The above quote was from Eoin a Wild Geese Boot Camp participant and Kickboxer. I don’t know what inspired the comment, but I like it and it got an important laugh on the first session of the Boot Camp when nerves were high and anticipation hung heavy.
We are now half way the first week of the Bootcamp and camaraderie is already building, the lads an lasses are working hard and shouting for each other to motivate them on. It’s great to see. We often work harder when there is a like minded peer group around us, people who have similar goals, similar ideas, people who want to see you work hard because in doing so, they work hard. It’s like a self perpetuating circle, I encourage you to work hard and seeing you work hard encourages me.
Often I tell people to give their training partners encouragement “For purely selfish reasons, if I can motivate you, just maybe when it’s my turn and I’m struggling, you’ll do the same for me!”
This team mentality is the only resemblance the Wild Geese Boot Camp has to a military style bootcamp. Hell, my guys are unshod unless their outside running, not a boot in sight! But as in a real bootcamp a camaraderie is built, nurtured and encouraged. This group mentality helps each individual member push that little more, go a little further, dig a little deeper. Eventually when the individual is out on their own, be facing another man in the ring or a brutal ascent in the mountains, that person will already have driven themselves to the edge of their abilities. They’ve gone to places in their minds where all doubt is eliminated, where only 100% pure focus on the task at hand exists, where your too fatigued to consider failure. Because to do so is to let yourself and the team down.
Of course it’s not just the boot camp where this happens. Every Tuesday at the Combat Conditioning session we raise the roof. Just last night the guys and girls were hitting max deadlifts left right and centre, the noise of them shouting each other on was phenomenal. Even the newest guy was hollering his lungs out as the others strained on the bar. When the time came to put strip the weights, one of the guys turned to me and said, with a hungry look in his eye “What’s next?”
Then came the circuit: 3 stations, Pull Ups, Push ups and Burpees. The workout was simplicity in it’s most brutal form. in a team of three, one person on each station. You stay at that station, doing as much as possible, the only person counting is the guy doing burpees, when he hits 20, all change.
It’s rough, but it’s a hell of a buzz. The lads were really shouting for the guy doing burpees, the faster he went, the less pain they suffered at the other stations!
There was a time a while ago where I was considering giving up this life and rejoining the work force, getting a “proper” job. No chance, to do so would be letting the team down, these guys and girls are working too hard, they’ve come too far, there’s no way I could quit on them.
And who would want to sit in an office when you could be running a gym filled with some of the most highly motivated and positive clients imaginable?
Whatever you’re going to do today, give it 100%. Start strong, but most importantly, finish strong.
Regards
Dave
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