking when the next event was being held, or when the next workout was scheduled. Put another way, instead of us pulling him to be part of what we do, he’d push us.

Today was no different. Because of my SNOOZE button issue, Rachel picked up Yovens. Neither Smith nor Benita answered their phones. While the cortisol level spiked because of the late night, early morning and missed alarm, the energy level lagged. Everything seemed out of sorts and in chaos.

Then we got in the workout. We did The Give Team 15 nice and easy. We’re in desperate need of GRIP STRENGTH for the Spartan Beast in December. It’s a long way away, but some of us have a long way to go. After The Give Team 15, we focused on three stations: (1) pull up / dead hang; (2) table row; and (3) band pulls. We did five sets, :45 on, :15 rest. Yovens fared well, pushing himself through. He’s built well for OCR with zero fat, decent strength and a desire to put in prep work before the race. This workout tested the grip, so mission accomplished.

We revisited physical goals, and agreed to putting a plan together to meet the physical goal by the end of September. His goal is to do 100 push ups. My goal and Smith’s goal is to do 20 pull ups. We’ll get a journal together to track progress, but both Yovens and Smith are committed to doing this right. That means setting the plan and following through on that plan, which is where everyone has fallen down in the past. Once they lose the momentum of the first week, it falls down the list of priorities.

Starting this week, we’ll post a workout schedule on the website. They’ll be short and sweet, intended to be a baseline and to be IN ADDITION TO The Give Team 15.

After the workout, I came home to eat, shower and walk the dawgz. Florida summer, blue skies and the temperature getting hotter as the sun rose. I left at 10 to take Smith to school for his summer class. Yovens needed to be at work by 1pm, so I stopped at a coffee shop to gather my thoughts with caffeine and my notebook. I dropped him a bit early and was back home by 1pm, energized.

The workout with Yovens was the spark needed to ignite the rest of the day. It’s yet another example where the coach is helped by the teammate. This works both ways. It was a good day. And a commitment to never miss another alarm.

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