Striving For Excellence, Not For Perfection.

In the past 2 and a half decades of being a trainer or strength coach, I've seen irony of both trainers and trainees looking for that perfection and not able to accomplish anything.

Trainers perform 60 mins of corrective exercises on glutes imbalance, physical therapy work for knee functioning, and, my current favorite, spending half of the session working with massaging devices for their client's back. To do what? To improve their squat. What's wrong with it? Easiest way to teach anything is to have the client do it and let them know it is ok to fail. Just like a child learning how to walk for the first time. Just because the child fell a few times, you don't take them to the doctors and ask why the child doesn't have perfect balance right? Then why should it be any different from us learning exercise skills?

Core strengthening exercises are another funny one. Many trainers have refused to do certain compound exercises, like deadlift, because their trainees core is weak and they spend weeks and months learning core exercises but the trainees throw their back out when lifting up the suitcase at the airport for not practicing the lift itself. Deadlift does help strengthen the core muscles much faster and effective than plank if taught right and spent TIME on it.

These issues are happening because trainers are to impress their clients with their new skills. Been there, done that but hated being the same as others so that ship sailed immediately. Second is fear of their client's failure. This one took me a while to get over because my confidence in my training skill was low. But trainers should give their trainees a space for failure and be able to support when, not "if", the failure comes. Last one is critical. Thinking that what they have learned from their 3 month certification course and "popular exercise articles" are the everything that they need to know and not learning the basic science like, anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, endocrinology, neuroscience, and so on and not understanding why the hamstring is still tight after 60 minutes of massaging session. Luckily, I didn't have to deal with that.

For trainers, when you stop learning from the primary source because managing business is more important to you, the business will not improve. Forget managing business and spend more time improving your knowledge and skill by applying for yourself. There is a reason why I spend 3 hours everyday learning about the human body.

How about starting a workout for the first time? You've heard it before. "I will start when I'm 10 lb lighter". Isn't that the reason why you should start? Yet, I do understand the mindset. When the majority of people start a workout or sign up for a gym membership, they are pretty much admitting that they are out of shape and overweight. Unless the person has strong will and determination to change their looks and health, he/she will hesitate. Especially when you join a gym, you may go through orientation with trainers and they will put you on a guilt trip for what you didn't do and overwhelm you with the type of services and equipment they have. It is intimidating and frustrating at the same time. But one must realize that we'll need to start from somewhere, somehow.

My kids are re-learning their Japanese by watching Pokemon anime in Japanese so they can ask their grandparents for birthday and Christmas gifts in Japanese. Appropriate way to educate kids? Not really, but they started from somewhere and somehow they started to speak more Japanese at home. Sometimes they use words in a wrong context but they are trying.

One of the things that I love about strength training is you have to fail to get stronger. I've learned to let my ego go to get stronger. I've learned to laugh about my failure. It is ok to make mistakes. It is ok for the squat to be not perfect because it will improve as you practice. Core can be weak to learn deadlifts and you can make the core stronger as you improve it. It's ok if you had knee surgery for we can spend more time improving your posture. You can be overweight to start exercising for the result will come faster when you stay consistent. What is not ok is do nothing and expect everything.

Life is not perfect. Anything for the first time will never be perfect.

Business is far from being perfect.

Humans are not machines.

It will be more fun in life when you start looking for excellence and not perfection.

Kota Shimada