Jump Higher!

“You Gotta Play Above The Rim!”

When I was around 14 years old, I was playing basketball and one of my teammates said this to me in response to my lack of jumping ability.  This was basically the equivalent of telling me to Jump Higher.  When I played sports in any context growing up, sage advice like this was always what I received in response to my lack of athleticism.    

Jump Higher!  Run Faster!  Throw Further!

Apparently, my problem when I was growing up is that I simply wasn’t trying hard enough.  Of course, this wasn’t the case.  With every chance I got to participate in sports, I was putting forth the best effort I possibly could.  I was competitive and I always wanted to win.  I wanted to improve.  I wanted to make every person that ever mocked me for my lack of athleticism, have to eat their words.  But I was overweight.  I was slow.  My knees were in pain all the time and, eventually, late in high school, my back started giving me problems.  Fitness and sports were the only things that I had real interest in growing up but due to my lack of ability, these interests were also my greatest sources of frustration and disappointment.    

I daydreamed about being a great professional athlete (I still do).  I did karate for a brief period in middle school and I studied handouts from the instructors on my own outside of class.  When I was a thrower on my highschool track team, I bought VHS tapes on the discus and shot put (It was the 90’s).  When I was lifting weights as a kid, I tried to read parts of the fitness magazines while at the grocery store with my mother, trying to understand how bodybuilders shaped their physiques.  For highschool baseball, I even bought my own pitching machine from a JUGS magazine… When people would say Jump Higher, it was like they were saying Try Harder.  I was trying as hard as I possibly could at all times.  I couldn’t figure out where I was going wrong.

When I was going through these struggles as a teenager I often hoped for a mentor of some sort to appear.  For all the Jump Faster and Run Higher or whatever useless forms of advice people had, I knew I was working hard on my own.  I knew that none of my classmates were putting in the extra hours of working out and learning that I was putting in.  However, I had gaps in my understanding and what I wanted more than anything was an adult who had the knowledge to mentor me across those gaps.

Presently, as a man in his early 40’s who has been watching sports for a long time, I now recognize that much of an athlete’s success is related to the programs, teammates, and coaches they’re surrounded by.  Also the parents, family, and mentors they have outside the sport.  In grade school my classmates and teammates were unsupportive and actively discouraged me from sports.  Coaches, while supportive, didn’t have much time to pour into me as an individual in any sport.  I love my parents and my family, but they weren’t athletes.  They didn’t have any advice to give me.  

I am not a religious man but my journey with fitness and athletics very much reminds me of the children of Israel wandering lost in the wilderness for 40 years as described in the Bible.  For me it was years of working hard on my own to improve myself physically and being lost as to why things weren’t improving in any significant way.

I’ve figured out some significant things in the last 5 years that account for these struggles.  A partially dislocated ankle at 9 years old that healed but not properly.  This led to a lifetime of knee pain that’s subsided in the last 2-3 years.  Maybe more impactful was the physical and sexual abuse at the hands of my older sister that left the imprints of trauma on my body.  I suspect many of the back problems I’ve dealt with originate from these experiences.  (Read this article for more explanation).  The point here is not so much about the solutions to my struggles.  It’s more about how I handled being lost in the wilderness.

I have always loved fitness and athletics.  It’s like it’s in my DNA.  I’ve always been competitive.  But for 30 years I carried this deep desire and hit nothing but obstacles to progress.  Even when I lost weight after graduating highschool, knee problems didn’t go away and my back issues got worse.  When I was in the Army, when I was doing Crossfit, and 6 years ago when I committed to Martial Arts, I battled knee and back problems the whole way.  Trying every mobility routine, every stretch, and every exercise I could find.  Did I get better?  For sure I did, but never the way I saw training partners improve.  Particularly in relation to anything involving the lower body (which is damn near everything).  I was lost in the wilderness.  Searching for answers.  Clueless as to why other people seemed to have success and I wasn’t.  It was so frustrating!  But I kept fighting.  I kept learning.  I kept showing up and trying.  Finally,  I discovered some strategies that led to huge breakthroughs about 3 years ago.  Knee and back problems have almost completely disappeared.  I found my way.

When I was $60,000 in debt I was in a financial wilderness.  When I was a single man for 14 years before meeting my wife, I was in a relationship wilderness.  We all will have experiences where we are trying to move ourselves forward but we’re clueless as to which way to even orient ourselves and we can’t find anyone with useful advice.  We’re struggling and there appears to be no end in sight.

I can not guarantee that you will find your way if you keep trying.  That would be irresponsible.  However, like I said, fitness and sports seems to be in my DNA.  Win or lose, I’m never going to stop trying.  This is what is so hard about life at times, you can’t win a game that you aren’t playing but you’re not guaranteed to ever win if you keep playing.  

If I never started working out, I wasn’t going to lose weight.  If I never started reading and learning about the musculoskeletal system, I would have never figured out the chronic pain in my knees and the issues with my lower back.  But making the effort was never a guarantee of success.  

So a big part of what I’ve learned from my wilderness experiences is what it means to fight for something that we believe is important.  This is the basic idea of my first principle of ownership: If it’s worth having it’s worth fighting for.  In my experience the wilderness has always been about learning a posture towards things that I believe are meaningful, regardless of outcome.  

It’s been my experience that showing up regularly and giving your best effort generally leads to more positive outcomes than not.  The most positive outcome being the peace of mind that comes with knowing that you didn’t let external factors beyond your control dictate how you showed up for the task.  

As frustrating as it was to be told to Jump Higher when I was jumping as hard as I could, the most important thing when I look back is to know that I didn’t let disappointment and repeated failure keep me from pursuing sports and making the effort.  I may have never been a great athlete but I didn’t let adversity keep me from something that I loved.

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