The Difference Between Winning and Losing

From the moment Danny Nichols moved 500 pounds across the grid eclipsing the Fire’s Sam Dancer’s efforts, Phoenix was a few reps ahead. Once Bryan Miller got to the rope climbs, it was all but over. Emily Pale, the Rise’s steady, consistent star all season, reached the ten-inch deficit handstand push ups first and began banging them out. About five reps into the ten reps required, the Fire’s Annie Sakamoto reached that station as well.

What happened next is where joy gives way to heartbreak, where fever-pitched adrenalin yields to panic. Emily reached fatigue with two reps left. Her judge held up a hand showing two fingers as she went back on the wall and tried – and failed – again. Sakamoto’s judge, meanwhile, had a single finger in the air signaling one final rep to be done. When Sakamoto failed, she sprinted back to the line and Cheryl Brost came in to finish the handstand push up station. Emily Pale was left on the grid with two reps remaining. The Fire won the race and the match – and advances to the championship.

The images that filtered into the video monitors following the race are the kinds of images that tear at the heartstrings of any parent, any coach, or hell, any human being. Emily Pale, with her face buried in her jersey and the shoulder of a teammate, weeping uncontrollably. For any of us who have even been in that position, where seemingly a single-rep makes the difference between winning and losing, you know that heartache. “I had it guys. I couldn’t hold on. I had it. I am sorry.”

The beauty of sport, though, is that it never really comes down to those single reps. It never comes down to that putt or the third strike. And for Phoenix, it didn’t really come down to those handstand push ups.

The Bartman Incident

In 2003, Steve Bartman was just another baseball fan. By the end of the sixth game of the major league baseball playoffs between the Chicago Cubs and the Florida Marlins, Bartman’s life would be changed forever. He was a villain.

In game six, with the Cubs holding a 3-2 series over the Marlins, the score was 3-0 Cubs. In the eighth inning, Bartman and a handful of other fans reached out over the wall at Wrigley Field to try to snag a ball coming into the stands off the bat of Luis Castillo. Cubs outfielder Moises Alou was also making a beeline for the ball and with glove outstretched.

Their worlds collided, literally, as Alou watched in disbelief as Bartman deflected the ball into the stands. Had Alou caught the ball, it would have been the second out in the inning, and the Cubs would have been just four outs away from winning their first National League title since 1945.

Almost immediately, Bartman drew the ire of the entire stadium who seemed to be channeling Alou’s rage at him for deflecting the ball. He had to be escorted from his seat among debris and jeers and needed a police escort to get home. It wasn’t long before he was receiving death threats.

The entire historical episode is the subject of a fascinating documentary called Catching Hell. I highly recommend watching it because what is derived from this film is the message that it’s never just that one snapshot of time that defines a win or a loss.

The documentary smartly points out a number of errors leading up to the Bartman incident, any one of which being eliminated might have resulted in a Cubs win. Moreover, after the Bartman deflection, the Cubs collapsed. There were eight runs given up after that, which lead to a Marlins win in game six, which then gave way to a seventh game. The Cubs could have won game seven, but, alas, they lost to Florida and the Marlins won the pennant.

The Snapshot Never Tells the Story

Any shift, any minor change in the cogs of the machine, and the outcome might be different.  Why then was the laser trained on Bartman? Why in a season-long serpentine of succeeding dominoes falling was the Bartman incident singled out as the sole reason the Cub’s train derailed on the way to the World Series?

It’s because we as fans, coaches, people need a reason – an “if only…” – to make sense of the process. We see the “The Drive” by the 1987 Broncos as the single reason the Browns failed to go to the Super bowl. But we fail to acknowledge that had the Browns put Denver away in that playoff game, “The Drive” would have been irrelevant. Bob Tway sinks a greenside bunker shot to edge out Greg Norman in the 1986 PGA Championship and it’s seen as one of the most memorable golf shots in history – but it needn’t have come down to that single shot.

The snapshot never tells the story. The handstand push ups in race eleven of Phoenix versus San Francisco do not tell the story. The story is much larger.

