Try Not To Try

Jason Price, MS, CSCS, ATC, LAT, CPT, USAW Club Coach

Very rarely dose a company get an advertising slogan right but I truly believe that Nike has got the appropriate slogan for all Athletes.  “Just Do IT”!! So simple when you say it, but how many of us actually “Just Do It”?  I recently finished the book “The Inner Athlete” By Dan Millman and in it he has a great though process on the word “Try”.  As a strength coach I find myself asking my Athletes, Clients, and Trainees often to “try” something here or there and my Athlete, Client, and Trainee will often say to me “I’ll give it a try”.  But when you break it done the word “try” already creates a negative mind set.  To have to “try” to do something shows a sign of weakness or that something will take over our natural ability.  When training that is exactly what you are trying to do is strengthen weakness or to improve our natural ability.  So why do you need to trick yourself into thinking that you have to “try”?

Millman discusses how when the mind resists something we feel stress.  That a vast majority of people tend to push or resist stress full situations or thoughts rather than accepting them and moving forward.  Now what on earth does this have to do with lifting and training?  Simple, when faced with the challenge of staring down a max effort lift or having to test out in a skill at a combine most of us will come out with the comment “I am going to try my best” or “ I am going to try and give my best effort”.  If this sounds like something that you would utter to yourself mentally or even say it out loud then you are already half beaten.  Once you are then going to put forth the effort of trying your body will begin to stress about the situation and your tendency to make a technical error or mental error goes up tremendously. 

Now let’s just not dismiss this as the new wave of positive thinking and changing our mindset that is sweeping around right now.  I am not trying to say that to you.  But, what I am saying is think about what you think about when you try.  I was a basketball player in college and when we would apply the full court press on our opponent it was not because we knew we had a defense they could not break.  All defenses in basketball can be broken by a disciplined and team orientated offense.   We applied the pressure full court press to force our opponent into making quick decisions and to, here it is again, “try” to beak our pressure.  Once we got them to do this then we had them, they would breakdown mentally and make errors and turnovers.  Think about your sport and how you apply pressure tactics to create more stressful situations or a challenge to your opponent.  Think about what happens to your opponent when they begin to “try”.

Now that you have that understanding think about how much more powerful you will be as an athlete when you stop “trying” and start “doing it”.  When you have no self doubt and are able to accept stress and resistance that life and opponents provide you will have an advantage that not many individuals will have.  Eliminating “try” from your vocabulary athletically your performance will become free of psychological resistance.

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