The 5 Pillars of Success - Part 1

Plus, some good movies to watch

Apr 10, 2024

This is another contribution from the one and only Dan John. Remember: It’s written as a coach to other other coaches and trainers. If you have a coach or trainer, you should be making sure they are applying the principles below. If you do not have one, but are trying to make progress…you are your own coach or trainer so this applied directly to you.

For this one, we did something different. We changed “your clients” to “you” and “coaching” to “personal results” throughout the article.

If I can summarize the key to elite personal results, it would be this:

Ownership.

You have OWN the process, the plan. It has to be yours. It took me years to understand this; I believed people when they told me they wanted to combine elite athletics with academics geared toward medical or law school. I was shocked when I later discovered they were daily drug users or day drinkers…party kids, basically.

I would often stop and ask:   “I thought you said…”

“I thought you said…” could be a great coffee mug or t-shirt logo. All too often, the words that come out of people’s mouths have little to do with their actions.

It’s true: Some parts of my goal-setting toolkit seem odd or weird. You might ask, “Why do I care about what movies or books they like?”

Yet, dialogue, discussion and conversation might be the true keys to establishing the road, the route and the journey to the goal.

Ownership.

This is the first task: to get the person (you) to own the process and then do what needs to be done.

Getting People to Become Actors

I’ve been told to never watch a medical drama on TV with a doctor in the room. Rarely does real medicine come down to some rare tropical disease and we can only hope that interns don’t steal hearts from transplant victims. I’m sure police struggle with cop shows and I hate movies and television shows about teachers.

But, what I hate the most are those idiotic “high five” montages in sports films. You know the kind, a couple of kids from different financial and ethnic backgrounds suddenly put their personal issues aside and start running hills, beaches and fields. They bond through sweat and strain. Then, the HIGH FIVE happens; cue the championship music and the good guys win.

None of that peacocking and posturing really pushes us toward superlative performance. Victory is won in the mundane, the basic and the simple. It is really as fundamental as repeat, repeat, repeat. But, you do need to buy in.

And, to me, this is the secret. Sure, it is as obvious as “buy low; sell high,” but it is true.

Good coaching stuns you with its power. Yet, it is also subtle.

As a young coach, I fell in love with the Knute Rockne or Vince Lombardi halftime talks. I thought—like the opening scene in Patton—that I could stir our force above and beyond their former limits and limitations and we would, dear God as our witness, destroy the forces of evil.

Or, at least, defeat the South Valley Sabercats sophomore badminton team.

I was trying to act like great coaches. In truth, I’m not a good actor. Oddly, taking a course on acting opened up this whole issue for me as a coach.

I took an online acting class to improve my presentation skills. I didn’t use much of it, but one concept really caught my eye:

Monologue–Dialogue–Soliloquy

A monologue, to understand this concept, is when you talk out loud.

For example, we begin hands-on certifications with a brief introduction from each participant. It can be funny or tedious depending on the group.

“Hi. I’m Dan John. I’m a Virgo. I like long walks on the beach and I hate phony people. My hobbies are skinny skiing and going to bullfights on acid.”

Thank you, Caddyshack.

Most of the time when I do goal setting, it seems like the client or athlete is reading a monologue from a script:

“I want to lose weight. I want to have a six-pack.”

Folks, it’s easy to get a six-pack. There are literally three grocery stores within walking distance of my home.

Oh…the other kind? Sorry.

This is the “Not A” kind of goal setting I discussed earlier.

Monologues are fine, but we rarely move the dial ahead with athletes by using just this technique. Dialogues, obviously, are better. We are moving into a discussion now.

I am a believer in the follow-up question. If someone tells me, “I like to work out,” I used to let it just stay there. Now, I follow up:

What do you do when you work out?

“Well, sometimes I, like, get up and maybe walk. Or I go to the gym.”

What gym?

“I dunno. I haven’t been to one in years.”

I learned this first while teaching religious studies. Literally, everyone tells me they practice a faith, a belief or some sort of spirituality. After a follow-up question, I discover most people believe they want a cup of coffee.

As a coach, you need to press people deeper into the statements they make concerning health, fitness, performance and longevity. The follow-up question is the key to dialogue.

But, there is one important next step in the process of getting the person to “own” the goal.

