Dealing with Disappoints: For Athletes and Bodybuilders
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Unless you lead a charmed life, you can be certain that somewhere along the line things are not going to go the way you planned. It might be in your personal life, your training, your competition, your career-or all four. Let's take a look at a couple of examples that illustrate two
basic strategies for managing events that go sour.
Life in the old Soviet Union wasn't adorned with MW malls and Mercedes-in fact, compared to what we have in the West, life would have seemed harsh. In the United States a kid might grow up dreaming about going to Stanford law school or starting the next software giant or being a
movie star or any of the other endless possibilities. Dreams in the Soviet Union weren't so varied, but one of the most prevalent, one that was open to just a privileged few, was that of becoming an Olympic gold medalist. Airy Orazdurdiev was a product of the fabled Soviet sports
system. His talent was identified early in his life, and at an age when an American kid might have been glued to a computer game or lazing in front of a video, Ally was already engaged in the serious business of turning the dream into reality.
The full force of the great Soviet athletic machine was at the disposal of his coaches, and day by day, year by year, it appeared that he was coming closer and closer to realizing the dream. Things changed one day in a way that nobody could predict, and the mighty Soviet juggernaut
was no more. To ease the transition, the '92 Olympics saw the appearance of the so-called Unified Team, an amalgamation of team members from all the former Soviet republics competing together one last time. The name sounded good, but at least in the sport of weightlifting, it was
anything but accurate.
Rancor and dissension were everywhere, primarily because the athletes felt they were the victims or beneficiaries of the personal and political prejudices of the head coach, Vasily Alexeev. Remember, what we're talking about here was a battle-hardened group of athletes who, by their
late teens, had more training and more international experience than many of the world's other top athletes will see in their entire careers. Those guys were used to intense competition because in the old Soviet Union there was so much talent, so much depth in weightlifting, for
example, the lifters used to tell us that winning the World Championships was easy-the tough part was getting selected for the team!
The 92 Olympic team selection process spared the athletes none of that but with the additional twist of an imperial puppeteer who turned the worlds of more than one weightlifter upside down.
Coming into the '92 Olympic Games, Orazdurdiev was considered a red-hot property in the international weightlifting world: His results at the '90 World Championships were extremely impressive and, coupled with the lifts he was making shortly before the Games, most experts considered
him nearly a shoe-in for a gold medal. For Orazdurdiev, however, what was to be the dream of his life turned into a nightmare, the horror of which was played out before the weightlifting world in Barcelona. As he prepared to weigh in, head coach Alexeev pulled Orazdurdiev out of the
competition on the spot. Instead of Orazdurdiev, a lifter named Ibragim Samadov would be representing the Unified Team.
Orazdurdiev burst into tears, absolutely devastated by the move, which was doubly cruel given its timing the last possible moment for making the change. As it turned out, this was just the beginning of the drama in that weight class. When Samadov ended up in third place, he refused
to accept his medal and was disqualified and summarily banned for life. With the guttiness you would expect from him, Orazdurdiev bounced back at the '93 World Weightlifting Championship she equaled the gold medal total from his class at Barcelona, even though he lifted in the class
below!
Change continents now, and let's make up an imaginary guy living in Chicago. The guy's big, really big, and he lifts weights, but he's really attracted to the strongman competitions. What he'd like to do is win the World's Strongest Man competition. The 6' 340-pound guy can lift all
sorts of things the average guy couldn't dream of budging, and his sheer size makes most people believe just about anything he says about his strength. One thing leads to another, and the big guy gets invited to an international strongman contest.
The idea how everyone stacks up. It's easy to talk about how strong you are, how hard you train and how you plan to win this contest or that, but the beauty of competition is that it ex pose the pretenders-it's the time for walking, not just talk. When you're the size of fictional
character, it's easy to fall into the trap of overrating your strength because you're almost always the biggest guy in any crowd. That might lull the unwary into a false sense of accomplishment when it comes to their physical power.
When our imaginary Big Guy arrives at the contest, though, he finds out that size wise, he's just one of the gang. This shakes his confidence momentarily, but taking a deep breath, he continues.
The first event involves lifting a crude barbell overhead, and when the Big Guy can't do the starting weight, the seasoned eyes in the crowd and on the field notice the chink in his armor. The second event brings virtually the same result. As the weekend wears on, this fellow doesn't
just finish last in each event, he tends to fail at the earliest possible opportunity To any who watches him, it's apparent that this just isn't his thing-for all his size, he just doesn't have the strength and other qualities required for success in this arena.
Coming back from Europe, the Big Guy realizes that, hey, he really isn't much better at this strongman stuff than a lot of tougher-than-average 200- pound guys-which is to say, he realizes that he's out of his league. He isn't about to wash his dreams down the drain, however, so he
thinks about things. He knows that he really is a lot stronger than most people. He comes to understand that what he really likes is performing, not competing, and that kids, in particular, seem to like him. He knows from past experience that it's relatively easy for him to get
publicity, and most people will believe absolutely anything he says about his strength levels. One year later the Big Guy is a big success doing community strength demonstrations.
He even hits the smaller TV talk shows-they love him as he bends bars, pulls cars and tells kids to listen to their parents and stay off drugs. Cutting to the chase, both Alty and the Big Guy illustrate two fundamental ways to deal successfully with disappointment. When things don't
go your way, stay calm and consider whether the disappointment is the result of temporary external circumstances, as in Alty's case. Once the circumstances change, it's time to regroup and charge forward again, hellbent on success. On the other hand, if the disappointment is
the result of permanent internal factors, as in the Big Guy's case, it's time to change your course. Either way, you can turn the most devastating disappointment into a shining success.
What could be nicer?
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