Obviously just a moment of insanity…
Need To Improve!
Feeling much more positive about my next trainin session!
Need to Improve
It is bloody hard to get the balance right in life, my athletic performance become 3rd fiddle when I was studying part time and working full time. Luckily the majority of my mates where involved in the sport, but still had to find time to go on dates with my girlfriend.
I don’t regret what I achieved in my sport, but I do regret not having the opportunity see what could of happened if the sport was number 1 priority. The sport was never going to pay the bills.
I recently had 4 parents complain about a talk I had with athletes about time management and priorites in life.
My dilemma exactly!
Most of the time my sport is my number one - I just occasionally panic that I’m getting the balance wrong - but as you say it’s all about priorities.
When I’m in a relaxed state of mind it’s the sport all the way:cool:
DMA,
What do you think you could have done? Would it have been worth it?
And what did you say to get the parents complaining?
What could I of done. Do you performance. If it is I was never an elite athlete and I threw hammers, I was ranked in top 8 as a junior and no sponsorships were available at that ranking unless you were a distance runner…
Could it been worth it. That is a hard call because I don’t know what it would been like. When I to make a decision I look at the opportunity cost.
Opportunity Costs - what is lost when a decision and direction is made.
I would of got everything out of myself for the sport I love and would of been happy with that, but it would probably mean I wouldn’t have a career in the professional I am in now.
I like most people have moments of ‘I wish or what could of been’ but I don’t regret the decisions I have made.
The phenemon of people wanting things now. In particular teenagers who want to get top marks in school, be elite athletes, want mobile phones, cars, girl/boyfriends, money and go to parties. It is possible to do all that.
One of the parents was upset, only because there child was. The child works part time, studies, goes to parties and is tired at training yet wants to become a medical specialist and be an elite athlete. The parents of this child are on good money, so child gets what she wants, so she doesn’t have to work.
Another of the athletes priorities are
- Party and getting drunk
- Working
- School
- Sport
Yet they want to be good at sport.
Now, I am not a parent but there are 24 hours in a day, you need 7-9 hours (min) sleep a day. If you want to do sport but consider school/work more important fine, but you can’t do it all.
Rant finished, I wrote a short article for my sporting association on it if anyone is interested.
Good rant. I’m a teacher/coach/counselor/mentor, and I’d like a copy of your article.
I have pasted it below. Firstly I am not a writer, my grammar is crap. So excuse it.
Hopefully it is useful. Starts now
POST SEASON THOUGHTS
DARREN ALOMES
The track and field season has finished, cross country season is going in earnest. Athletes and officials are
generally having well earned breaks from training and competing. Coaches although not necessarily visually
coaching athletes, are into post-season reviews and pre-seasoning planning for athletes.
What do coaches do for post-season reviews and pre-season planning?
Post Season Review.
The role of this review is as the heading suggests, reviewing the season after it has finished.
Why do we do this?
Review what went right, what went wrong. This comes about because we are humans and we humans have
been known to stuff up.
This information is used in pre-season planning.
Pre Season Planning
After the review, the coach and athlete work out a plan. There where three articles on planning done in
previous issues of the newsletter, namely issues 2, 3 and 4, so this article will refrain from re-hashing
information. Instead this article will look at two issues that cause angst among coaches, athletes and parents.
These are;
Priorities
Time Management
Priorities
As an athlete I remember attending a meeting with John Quinn, former TIS high performance, who mentioned
your priorities as an athlete should be as follows;
Athletics
Athletics
Education or Employment
Social Aspects
What are your priorities?
Listening to more experienced people, read older, they talk about how the youth of today have it easy. In
contrast the youth of today, believe they have it tougher then previous generations. The older generation think
that is BS, in hindsight I believe they are both partially correct, the younger generation probably do have it
easier in some parts then the older generation, but I respectfully suggest that the youth of today have it harder
then previous generations in other areas.
Who is to blame for this? No one group is to blame, but I believe a change in culture and society has overall,
lead people to wanting more, and becoming lazier. Read wanting more for less.
Back in the 1960’s getting employment was reasonably easy, you left school and the next day you had a job.
In the next 40 years, you had fewer jobs due to the increase in use of technology and employers wanting more
skilled workers at a younger age. I can remember a job ad asking for junior staff to work full time in an
occupation with 2 years work experience in that occupation.
Issue 10 Page 13
The two areas, that I see as being harder for the younger generations is firstly the requirement to have a solid
educational background with experience in work earlier than older generations. Other areas that are perceived
to be harder are probably cop outs and excuses.
The reason I feel that education and employment are the two areas that has become a higher priority because of
the premium on occupations and the requirement of getting the best education you can. Remember athletics
doesn’t pay the bills, so what a 20 year could do 10 years ago is not what a 20 year old can necessarily do now.
Time Management
This is by far the biggest issue concerning people in the sport, whether that is parents, athletes, partners or
coaches. With any development of time management, you have to be realistic and remember there is only 24
hours in a day and 7 days in a week. Nothing more, nothing less.
During my final year at University I used a time management sheet religiously. This had to cater for study,
full time work and training commitments as well as sleep and relaxation.
Roughly my daily schedule looked liked this.
5:30-6:00 - Abdominal, yoga or pilates
6:30-7:30 - Training at Gym
8:00- 6:00 - Work and Uni Commitments
6:30 - 8:00 - Training
8:00 - 9:00 - Study
10:00 - Bed
My priorities at this time were
Study
Work
Sport
Social
Ask yourself this. Do I have what it takes to be single minded about something and push everything else to
one side?
If YES, you will achieve.
