Recently I wrote a blog on not being afraid to fail. Today I would like to build on thatand talk about weaknesses. Too often we, and I am including myself, choose towork on what we are already good at. It’s easy, familiar and we enjoy workingon and doing things we are already successful at. It is difficult to choose aweakness over a strength.
As astrength and conditioning coach it is something that I see often. I am going touse myself as an example because I too get caught up in working on my strengthsrather than my weaknesses. Over the past two years there has been an exercisethat has haunted me in the weight room…the power clean. It took me almost two years before I saw any progress in my clean. The reason? I chose to continuallywork on my strengths and ignored the obvious weaknesses in my technique andmobility. The clean is a very complex barbell movement, there are severalphases, each being as important as the other to be successful. I thought bycontinuously attempting to power clean I would magically just get better at it.
Well I waswrong. Thanks to my friends and colleagues I was able to break down what wascausing me to fail. For me mobility, or lack thereof, was a big contributor tomy failure. I had known for a long time mobility was something I needed to workon but always chose to lift or play into my strengths before choosing to foamroll, stretch, and/or trigger point. By working on my mobility, I was able tobreak through and improve my power clean.
Now to thisday I still need to do a better job with mobility, I am still nowhere nearwhere I want and or need to be. My power clean still needs work, it’s betterthan it was but not great. I sometimes catch myself falling back into my oldpatterns of thinking. It is a constant battle, and one I need to work on. Nowas a strength and conditioning coach it is important to help people overcometheir weaknesses to find improvement. If you really want to improve yourlifting, running, or just your overall athletic ability you need to step backand work on your weaknesses.
Babe Ruth(pretty good baseball player) said “You know the old saying about a chain andits weakest link. The same can be said in the chain of skills a man forges.”Weakness exist in every aspect of our lives, not just our athletic ability. Ifyou want to continue to grow as a person it is important to work on turningweaknesses into strengths. A couple of days ago Michael Phelps, perhaps thegreatest Olympian of all time, gave a pretty telling interview about some of hisstruggles over the past few years. He talks about his struggles with alcohol,family issues, and even his lack of will to swim. Imagine the greatest swimmerof all time not wanting to compete in the 2012 London games. Phelps hit rockbottom before he decided he was going to work on his weaknesses. Now a coupleof months before the 16 summer games, Phelps is back and better than ever. Hechose to step back, work on some things and now that is translating to thepool. He actually wants to train again and is posting some of his fastest timessince 2009.
Maybe it’stime to turn some of your weaknesses into strengths….
