Snickers told me to lay off one of our Hulk members and told
me “They really don’t care what you eat.
They don’t care if you care about what they eat”. I think he’s wrong. I think he’s so wrong.
The situation that led up to this statement revolved around
me giving Snickers a hard time about his eating habits. He’s notorious for having one or two massive
meals or snacking away during the day on things he really shouldn’t be. Those that know Snickers know too well that
he’s quite the ring leader in his crew of friends. His friends are very much monkey-see-monkey-do
with him being the one they copy. So
when he eats and what he eats are very much copied by friends around him. It’d be one thing if these
monkey-see-monkey-do friends eating with him weren’t members but now many of
them are and there’s one friend in particular who I’ve been trying hard to
encourage and help train – King Kong. I
remember King Kong’s very first day at training. I wasn’t actually working that day nor was
the club even opened yet. But when he
called us at 11pm and begged us to help him, twenty minutes later I found
myself at the boxing club lacing up my boots and helping him with some handwraps. His first training session lasted only about
25 minutes because he then ran outside and puked all over the bottom of our
club steps.
King Kong is an adorably innocent 28 year old Korean friend
of mine but he’s reached a point in his life where he realizes his bad eating,
over drinking and lack of physical activity is really starting to catch up with
him. When Snickers goes to play sports
with his buddies, King Kong is forced to either watch or die huffing and
puffing with his efforts. I promised him
I’d help him if he committed to being fit.
“I will commit if you commit”, I told him and with that he’s been
faithfully training hard. I push him, he
pukes but he continually comes back for more.
I tell him not to come every day but he’s only missed maybe 2 or 3 days,
at most, in the past three weeks. He
comes late in the evening, after work, and though we technically close at
midnight, him training late means we’re usually here till about
12:30am-1am. I really don’t mind it
though, honestly. If he’s committed then
so am I. He’s really been quite
successful with his training but his problem lies with his eating. And because he trains right after work and is
then hungry, he always wants to treat us to a meal out after. Thankfully for his sake I’m usually the one
picking the meal out and not him or Snickers but tonight they decided to have a
late night rooftop party at Hulk’s.
Saturdays are our days off but ironically enough they’ve
become our busiest work days. Today our embarrassingly
big TV came and was installed, I plastered about 400 flyers on the doors of a
local apartment, had a meeting with the bathroom wall crew, had to go to the
printers, and some friends wanted to see our club. Our Saturdays may be our day off but it’s our
day off of physical training but it’s still very much a work day – it’s our
social-networking work day.
I had gone to a comedy show in the evening but returned to
Hulk’s for a late night BBQ party invited various members and friends. King Kong was one of our members/friends that
we invited. When I arrived, they had already
started. The table was littered with
bottles of soju, plates of fatty pork, with packages of raymin (fried noodle)
on the side. I wasn’t impressed and I
was shocked that Snickers had allowed them to bring such a disgust of bad food,
and lack thereof “food, to our party which lead us to an argument between
Snickers and I and then me lecturing King Kong.
“They don’t care what you eat. They don’t care if you care about what they
eat” Snickers said and I think he’s wrong.
Whether they care about what we eat is not the point. The point is that you can’t promote health
and fitness but live in an opposite manner and, due to his friends and their monkey-see-monkey-do
manner, Snickers should be more mindful and should care more about what he
eats. What he eats they eat, it’s as
simple and as straight forward as that.
Snickers argued with me, telling me that despite King Kong’s
bad habit of late night, bad food eating habits, that he’s been successful in
losing some body fat and gaining muscle mass because of hard training. Sure, this is true but think about much more
successful he’d be if he paid attention to his eating. He’s taking one step back for every two steps
forward though I argue it’s more like a step and a half back!
I really want King Kong to succeed but it’s so completely
frustrating to want it bad for him like I do, see him struggle through training
and then watch him totally disregard what he’s putting in his mouth. You can’t out train a bad diet and if
training is only worth 10%, genetics are another 10% and eating is 80% then he’s
wasting his time by solely focusing on training.
I was so frustrated with the situation and so disappointed
in both King Kong and Snickers, so I told King Kong to stick to following
Snickers. “Don’t ask me to commit to you
if you’re only 10% committed” (the 10% referring to training). And on that note, one of my Korean friends
slapped down $100 on the counter and said “I’ll commit all of me!” -- Monday I start training him.
So yes, maybe they don’t care what we eat and they don’t
care if we care about what they eat but in a way they do. I see it when friends/members try to justify something they ate or when I pull out something to eat and they curiously look. As coaches, we should care because we're to set an example take that position very seriously. It’d be a heck of a lot easier to send them on their way after training and it’d defeat the sole purpose
of the juice bar if I didn’t care and I honestly wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if I didn’t.
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