That story includes:

• How the relatively unknown Emily Pale came out of the Vegas combines as a rising star and was signed by the Rise pre-draft.
• How Pale solidly and consistently helped her team to victories over the course of the season, including the quarterfinals in Charlotte
• Each race within the semifinals against the Fire that, had they been won, would have put Phoenix out of reach of San Francisco in race eleven.
• Every coaching call, every race, every training session and every referee decision leading up to those handstand push ups.

In other words, Emily Pale, you should have nothing but pride in your performance for the Phoenix Rise from day one through the final thrusters in Q4 against the Fire. What you did, and what your teammates did, is what Grid is all about. You laid it all out there, every rep, every race, every match. There is no “if only” here, and I hope you know that. I, for one, look forward to watching you continue to dominate the sport of Grid along with the Phoenix Rise for many years to come.

Photos courtesy of NPGL.

The post When a Single Moment Is the Difference Between Winning and Losing appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The Dodo suddenly called out “The race is over!” and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, “But who has won?”

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead, while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.

– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

We can all laugh at the pompous and ridiculous reasoning of the dodo bird, but many school systems today seem to have raised the dodo’s thinking to the level of dogma. Where the schools once championed equality of opportunity, they now insist on equality of result. No one fails and no one’s self-esteem is damaged – and no one is prepared for real life.

The Fallacy of No Winners in Real Life

I once refereed a weightlifting competition for kids ranging in age from about twelve to nineteen. After a medal ceremony the mother of one of the athletes came up to me and gave her opinion that it was too bad all of the kids couldn’t get medals. Immediately seeing a dodo bird in front of me, I decided to throw this remark back at her. I asked her if she gave her kids a weekly allowance.

“Oh, yes,” she replied.

“If they don’t do their chores for the week, do they still get their allowance?” I asked.

“Of course not!”

“Why not?” I asked.

She replied that the kids would never learn how to do anything properly around the house or farm if they got rewarded for a bad job. I agreed with her, of course, and then subtly pointed out the inconsistency in her logic. I guess I wasn’t subtle enough for she turned on her heel and walked away.

The Merit of Meritocratic Nobility

The biggest problem with everyone receiving prizes is that the prizes become worthless baubles. This reminds us of the old saying from who knows where: “If all men are nobles, then no man is a noble.” Self esteem comes from knowing you do things better than others, not from accomplishing the same nothing as others.

Hereditary nobility might rub egalitarians the wrong way, but the fact is that we do have meritocratic nobility. And thank God for that. If I ever end up in an operating room, I hope the surgeon is way better than anyone else at his job. I sure wouldn’t someone operating on me who was only given an MD in order to preserve his self-esteem. We need this meritocratic nobility in order to have something to look up to, to aspire to, and to depend on when needed. Conversely, even if there was no such elite, others would still tried to distinguish themselves by being better than the average.

I once read of a certain football coach in a Division III college in the United States. His school did not play as part of a conference, but the coach had his team play what amounted to nine exhibition games every year. Three games would be played against schools that he felt would be fairly easy for his team to beat. Three other games would be played against teams that would probably beat them. The other three games would be played against teams where the outcome would be in doubt.

In this way, the coach hoped he would give his players some of the joys of winning, the joys of tight competition, and an opportunity to learn from a superior team. He thought this mixture of levels provided his team members with the best training for their futures lives, if not for serious football. They would learn how to be gracious in victory, to recognize the joys and pains of heavy competition, and to humbly learn from their mistakes and the superior talents of others.

Sports as Apprenticeship for Life

When I was just learning how to play sports, I was lousy, as was everyone else my age. We would play sandlot baseball, football, soccer, and hockey (icelot?) with the neighborhood boys of varying ages, anywhere from nine to thirteen or so. The first year I was barely tolerated and always picked last when captains divided up the teams. In my second year I improved a little bit but not much, maybe picked third or fourth last in the pecking order as older boys would move on to pursue other things.

