A generation of worry?

So I was on a long ride today and I didn't have my headphones so I did a lot of thinking. One thing that I came up with is can a person be taught to be an anxious person or are they born that way? I don't ever remember as a young kid really ever worrying about anything. But I guess what kid does? All you have to deal with is what cartoon are you going to watch today and hoping you can go to McDonalds for dinner.

The first time I ever remember being anxious was on a family vacation. My two brothers and I had taken a small blow up raft onto Lake Michigan. Not realizing it, we drifted quite far out onto the lake. We could still see land and we were in a large bay type area so I don't think that we were ever really in any danger. I don't know. I even turned down the man that came out on a jet ski to help us at first. My brother and I had hung our legs out the back of the little boat and were kicking like mad to try and get back. Still I was not really worried. Finally we took his help though. Not until we got back to shore and I saw how upset my mom was did I realize how bad it could have been. Her and my Dad were putting away lunch when my brothers and I took off with the boat. By the time they got to the beach we were way out there. I don't know what it was but seeing her so upset changed me. It took me a long time to get over that event, I guess that might have been when I finally realized my own mortality. It might have also triggered what has become a big struggle for me with anxiety. I'm not really sure about that, I think that my family on my Dad's side, is kind of predisposed to this kind of thing. So I could have been dealing with this, with or without this incident.

I think about this a lot because I have a lot of athletes that seem to worry about a lot of things that they have no control over, things that are far from happening, and instead of dealing with what is in front of them, they worry about what might happen. They create scenarios that are so out there that you have no idea how they come up with these things.It makes me think about all these people who tell these kids that every decision they make now will effect their whole lives. Yes there are things that if you fuck up you could fuck up your life. But getting a B+ or an A- on some random paper will not mean you can't go to medical school eight years from now. Almost all of the kids I coach are super smart, very driven, type A personalities. I have some friends, that knowing where they were in high school, and seeing where they are now, I could never have imagined how great they would be doing. People that did nothing but party and barely get into college, turned into top members of their very high paying fields. Some are engineers, business men, entrepreneurs, even doctors, and not all were A or even B students.
In a time were it seems harder and harder to get a job out of school I think that things are only going to get worse. People are coming out of school with advanced degrees and looking for jobs for years. Parents are pushing their kids more, which puts more pressure on the kids, and creates anxious kids.

I guess the place to be right now is to open your own school, I see an awful lot of ads for schools or websites that will find you the "right school". They promise you more just because you have a piece of paper. To me it is a scam, just pay them your $50k and they will say you are now ready to be a graphic artist, or a nurse. When often times I hear employer friends of mine say that they get these guys right out of school that know nothing. They end up teaching these guys, gals everything they need to know anyways. Thinking back to my time in school I really don't know what I was taught? How many people do you know that moved from one job to a totally different job they didn't go to school for? Or how many got jobs not in their field of study? Biologists who are advertisers, or art majors who are stock brokers.

I guess I just want to try to get across to these kids that they are not closing any doors on themselves if they don't ace every test. And get them to enjoy this time of their lives. You grow up so fast and live a comfortable protected life with your parents for such a small amount of time. Once you are out of the house things only get tougher. If you are already stressed so much you never sleep at 13, things don't look good for your future. I guess I should have become a therapist, thats where the money really will be.

