Teach-Ability

Appeared July 17, 2006

May God richly bless you all and may you all be moving toward the life that you want.

Today a quick note on teach-ability. The people who are the greatest at what they do are always willing to learn. They never come to a place where they don’t have the ability to learn from someone else. No matter where they are in life or what they’re doing. Great teachers also realize that the act of teaching is one of the greatest ways to learn. If you want to really understand the thing that you’re doing put yourself in the position of having to teach someone else to do it. It forces you to critically think about the steps necessary to truly learn and master a skill and be able to communicate them.

Almost all of the great trainers in America today are like this. I’ve met most of them and as revered as they all are for the their strength or ability to teach the skills of strength and endurance they are almost universally surprising in their willingness to learn. However that is how they generally became great in the first place. The intense desire to absorb knowledge and the willingness to actually apply it. 99% of the complaining and most of the talking both on the internet and in gyms around the world are from people with an unteachable spirit. They have come to believe that they literally know all that there is to know about training. This applies to most all other areas of life as well.

Guard yourself against that attitude. It will forever doom you to being second-best. Your willingness to learn is directly related to how high you go in any profession and especially in strength training. Learn to ignore those who complain or believe they know everything. They’ll waste your time and energy. Become one of those who uses learning to become great in your job, in your life and in your training.