The Win Win

16Sep/110

I was capping off a nice training session last night on the mats at my jiu jitsu gym, and towards the end of my sparring session with my training partner I asked him a question. He had pulled a pretty interesting move on me and I wanted to know what he did, to which he responded "don't worry about it. It's a secret move."

Now, I don't expect people who don't train to know how I feel, and I don't even expect people who do train to necessarily have the same mentality towards training, but to me, at the gym we are all there to improve ourselves and also to improve each other. Helping to make our peers stronger can only help us, because we then in turn have stronger partners to train with.

So when that guy refused to tell me what he did, it got me really angry. Or rather, it was anger mixed in with some disappointment. Here I was, asking for his help, and all he could do was grin like a villain and say "sorry pal, it's a secret!" I am far from the best guy at my gym, but when I notice something that somebody is doing wrong or just feel like I can pass off a valuable tip, I do. If I am consistently catching my training partners with a certain thing, I tell them why I'm catching them with it and what they can do to stop it. I'm not there to beat up on my training partners. I mean, I know the goal is to improve and to ultimately "win" via positional dominance or submission, but in the gym, we're supposed to be training to help each other win, not just ourselves.

I'm contemplating never pairing up with that guy ever again, because why should I be a good training partner for this guy when he's clearly not trying to be a good training partner for me?

But then that's being petty I suppose.

This concept of mutual support extends beyond the mats.

Recently I have been thinking about how I can accomplish my goals more effectively. Unfortunately for me, I am not always intrinsically driven to accomplish certain goals. These might be goals that I want to accomplish, but I just lack the internal willpower or whatever you want to call it to accomplish them.

Then I started thinking of AA (alcoholics anonymous) groups. I have a pretty limited understanding of how AA groups work, considering my entire existing body of knowledge about them is derived from television shows and movies. But here you have a group of people coming together, with a specific goal that they want to accomplish. They're there because they obviously can't do it on their own (excluding those who are there on court-mandated terms). Within that group structure is a pairing system, where you have someone act as a "sponsor" who helps you stay on track and not waver from your goal.

Some strong, intrinsically-driven people out there might poo-poo on the idea of having this extrinsic support group to help accomplish something. I think it's honorable that people can recognize a problem, acknowledge that they might not be able to accomplish it on their own, and look to others for guidance and support in order.

So I was thinking about this whole AA group concept, and I thought it would be cool if this could be implemented in other areas of life. We may not all be struggling addicts, but we're all struggling with something in our lives at one point or another. What if we had some help in those areas we were struggling in?

I proposed this idea to a group of friends. The idea is that I have a goal I want to accomplish and you have a goal we want to accomplish. We then come to an agreement to be responsible for the success of each other's goals. It probably sounds a little hokey, which is why I don't think many of my friends were enthusiastic.

I did have two takers though, and coincidentally both their names are Ray. I came to agreement with one of the Ray's: my goal is to play at least 2 hours of guitar a week, and his goal is to work out at least 5x a week leading up to our race (Tough Mudder).

I think he agreed to it to indulge me, as he is not a person that needs extrinsic motivation to accomplish something. Whatever the case, I'm interested to see how this experiment works out.