Slaying the Badger

So I am reading this book about the duel between Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault and their lives before. I am not very far in but already I really like the book. It has just talked about how both of these greats of the cycling world grew up and started in the pro peleton. For those who don't know Bernard Hinault was one of the greatest cyclists of all time. He is one of only 5 cyclists to have won all the grand tours, he is the only one to have won each one at least twice. He also won the Tour De France 5 times was second twice and won 28 stages. There are only four other cyclists to have won 5 TdF titles, Lance Armstrong being the only one to win more. Hinault was nick named the Badger early on in his career because of his ferocious attitude during racing. There is one paragraph in this book that peaked my attention and I have read it maybe 100 times, even out loud to my wife.
"The club Hinault joined, Club Olympique Briochin was quite an institution - and still is. Set up in 1947, a cycling section was created in 1951 under the guidance of Robert Le Roux, a former national champion - not as a cyclist, however, but as a gymnast. It was Le Roux who was still in charge two decades later, when Hinault began racing and whom Hinault credits as being his first coach and a huge influence. 'He was both a sound theoretician and practical man' said Hinault. 'He gave me my education and I owe him everything."
(Slaying the Badger pg26)
This was HUGE for me. If you have read my blog you know I am a gymnastics coach and was a gymnast at the U of I. I was not a national champion but I was a Big Ten champ and I was ranked on rings in the top 25 so I was okay. My love for cycling and its amazing culture has had a huge draw for me and I hope someday to be able coach cyclists as well as gymnasts. It is amazing how people don't realize that if you are a good coach you can just about coach anything. Sure I can't tell you how to shoot the best free throw, but give me a little time and I bet I could learn and have some kids doing it pretty well. That's how I see it with cycling. I am putting in a lot of time trying to learn as much as I can about being an endurance athlete, what it takes to be a smart cyclists, and how to run a team. I think the running the team part will be the easiest, it is just putting orders together and calling team meetings and stuff like that. The hard part will be if I ever get my coaching license and start coaching kids or other adults. I have asked some of my teammates if they would let me come up with workouts for them but they do not seam too pumped for that. I think coaching adults would be one of the hardest things to do. Coaching kids is easy comparably. Kids will for the most part do what you say. The don't know if you know what you are doing or just trying to act like you do. You have to be a very good coach to work with adults. My coach is great, and he has never coached anyone before. He was a great amateur cyclist who quit racing when he got a job and started a family. Twelve years later, I met him though work and he has been helping me for the last 2 seasons. I have made huge steps forward in my cycling ability and I have learned a lot from him on how to coach cyclists. I have even been able to use the knowledge I have gained from him to be a better gymnastics coach. I think that we help each other out a lot of times too. We bounce stuff off each other as we both started using power meters at that same time, and didn't know anything about them. That is how I try to work with my athletes in the gym. I try to work with them no just ordering them around like machines. Sometime yes I have to tell them what to do, but I want my kids to be able to think, and you would be amazed at how little they do sometimes.
I guess the biggest reason that I am writing this entry was because I was told recently how my knowledge as a gymnastics coach was meaningless in cycling. There were a lot of other un-nice things said about me at that point as well but no need to go into it. This paragraph was just great for me. It showed me that there have been dudes like me who did what I would like to do. I don't think that I will ever be involved with someone like Bernard Hinault but that's not what interests me. I just want to be a coach.

A new team

Mike and I have finally come up with a new team name. I want to get a logo and some kit ideas down before I let the cat out of the bag but it is a good name I think. I have spent a few days working on a name, it is unreal how hard it is to come up with a name. Also it is very annoying how every person you ask for advice gives you joke names. It's uncanny really. I think funny names are great for teams that only exist for short periods of time. Like you are doing an event and want a tongue and cheek name that gives everyone a laugh. But a team that hopefully is going to last for some time, you want people to take you seriously. There are no professional teams that have funny names or cute names. They are all supposed to invoke fear, respect, or the power and or wisdom of whatever the team is named after. We are giving ourselves a name and then having our biggest sponsor, being Mesa Cycles included in the name. Doing this will allow for any changes that may happen in the future to be minimized. For example if Mesa decides we don't do a good enough just promoting their brand and don't want to be a naming sponsor any more we will still have our main name. This is something that the pro teams have been doing for a while, basically having a holding company that takes in all the money and then pays it all out to the riders. We wont be bringing huge sums of money but Mesa will be making things very nice for us and allows us to help out the guys on our team with what is a very expensive sport.

I started riding again on Friday and I can still feel some pretty sore muscles at certain points. I don't remember a time that my muscle soreness lasted this long. I remember in gymnastics getting pretty sore at times but I think that lasted because I would go in and do the same workout again and get re-sored I guess you could say. Most likely I'm still so sore because I made myself hold a position that I was not used to for such a long time and rarely gave myself any relief. I just tried to power through. Mentally I think that ride will pay off in the future but I am paying for it.

