Sometimes I really do feel like things happen for a reason.
Today I was digging through some old emails and found a great nugget from some friends in the industry that our second ever members-only powerlifting meet is happening this weekend.
Here are the high points from Alex:
“There’s a term I learned from the business and marketing world that I want you learn. It’s called the M.V.P and no it doesn’t mean most valuable player. I’m talking about the MVP, or minimum viable product.
It’s the bare-minimum version of a product that meets basic needs and expectations. It’s not perfect and definitely not finished. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad product. It means it’s “good enough” to put there to the world.
The biggest hesitation I’ve seen about competing, especially in Olympic Weightlifting, is that many want to wait until they are really good before competing when their technique is “perfect” and/or they are ‘strong enough”. You fear that if you’re not really good and ready, you’ll embarrass yourself, your pride, ego or self-esteem, make mistakes or fail.
First of all, get over that. Competition in it’s very nature will smash your pride, ego and humble you real quick. There’s no getting around that. You’ll make mistakes and fail often but that’s part of the process and important for learning and growth.
Second, stop giving a damn what other people think! You’re just putting all this unnecessary pressure on yourself that doesn’t help. My Shrugged teammate Von said it best, “If you find yourself worrying about what someone else thinks about your thing, stop. You don’t need anyone’s approval to do anything.” Do your thing.
Finally, your technique, strength, mobility, endurance and etc are never going to be “perfect”. Elite athletes spend decades to reach a state resembling perfection and some would even admit that they never really made it there. You just need to be good enough to start. You need to be the MVP.
There will be always improvements that can be made, but sometimes you just have to see how something goes before you can improve it. You could spend 20 years trying to make it “perfect” only to find to find out that it’s too late and you’ve wasted all that time.
So if you’re a beginner, compete, and compete often. It’ll give purpose, focus and meaning to your training.
I firmly believe there’s no substitute than a true competition for stimulating learning, growth and progress.No experience comes remotely close.
So whether you do powerlifting, weightlifting, CrossFit, whatever, I encourage you to compete.
Go do the Open, or that powerlifting, weightlifting meet, obstacle race, or whatever, you’ve been thinking about entering. It’ll be humbling and difficult. You’ll make mistakes and make them often but remember that also means you’ll learn and grow.”
We’ve still got spots left in the meet, and we even have a beginner’s division! The best part, $20 bones gets you in AND you get a shirt (and bad jokes!) with your registration! Come have a blast with us this saturday, just click here to register on Zenplanner!
I had to share this with you guys, too.
I had one of our old athletes reach out in response to a CRAZY old email back from when it was just your’s truly (G.R.) running every session.
You wanna talk about “MVP” and just getting out there, taking my lumps, and doing it… man this was it!
Talk about an imperfect situation…
We were living in Uptown Minneapolis (because wifey’s getting her PHD and evidently that’s what you do when you move to MSP to get your PHD) and I would drive aaaalll the way across town to a now-closed hell hole of a facility I was subleasing space (if you could call it that) out of.
It was a mildew-smelling corner of a basement in with leaks in the roof and doors that wouldn’t unlock and, like I said, it was a hell hole of a facility.
Anyway, I’d get up before the butt-crack of dawn, make the drive from Uptown to this gym that was further up 35E than we are now (read: even further away from where we lived at the time), train a 5:15 AM session.
What was SUPER awesome was that the owners of this place wouldn’t let me keep the doors open or give my clients a key, so they’d call or text from upstairs (I’d be in the basement w/ other clients) and my (loving, awesome, patient, still with me today) clients would be waiting in the Minnesota cold for their awesome coach to let ’em in!
I’d hit those sessions and blare 80’s in the basement before a drive to downtown Minneapolis where I had a full time holy-moly get me out of here “real” job at a bank (super fun). I’d work there all day, then make the drive in rush hour traffic back to the gym (this took over an hour most days) and train my evening peeps.
I used to email out the schedule every week–look at how many sessions there were!
You know what though?
We did it.
We jumped.
We did things people said were stupid (heck, they were probably right!) Who the heck works that much in an industry where more businesses close than ever live to see the 12 month mark?
We gave a damn.
Yes, at the time, it was me and me alone running the show. It was over a year before Airion joined up as an intern. But you know what, just like in competition (particularly when you’re with the DSC family), you’re not alone… I certainly wasn’t!
The early members of the DSC familia were the assembly crew & moving party.
I was lucky enough to have clients that served as mentors and idea-bouncer-offers that I’m lucky to call friends.
Nothing that you see now happens without “MVP.”
We had one of the members of the familia talk about how doing that first rekindled a passion that she hadn’t had since she was an athlete in college.
It gave her an extra “umph” to bring to her training every day. Extra motivation to push like the badass she is.
All she had to do was jump, before everything was perfect, before she lifted hundreds of pounds, and take a single step.
Stop waiting and take that step.
Things get sort of awesome when you do 🙂