Eventually however, towards the end of our time on the neighborhood fields many of us ended up as captains ourselves. With the wisdom of age I can now see what we were really doing was working an apprenticeship, not only in sports, but also in the wider world of general teamwork. In a few years we would all be going off to work and we would be the “freshman on the playing field” once again. We had another apprenticeship to go through and that one would be done in a more serious game. But at least we were prepared for what might lie ahead by our years of competition on the playground. We learned that success was not going to be handed to us.

The Meritocracy of Weightlifting

Lifting is a pure meritocracy and it is objective – all numbers that cannot be argued with. Nobody is judged on how cute his or her outfit is or how well the referee knows your style, but only by how much was on the bar. If you train properly, then you will rise up the hierarchy. Most importantly, you see that reward only follows effort and nothing else.

Whoever lifts the most will win, but it is important to remember in weightlifting that those who finish down the standings do not necessarily lose. You do not always compare yourself to the winner. Like a golfer, you may compare yourself to your own previous best or a performance that you hope to achieve (your “par” so to speak). In this way someone who totals 220kg when his previous best was 200 will feel more like a winner than the person who totals 300 and wins the event even though his previous best was 330kg. There’s more than one way to win. Weightlifting competition need not be a zero-sum game.

In conclusion, competition has its good and bad points, but I feel we must not throw out the baby with the bathwater. The idea that all must have prizes has caused enough trouble over the last several decades. It’s time we take a step or two backwards to teach people that anything worth striving for will require hard work and it will involve competition with others.

Some school boards may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. This artificial scenario doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in life. We should be teaching two rules:

1. Life is not fair – get used to it! Nobody will hold a thirty-year-old’s hand.
2. The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. It will only expect you to feel good about yourself after you accomplish something worthwhile, not before.

There are no dodo birds out there. They really are extinct.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Why Winning and Losing Matters and the Dodo Is Extinct appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

How to Prepare for and Win a Fight (Eric C. Stevens)

Knowing the how an event is judged is the best way to decide how to prepare for competition. Let’s look at how boxing is judged, and how it relates to our preparations for success in life.

Analyzing a Weightlifter: Do We Learn Anything From Winning? (Dresdin Archibald)

We are often told that we should learn from our mistakes. But how do we analyze our winning performances and what do we learn from them?

Winners Have More Testosterone (Doug Dupont)

Researchers were able to predict the winners of rugby matches by measuring testosterone levels before the games. Yes, before. Is testosterone a predictor of victory? Read on for the answers.

Friday Flicks: John Wooden – The Difference Between Winning and Succeeding (Breaking Muscle HQ)

John Wooden is known as one of the best coaches, basketball or otherwise, in history. In this video Wooden explains the true meaning of success and how it has nothing to do with points.

Failing Forward: 7 Stories of Success Through Failure (Nick Horton)

Fitness goals can be quite oddball and they can take a very long time and a lot of energy to accomplish. Without a willingness to endure failure you’ll never reach your goals.

Victory Gestures: Science Discovers A New Emotion (Joshua Wortman)

Pyschologists examine the post-victory gestures of Olympic athletes and discover a new emotion – triumph. How does it differ from pride and how do you recognize it? Science shows us.

Monthly OpEd: How to Stop Sucking at Life and Win at Everything (Nick Horton)

We make addiction out to be an unbeatable foe. That’s bull. If that was true, then no one would ever kick a drug habit, no one would ever lose weight, and no one would ever overcome anything hard.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Eight Articles to Help Bring Out Your Inner Winner appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

As for favorable variances, many of these are glossed over and complacency rules. “All is well, so let’s move on to the problem areas” seems to be the attitude. But is this reasonable? Is there anything to be gained from looking at what we did right?

We are told that we should learn from our mistakes. This is indeed good advice. A mistake is usually easy to spot, if not by you then by others. And we all know how eager some people are to point out our errors. Nevertheless this situation does motivate us to improve. We know what went wrong and then we can go about correcting things.

