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dent adults who knew the difference between right and wrong.
If I can be as good a parent to my kids as they were to me, then
I know I ll be very successful. My parents had their work cut out
for them, as they had been told my entire childhood that their
son was slow, had attention deficient disorder, and many
other things. As a parent, what are you to do? They did the best
they could do. They hired help, worked with me when ever they
could, and hoped for the best. The truth finally came to a head
in the parking lot of my old high school weight room. I was
home from college for the spring. I would have rather stayed
at Bowling Green, but as you remember I didn t really have a
choice. I was trying to find a job at the time and had given up
on the whole college thing. My parents were pressuring me to
go back, but I had had enough of it. I was not a smart kid and
college was not for me. I figured I could just stay in town and
find a nice factory job that paid well. As with most other times
in my life, I was training for an upcoming powerlifting competi-
tion and thought I would go back to the old high school weight
room for a training session. It had been a year and a half since
I had been there, and I needed a change of pace from the gym
I was training at. My brother was a junior at the time and was
conditioning for the following football season. He had a train-
ing session with the team, making it easy for me to gain access
to the weight room. After my training session I made my way
back to my car to get a bottle of Gatorade I had bought on the
way to the school. As I leaned against the car I saw one of my old
coaches walk out the gym doors and head my way.
Coach Shoop
Bill Shoop was one of my football coaches in junior high school.
I always liked coach Scoop because he was also a weightlifter and
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would always run around yelling out intense things like, Rip
or be ripped! He was a very intense coach and very passionate
when it came to helping us be our best. I loved his coaching
style and how he could get the team fired up. Unlike other
coaches, he didn t try and take the limelight and gave every kid
all he had. If you were a starter you got his best; if you were a
bench warmer, you got his best. His best was all he had to give,
and he gave it to everyone. He would always tell me about how
he just bench pressed some huge weight for multiple reps earlier
in the day. I shared the same passion for training and always
made it a goal to be stronger than him some day. This kept me
training hard in the weight room, and during my senior year I
did become stronger than him.
Coach Shoop didn t see you for what you were but for what you
could be. I didn t really understand what this would mean for
me personally until years later, drinking that Gatorade outside
my high school weight room. I was leaning back against my
car sucking down a bottle when Coach walked toward me. He
asked how I was doing, and I went into a long dialogue about
how I was training for an upcoming meet and how my squat
had really taken off over the past year. I told him about all the
training research I had been looking into and what things I had
applied with success and what things did not work out so well. I
let him in on a few bench pressing tips I had picked up over the
past year and how, if he used a few of them, he might be able to
get his bench press to go up 30 or 40 pounds.
Do You Want to Know What I Think?
We spoke training for the next five or 10 minutes, and then he
asked me how school was going. I guess he didn t know what
had happened, and I had enough respect for him to tell him
the truth. I told him how I went to Tiffin for a year and then
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transferred to BGSU and flunked all but one of my classes and
was asked to sit out a semester. He went on to ask me if I was
going back in the summer or fall. I told him that I didn t plan
on going back and that college was not made for people like
me. About this time he leaned back against his truck that was
parked next to mine and asked me one question I will never
forget.
Dave, do you want to know what I think?
What was I supposed to say? Here was a guy I had respected
since the day I met him. I respected him enough to just spend
10 minutes telling him all my training secrets. He looked me in
the face and said:
Dave, you are not stupid, you have never been stupid you re
just lazy and do not care.
I didn t know what to think. I m lazy! What is he talking about?
I bust my ass in the weight room every day. I m not some bum
who stays home watching TV and eating chips all day. I do not
care! I care more about my training than anything else. I eat
clean, don t smoke, don t drink, and will not do anything that
could hurt my training results in any way. I think he could tell
my frustration as he went on.
Look, I understand you ve been tracked and labeled your en-
tire life as being a slow learner. The school systems have a way
of placing people in different career tracks and only go on what
they feel is best for the kid. There are a few ways to be tracked,
including business, shop, college prep, and just graduate. Have
you ever considered they may have been wrong?
Look, I see what you re saying, I replied, but I ve never been
good at school since day one. I then went on to share some of
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the stories listed earlier in my I remember list. The difference
was that he couldn t care less about what I was saying and actu-
ally told me:
Dave, excuses are like assholes and they all stink.
You Do Not Care Enough to Try
This statement drove the point home. He went on to tell me
how I had just spent 10 minutes telling him very detailed train-
ing information I had collected from books and journals. I had
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