Im going to try to make the Knucklehead ride tomorrow morning. This is a very interesting ride. It is about 70 miles long starting in the Moorelands of St Louis and heading out west to the Babbler area. The ride is mostly populated by cyclist who don't generally race anymore. The few times I have done it I have only seen a few regular racers, myself and Chris Connolly being two of them. The rest of these guys and gals are for real though. They will kick your ass and then go faster and laugh at you. This is their race and they take it seriously. I have been dropped on the first climb before on this ride. The last couple times I have done fine and hung at the front, but tomorrow might be another bad day. I don't have any miles and I think I might be a few pounds heavier. I am too scared to weigh myself, but I have been eating whatever I want and drinking too. Not a good idea to keep fit. I just felt like I needed a little time not caring for a while about what I weighed or how much I trained. The strangest thing about riding right now is that I have no structure. I remember last year feeling the same way about going back to just getting base miles. For a while Mike (my coach) just has me riding and enjoying the view. Soon enough I will be back on a schedule and I will be getting ready for an all new season. 5 months will go quick.

Is it time to compete yet?

This is the part of the year that I can't wait to get back into meet season. Some time around March I am going to be hating gymnastics and just want to stay home and sleep in my own bed. But right now I want the world to see all the hard work my coaches', athlete's, and I have put in this summer. In a few weeks region 4 (Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota) will be coming together at our annual training camp. There are two camps each year to help clubs from the north and south have a camp closer to home. This year Al Fong will be opening up his gym and hosting the rest of our region. I am really excited to go this year and see his gym and maybe learn something from him or another coach there. I am always trying to learn and there are going to be some great coaches and athletes there.
Things in the gym seem to be going in the right direction. Athletes are starting to put routines together, we are starting to get injured athletes back on their feet. I feel like we are getting better and better at getting athletes ready to compete. It has taken years to get to this point and I am starting to feel like I am starting to get some real momentum and I am feeling confident. I need to always try to keep my feet on the ground and not think that I am too good. Obviously I am not. I have no national champions and even a lot of the great coaches I see out there that I have don't appear to be "too good". Most of the guys, gals, I look up to in the coaching world are more that willing to help a young coach out. I don't know if I count any more as a young coach since I have been around for over a decade now. But if you know the right questions to ask, most of the time people want to tell you how they got to where they are. The hard part is knowing how to take what they say and use it to improve yourself and your athletes.
I have had plenty of coaches throughout my life ask me how I coach one skill or another. Then after taking sometimes hours to teach these people they go right back to what they did before they asked me.There is that and I feel that a lot of coaches have no imagination. I know I was stuck in a rut last year. I was so happy to just have kids competing routines that they hit 90% of the time I didn't notice that they all had the same freakin routines.Most of the time though I am trying to think of how I can be different. I don't want to be strange different, I want to be wow different. There are plenty of skills in the code that are goofy, like fly aways from the low bar to the high bar. Yeah I have only seen that once but no matter what it looks like shit. The hardest event to be inventive is vault. There just aren't that many high level vaults out there and there are even fewer of the "easy" high level vaults. Last year I would hear vault judges often complaining about the lack of variety on vault and they would give higher scores to vaults not often seen. In my opinion these vault weren't actually any better they just don't see them often enough to pick them apart like they do the normal vaults.
This year I think I have done a better job of mixing it up a bit. All the kids have just about the same level of skills and number. But each one has maybe one skill that is going to make them different than the rest. Also I am doing my best to come up with different sequences or changing up the order of the skills to keep everything fresh. Over the next few years I hope to keep adding to my portfolio of skills for my athletes to compete and being able to get those skills ready in time for season and while the athlete is still young enough.
Well there is still some work to do but everything is fast approaching and I can't wait! 

Dream big or go home

This was a post that I took down because I wrote it when I was really mad about something and also said some really ignorant stuff. I went through it again and now I think it is less stupid.

