Avoid the Enablers

[01dragonslayer]

The world is full of enablers that make you feel good about yourself while ultimately turning you into a sucky human being. Avoid these people like the plague.​

It could be your training crew, your best friend or even your mom. But if you want to reach your goals, you gotta put enablers in their place.

Enablers are people that allow you to continue your losing ways. They baby you and bail you out.

Fitness enablers allow you to continue making the same mistakes and never have the guts to tell you where you really stand, never having the balls to let you know that you’re screwing up or that you just might need to sweat if you want to lose a few pounds.

In the fitness world, enablers are most apparent in the mainstream. These are companies that promise a physique change with a five-minute workout gadget. Most of us recognize this. We all roll our eyes at the infomercials. We know it’s not about a plastic ab machine, and there’s a sense of pride in this because we aren’t getting duped.

Unfortunately, the enabler exists in the hardcore training world too. In exists within training groups: guys too scared to tell the “top dog” that he isn’t parallel when he squats.

This happens all the time in powerlifting. A strong lifter “runs” a lifting group with young pups that follow his program and make sure his bench shirts are pulled down just right. This is the guy that rarely hits depth at a meet because his training partners are too busy being cheerleaders and “yes men” instead of real training partners.

The enabler exists in athletics. The coach, agent, friends and hanger-ons tell the athlete he is “going to the league.” They keep his head full of dreams, in the clouds, and not in the books and the work at hand. Bad grades? No worries, you’re getting drafted, son.

Enablers exist as parents who never let the kids get hurt or fail. Welcome to the Participation Generation, now all grown-up and crying about how hard the world is. Sad. Go get a rake and a shovel and learn to do some yard work.

If you find yourself failing in any of the above, remember that great lessons can be learned from:

• Squats
• Prowler pushes
• Yard work
• Volunteering at children’s hospital

A couple of steady years of this would cure most of yeast growing amongst the swinging richards.