I was doing Marine OCS physicals at Quantico and a young man came in built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, about 6'4" and 215 pounds. He was wheezing slightly. "I'm sorry, young man. You have asthma; you're NPQ (not physically qualified...asthma after age 12)." He left in tears. During extremes of temperature and environmental (dust, fumes) stress, asthma often flares.
During competition, we have winners and losers. The degree of joy or suffering attendant to results isn't stoichiometric. We can derive less satisfaction from a poorly-played win than a well-played defeat. Therefore, loss and consistent suffering aren't synonymous.
In Atruism, Matthieu Ricard describes the 'four noble truths of suffering.'
-The truth of suffering (suffering IS)
-The triggers (causes), including ignorance and derivatives like hate, greet, and envy
-Potential to stop (cessation) suffering
-Journey to pursue (path) to alleviate suffering
We know suffering is real, but we can focus on process. Triggers relate to inattention to process, poor technique, tactical failure, or sometimes making it personal. "WE have to beat THEM." The alternative is focusing on doing what we do better. We can stop punishing our collective "self'' by playing present, competing possession by possession. And the path to better process includes altruism (imposing kindness on our team) and compassion (desiring to free them from mental or physical anguish). We can condition players without punishing them.
But suffering transcends victory and defeat. Suffering attends illness and injury. Suffering stems from changes in identity and status - poor performance, cut from a team, traded, diminished role, pay cut, media criticism, retirement. There is reality and our response.
We can choose denial. "It never happened." Have you not seen girls leave tryouts sobbing? Did Isaiah Thomas not reveal his suffering in The Players' Tribune? "And two, as my youngest said it: “Sad.” Or put another way — man, man, am I going to miss this city. Man, am I going to miss being a Celtic. But yeah, I’ll just say it: That shit hurt. It hurt a lot. And I won’t lie — it still hurts. And that doesn't even count the pain of his labrum tear, rehabilitation, possibly impaired skills, and contract concerns.
Players got scholarships, but not always enough food. Shabazz Napier said, “I don’t think student athletes should get hundreds of thousands of dollars, but ... there are hungry nights that I go to bed and I’m starving.” Schools and coaches made big bucks but some student-athletes went hungry. Later, the NCAA liberalized the rules...shortly after Napier went public. It's hard to defend billions when your athletes are hungry. Even the tone-deaf NCAA and President Mark Emmert remarked, “What we’ve been doing is saying: ‘Look, you’re competing — you’re competing on coaches’ salaries, you’re competing on gold-plated locker rooms. How about you compete on feeding kids?"
We can dismiss complaints about coaches. "Lauren...was struck particularly by a figure in the NCAA’s 2010 GOALS Report. That survey of almost 20,000 college athletes reported that only 39% of women’s basketball players “strongly agreed” that “my head coach can be trusted.” More than half of players had concerns with trust. That is pain.
What can we do? Discuss what creates and destroys trust. But words like honesty, communication, authenticity, and integrity are just words. We choose whether to put words into action. Don't pretend suffering isn't real or that we're unattached. It's baked into the system and dismissed as "soft" or "politically correct." We can train players without abuse and with kindness.
Drill du jour: Hoiberg Speed Drill
