BETWEEN YOU AND YOU

WEEK OF 2/23/26

 

Short one for you guys today!

I want to preface this by saying that there is a social media trend of dogging on coaches, dogging on students, and generally just being negative and gatekeeping a bunch of stuff in combat sports.  It’s a bummer, but it gets people feeling self righteous so it gains traction unfortunately.

With that said, some of these things are true, or close to true anyway.

Additionally, I want to explicitly state that this isn’t written about anyone or any general behavior in particular.  It is just simply a lesson learned from my life as a student, athlete, coach, and leader.

Too often we think that because we are students that we can just subcontract out everything to the coaching staff, the gym, or our teammates.  That being a student is a passive role, that we are here to be led, that the path should be laid out for us and we should be tenderly and affectionately guided forward at exactly the pace we are comfortable with.

Not feeling motivated?  That’s someone else’s fault.  Not skilled enough?  The curriculum is to blame.  Fitness not where it should be?  We’re not being worked hard enough.

By the way, these can absolutely all be true, even at the best gyms in the world.  Nothing, and nobody, is perfect.  There is much on the other side of the aisle that is “between the coach and the coach” as well!

However, the truth is that most of this stuff is between you and you.  Sure, the environment needs to be up to par.  But also you can’t coach motivation, you can’t coach effort, and you can’t coach study.  These are efforts that we, and we alone, are capable of making.

As a young student I wasted too much time and effort waiting for others to fill in these gaps for me, to push me in the right direction, and to pull me along when I stumbled.  To show me where the next step was instead of keeping my feet moving in exploration.

And when I began exploring and taking lead, I freed myself to grow.

Students can explore.  Students can inspire.  Students can teach.  Students can lead.  We don’t need permission, nor motivation, to do so.

Everyone around you is your support network, we are here to help you when you stumble, but make sure to take ownership of your own journey.  After all, it’s yours and yours alone.  It’s between you and you.