If NO, you may achieve but if you give part effort you get part results.
To finish below is a common statement parents make to their teenage children when they complain about how
tough they have it. I quote
Enjoy school, as it is the best time of your life. The only responsibility you have is to go to school.
Wait till you get a full time job, a house and a family then come back and tell me how hard you had as a child.
Mum & Dad
^^^ Yep, you are right, employment was alot easier decades ago. Now it’s very difficult to find a good job fresh out of HS or Collage. Many jobs have now been relocated to India, China or Mexico.
All these “service” jobs (Kinkos, Starbucks) that have sprang up are the worse as you can never get ahead as the pay is very low and the amount of hours you haft to work is very high.
So my advice is to do what I do and employ yourself. I work on peoples homes and people need all kinds of stuff done such as cleaning, plumbing, carpentry work ect, ect… …
This is key - however, sadly, its not taught at any school i went to. Your only ever taught how to be a good employee! Even before i even had my 1st job, i could do a Employee Tax Return.
The mental skill set to be your own boss should be taught at school level - the catch is - if teachers could actually teach such info, then they would have to actually contract in special teachers to do so, as the Full-timed teachers teaching you have NO IDEA (bit a catch really).
Im 33yrs old, and just spent over 1yr fully self employed. Massive learning curve and still learning. In the next 2wks alone, systems i put in place 5wks ago should see me earning full time $$ with part time HRs.
What that means, is now i will have time and money to do the things i love. Imagine learning this fresh out of school and taking say 3yrs to learn instead of 1. That would be a 20yr old working 3-4yr a day and training 3-4hrs per day and still having time for a life outside.
Your post is so true especially the part about earning full time pay with less hours of work to log in. As far as why U.S citizens don’t learn self employed skills in the U.S, I have pretty much narrowed it down to two things:
-
The general public does not demand knowledge of self employed skills out of the university systems because they believe that whatever the university dishes out is best for them and that the university will always work in THERE best interest. lol, that’s why people always “go back to school” when they are financially boxed in instead of immediately taking whatever skills they have to real world and locating a buyer.
-
It’s not in the Governments/University’s interest to teach the general population self employed skills because then they could not get away with charging premium prices for common knowledge and they could no longer get away with teaching the general population to be subordinate which the the whole undertone of modern education.
I also failed to submit that people have also loss there jobs to robots. lol, those robots are taking over the welding jobs that use to be done by hand for example.
At the local uni they now have a degree in entrepeur. Personally whether you are an employee or self-employed is up to you. I am conservative in this regard I like my nice cushy desk job, I get paid well for it and I don’t have to worry about self employed things. Yet I have a friend who has only ever work for themselves and loves its…
I guess the question has to be what are you willing to give up to be the best at something. Hence Opportunity Cost
A ex-client of mine wanted to be rich, but he has remained single has no friends and is a tight wad with cash. I don’t think that is living but he is weathly but yet rich.
Yea, and the class is probably taught by a failed business man/women or even by somebody who has never ran a business at all.
Good for you that you have found what you like (and I respect that) but for the most part because of the biased system people are not even given the choice to be self employed.
As far as your ex-client, yea I was the right hand man of a guy like that for 2 years but he HAS friends so I think this guy is an extreme case. But I will admit, because I’m making the climb myself it gets more and more lonely as you climb to the top. It does not bother me however because the caliber of people I meet at my level (and MUCH higher) are better. Not as in a better human but better as more self controlled and disciplined. Yea, I know people who have lots of friends but the quality of the friends they have are nothing to brag about… … …
In regards to the guy I knew he told me that in order to be successful you haft to delay gratification which is something that Americans have trouble doing. So for him it meant renting rooms even when he had enough for his own apartment, driving old cars, and not having kids but today he is a millionaire, owns property and no longer has to work anymore. He is 49 by the way.
Thanks to the person who took rep points off me for my lack of English skills. I confess they are not as good as they should be. As an Australian I always comment to my bosses, that I am glad I am Australian because if I had to sit the basic English test I would fail and wouldn’t be allowed in the country.
But honestly taking off rep points for that and commenting and I quote “it’s HAVE done, moron, not “of done”, dumbass” is very immature and completely missing the point of the thread. That being said this dumb ass is looking at going back to Uni to study Physiotherapy and keeping his Professional job as an Accountant - so grow up.
I wouldn’t sweat the obnoxious behaviour of what I presume is a young, new member of the forum. What you quoted is such a small mistake most people wouldn’t notice, let alone care.
Cheers Rainy.Here
I have no problem with losing rep points and being corrected if I was wrong.
I should thank Rainy for editing the article. So thanks Rainy
haha - Rep points for bad english… golly gosh… them skally wags!
I also recieved “here’s a tip: try English” - not exactly great for me to lose rep points as soon as I joined the forum…
Still, the actual replies to my post certainly helped my perspective =)
Easy there teacher haters;
The other side of that coin is that you could bring in an entrepreneur and he or she might have no idea how to stand in front of a class for three hours and organize a curriculum that made sense. Teaching is a skill too, and I hope anyone who thinks otherwise has stood in front of a class and tried it.
T-Slow I actually like teachers. Although like many occupations we have good ones and bad ones, and unfortunately because they are generally teaching the youth of today the good teachers get lumped with the bad ones.
All my friends who are teachers are having to spend all their time teaching children skills, general commonsense and other things that should be taught by the parents. Some parents send the kids to school to get them out of their hair and it is up the teacher to teach everything.
I wouldn’t want to be a paid role as a teacher, much prefer the teaching role of coaching.