Less Than Ideal

So i’m going back a while now to when I was studying my diploma to become a personal trainer, I was right into bodybuilding at the time.

When you get to class everyone is sitting there all kind of nervous, you know that eventually you’re probably going to have to do somme group stuff or get into pairs, that kind of stuff, not the kind of thing i particularly like, but you just get on with it right.

Anyway, I remember looking around the room, there seemed to be a few people who already knew each other, a few others who clearly ‘looked’ like they worked out, some clearly into bodybuilding who i would think were more ‘my’ kind of people.

So we get into things, learning all the theory and anatomy, nutrition, endocrine system, etc… I found it all so so interesting. Weird considering at school I wasn’t into science and especially biology that much. Education wasted on the young as they say.

Anyway, we all frothed over all the elements, and especially training.

Then it came time to get into pairs. We would work with this person for quite a few months and use them as our guinea pig to write a program for and all of that stuff.

Due to the seating arrangement, everyone pretty much paired off with the person next to them. I was paired off with this Polish guy, nice guy, but not necessarily my cup of tea.

Just my luck, turns out he was well into his cycling, iron man, and endurance sports, which I was not. It felt hard to find a connection on things when it came to training philosophies and training styles, 2 very different approaches, but you know, we set about our work and getting to know each other and creating our programs for each other based on their interests or what agenda we wanted to push ;) To be honest it felt less than ideal. I really wanted to be with someone who was in to what I was into. Someone who would mirror my own biases, and someone I could connect with more.

So of course he was writing a program for a triathlete, we would chat about what he had done in the past, what his approach would be and all kinds of other stuff.

We would also have to do some practical work with each other, putting each other through their paces on their methodology for what we were trying to achieve.

I remember so clearly him getting me on the bike. We were going to do 10s all out max effor sprints, 20 seconds rest x 10. Lactate threshold training.

Holy S, It absolutely destroyed. After the first 3 rounds I was so ready to stop, but he was good at keeping me going and explaining what was happening. Yeah, thanks but no thanks I was thinking.

However, many years on, I remember a lot of the training principles he was into and a lot of the stuff we spoke about. Although at the time it was less than ideal, I can’t help thinking I was actually the lucky one in the class, I learned way more about different styles of training, was pushed out of my com fort zone and it has set me up well for when naturally my own interests and training approaches evolved or changed for a while.

So even when situations are less than great, maybe there’s something in that that we’re supposed to learn or take away, maybe we can’t see it at the time but it may be something that we’re able to draw on in the future.

It wasn’t ideal, but it was a few months, things change, then they’re in the past, so if something isn’t ideal for you right now, then I hope that it wont stay that way forever, and maybe that helps a little.

Lawrence x