I don't generally listen to church shows but I stopped for a second and listened to that dude Joel Olsteen. It's like his smile just mesmerizes you and he seams to make more sense to me that someone saying that I have to follow some book that was in my opinion, written by men to control those not as smart as themselves. This guy every time I have heard him just says be a good person, help other people, help yourself, and try in your life. This time when I stopped for a few seconds he was talking about having big dreams. He was saying that sometimes having only small goals makes it so that you will never achieve all that you could. I know that small goals are good for moral, you need them to keep you going until you attain your large goal. I have big goals, and I have a general idea of how I am going to get to most of them. One of my big goals is to one day compete in a masters world championships, and by compete I mean be competitive. I don't want to just show up and ride my bike. These are things that I try to teach my athletes and that I have to constantly remind myself about. I really don't know why but there are always those that want to keep you from your goals. There is no reason for this, maybe they are jealous or just don't like to see other succeed. I even find myself sometimes telling people why it is going to be really hard to achieve some goal they want. Why tell them that, why not tell them how to attain that goal, or do something that would help them on their way? Especially if this person attaining their goal has no negative outcome on me.
There is a young guy that is working for me who is turning out to be a great coach in a very short time. This coach wants to one day coach elite gymnastics. At one time this was what I wanted as well but I have changed my goal in this area to sending athletes to college. I have my reasons for this but that does not mean that I should discourage this coach from trying to do what he wants to do. So I think I will be as of much help as I can. I have never been an elite coach so I can't tell him exactly what to do, but one day this coach is going to have to leave my gym to go to an elite gym. And when that day comes I will help him find a great gym that he can go to learn more. I wont be mad but happy for him. He will be one more step closer to realizing his dream. I will most likely miss him and his skill as a coach, but who am I to tell someone they can't have what they have worked so hard to have.
I think that maybe I am not the norm though. I often find those who would rather tell me why I can't do something rather than why I can or should. I know it will be hard, and that the odds are against me.  But if I work hard, plan, train, study, do everything that I can to attain that goal, I don't need you or anyone else telling me what I can or can't do. In fact, you telling me I can't, that I am a nobody, that I have no right, that pushes me even more. I love to prove people wrong, I have been doing it my whole life, and I will do it again. I have great things that I am going to do. I have a long way to go to reach my goals for life, but I will rise above and I will continue to work. No one is going to stop me, and I will do everything that I can to help all those that ask to get what they want too. I hope that is a step in the right direction.

A long Season Finished

Man what a year! Good, bad, winning, losing. Everything goes into the knowledge bank. Already I am planning for next year. This week though is off the bike. Did one of the hardest ride I had ever done on the 11th of this month. I was part of Illini Pride, a relay team competing at the Cedar Point Iron Man. I road the bike section and was able to help my team to a second place showing. I had never trained for such a race and was really worried about being able to compete at that distance. In the end everything worked out well and I had a lot of fun. I hope to be able to do it again next year.
This year I raced; if I wasn't at work I was heading to a race with my team. Katie was a huge help with my ability to race so much. She was often my support crew and even though she complains sometimes, I think she likes it. We are part of a community of people and we have a circle of friends. Without racing we wouldn't have any of it.
I hope that next year I am able to come close to the number of races that I did this year. I also hope to have more success in the coming year. Most of this last year was spent as a helper to most of my teammates. If everyone works as hard in the off season though I may still be a domestique. Not really a bad thing though if you think about it, it is great to be part of such a great group of guys.
2012 will bring in more change for my cycling. I hope that it will be a change for the better. Really I think it will be and will be the start of something really good. There is a lot of work left to get everything ready and to make it an enjoyable experience for the rest of the guys on the team. When things get more solid I will share but now I want to make sure things are ready to go.
Gymnastics is heating up now that racing is cooling down. Things are looking good, all the coaches are working hard and I think things are coming together better than ever. Still there is room to improve and if I ever think there isn't I should quit. The biggest hurdle I think we are working with right now is trying to get all our gymnasts healthy. It always seems like we have a lot of injuries but I think that is just because we have so many girls compared to what I have known all my life. My level 9/10 team is bigger than the women's team at the U of I when I was there.