Boxers are one of the better examples of this tendency in the sport world. Alberta Sport Hall of Fame coach Kai Yip once remarked to me that you never learn anything from winning a fight, only from losing one. He pointed out the story of how Joe Louis always dropped his guard when delivering a punch. Max Schmeling, generally considered a lesser boxer, was able to exploit that flaw and handed the Brown Bomber a setback on his eventually successful quest for the heavyweight title.

Louis’s long string of wins against generally lesser opposition had made him complacent. Louis had been warned of this flaw by former champ Jack Johnson, but since there was a lot of jealousy between the first two black champs Louis was not inclined to listen to the old man’s advice. Only when his string of success ended was Louis ready to listen to the suggestion that he keep his guard up during punches. Trainer Jack Blackburn used the shock of this loss to finally motivate Louis to change his tactics. As a result Joe learned this lesson and Der Max was no match for Louis in their second meeting (KO1 for Louis).

This is all very informative but was Kai right about not learning anything when winning? I had to disagree even though I conceded that motivation to learn will usually be higher after a loss. But it is just as important to try to learn from victories. After all, you must have done something right if the gold now hangs around your neck. It then behooves us to determine what things were done right. I pointed out to Kai that ever after Louis kept his guard up and as a result reigned longer than any other champion. This was a case where someone indeed learned from winning.

It is good to know how well a good training plan can bring victory. Sometimes, however, winning can occur even when pre-meet training and other factors were not up to par. This is often the case in local competitions where opposition is weak. An unseasoned lifter may get the idea that whatever he did on the way to winning was acceptable and will be acceptable in future. I remember one lifter in particular who was unfortunate enough to win his first competition, despite having trained only haphazardly. It took him a long time to realize that he won in spite of his slack training, not because of it. In the meantime he wasted a lot of time and wondered why others were leapfrogging over him.

Come to think of it, ego is another factor that all too many lifters ignore but should be taken into consideration. It is one thing to win in a local garage meet, quite another when the stakes get higher. Victory may have been due to factors of which the lifters were not aware. Perhaps they won in spite of themselves, not because of their abilities. Some even forget that they wear the gold because no one else entered in the meet. They will assume they have nothing to learn since they “won.” That seems irrational but I’ve seen it happen many times.

Other factors that the lifter likes to highlight may not be the reason he won. For example, one lifter I once knew thought he was a strong squatter so that is what always enabled him to win with a big clean and jerk. I disagreed. I asked him what his best dead-stop squat was. He hemmed and hawed in answering. Well, it turned out that it was far, far lower than what his bounced squat was. In short, his legs were weaker than he assumed. He made his cleans but that depended on him getting a good bounce at the bottom. Meanwhile he had no reserve leg strength. If the bounce wasn’t enough he would power out. I told him that he would probably remain a good cleaner, but only until his patella tendons gave out one day. So he had to reassess his supposed leg strength.

In other cases a lifter does far better in one meet than he did in a previous one and the reasons are not very evident. The factors usually examined seem to be unchanged – training is similar, bodyweight hasn’t changed, etc. This is where the analysis must get very nuanced. Often the reason can be found to be one that is discounted as insignificant. Sleep is frequently such a factor. I remember two meets I lifted in only six weeks apart. I couldn’t discern much difference in my training. The only thing I could see was that I got nine hours of sleep before the better result and only six before the other. Afterwards I tried to get more sleep before meets and in training as well. That indeed made the difference. But since I was always a lighter sleeper I had discounted sleep as a factor.

Bodyweight is another factor. Training may go very well when one is several pounds over his category limit. If bodyweight has to be cut too close to competition then the lifter will be in for a surprise. Strength will be lost and performance will suffer while the lifter might not think the loss significant. This is especially true when the lifter gets older. Losing weight with no ill effects is easier when younger, less so as you age. In that case the lifter must damp down his ego and consider the effects of aging in his future training plans.

These are but a few examples of how things can be learned from winning and doing things right. For this reason determining what you did right is just as important as figuring out what went wrong.

Photos 1 & 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Joe Louis photo courtesy of Carl Van Vechten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Analyzing a Weightlifter: Do We Learn Anything From Winning? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.