“Get your mind right.” Coach John Paty, Sprayberry High School 1985
“Get your mind right.” Coach Ty Trahan, Paul Lacoste Training, 2014
We were standing on the 50-yard line in Madison Central’s Stadium when he said it. It was zero dark thirty and the humidity was so thick you could spoon the air into your lungs. We had done up/downs yesterday with him — and this morning, we were sore. Today our challenge was to do two burpees (that evil exercise you never really improve at) on the fake turf field, move five yards and repeat until we got to to goal line. And then we’d go back to the fifty. It was 100 yards of burpee fun.
Coach Trahan (a man I probably wouldn’t recognize in the daylight but I know he’s the PE coach at my son’s school and defensive coordinator at Madison Central) works us hard every day. He walked up to our line and said, “Get your mind right.”
For a moment, I was 30 years younger and on the dirt and grass of Sprayberry High School’s practice field. And it was Coach John Paty saying the words.
“Get your mind right.”
Four words, yet so freaking hard to master.
Burpees, for lack of a better term, suck. And when you are as flat exhausted as I have been this week, it’s easy to get a bad attitude. Fatigue does that. It robs you of your will. It steals your purpose. It makes you lesser at anything you are doing. It makes you a quitter. And I can tell you, when I walked up to that line and found out what we’d be doing, I had dark thoughts rolling through my mind. I wanted to just walk away.
“Get your mind right.”
High school football was fun for me but I had a real challenge to deal with my senior year. And there were times I wanted to quit. But I didn’t. It is something that has stuck with me for three decades. And it was the moment that forged my will.
Paul Lacoste likes to say, “Don’t let fatigue make you a coward.”
As I was doing burpees this morning, fatigue was trying to make me a coward. When I was stumbling through Clark’s core workout, I was fighting fatigue’s grip. When I was doing the circuit or running the nipple drill while carrying a 25-lb. weight, I was fighting the urge to stop. Fatigue was like the serpent in the garden of evil. The temptation was there. So many times I wanted to quit.
But I didn’t. I kept pushing.
“Get your mind right.”
I looked toward Coach Trahan (who I am really getting to like and respect) in the darkness and saw Coach Paty’s ghost standing there instead. It may have been sweat in my eyes. I’m don’t know. But I kept busting past my fatigue.
For a brief moment, I had gotten my mind right. And my old ball coach nodded with approval.