My online acting class taught me this great insight: You want to get the athletes to “overhear” themselves. This is called soliloquy: “An utterance or discourse by a person who is talking to himself or herself or is disregardful of or oblivious to any hearers present.”

When athletes tell me they want to be great discus throwers, or whatever, I first press them with deeper follow-up questions. But soon, I want them to listen to themselves.

The first tool is a goal-setting exercise. It’s the “waddaya want” question. This is a bit bland, but it opens the door to other things. Most of the time, people have goals that are almost completely unreachable. They have a wish list.

I wish I had six-percent bodyfat.

I wish I had a jelly doughnut.

I can get you the doughnut.

For the the person working on measurable goals, like track and field or reducing the waistline, the wish list goal can be charted on a piece of paper and reasonable steps can be discussed. What shocks most people is when they see the amount of time the goals take to achieve.

For vague goals, I don’t really know what to do. Without a measuring stick, it’s tough to figure out a plan.

After the basics of goal setting, I want to encourage the person to buy in to the goal. It seems to help if you can get people to reflect on their life. Autobiography work is excellent, as it opens up the connections that draw people into why they want this goal and not another goal.

I have been introduced to several different methods, but I like to start with the simplest first. The easiest autobiography tools are to list the 10 best movies and books you have watched or read.

Let me share mine.

Books

The Sword in the Stone
The Hobbit
Don Quixote (Book One)
Two Years before the Mast
Hamlet
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Gulliver’s Travels
Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder
Dune
The Tao of Pooh

Movies

Patton
Star Trek II
Lawrence of Arabia
Star Wars (the original…call it “Star Wars”)
Field of Dreams
The Three Musketeers (the Michael York version)
Brigadoon
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying
Moonstruck
Fisher King

It’s a fun discovery and actually easy to do. It’s easy to turn this into dialogue:

“Why this book?”

“Can you tell me more about that movie?”

But, often people doing the exercise pick up some interesting insights about themselves. I tend to like movies where the characters transform during the adventure—I’m sure I’m not alone here. Understanding that insight helps me plan things far into the future since I know it won’t happen overnight.

This assignment comes with a warning: If the person you want to marry has not read 10 books, take this fact under advisement.

It’s not a bad idea to do this with favorite musical albums or dining experiences too. Obviously, the audience is the key to how far you can take this assignment. I find the conversation really unpacks the coach-athlete relationship and gives insights that one might not discover for years without this reflective task.

I would also have experienced athletes list their 10 best and 10 worst performances and, perhaps, training ideas or programs. Those 10 best training tools might be all you really need to move forward with the programming.

The drills and the whole idea of soliloquy prepare us for another insight:

Mythos and logos

Mythos is the “Why?” and logos is the “How?”

Reps and sets and exercise selection and diet and recovery are the “how.”

And, yes, these are important, but more important is the “why” behind things. Truthfully, fat loss clients already know the how: some kind of caloric restriction and probably some kind of exercise. Getting them to go all in with a program needs an answer to the question: “Why?”

Which technique, monologue, dialogue or soliloquy explains mythos or logos better?

Avoid “either/or” here, as some people might show up with a “why” encased in stone. Maybe the goal is to be alive and healthy for their kids or grandkids. Often, it is to rise above a situation such as depressing poverty or pain. The coach needs, once again, a pretty full toolbox to bring the person along.

Getting the people to hear themselves is the key to ongoing improvement in performance. Once the “why” is answered, we can move into the nuts and bolts of things, the “how.” As Viktor Frankl taught us: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live can deal with any ‘how.’”

On the coaching journey, like everything else, as I have discovered in life, we tend to go through four phases:

Unconscious incompetence—You don’t know what you don’t know.

Conscious incompetence—You know what can be done, but you can’t do it.

Conscious competence—You think your way through the process.

Unconscious competence—You automatically apply the techniques.

Young coaches will listen to the monologue, nod their heads and start with a warmup. As the weeks move on, the disconnect between an athlete’s goals and behaviors will become evident. Soon, though, the coach will begin to connect the dots with the athlete.

An elite coach will have this as part of the system and these concepts will be applied seamlessly. It will be so effortless, the coach will not even remember there is a process in place. It just becomes part of who we are and what we do.

“What we do.”

While taking that acting class, it was interesting to look at the word “actor” and discover that it comes from the same root as “doer.” My job is to get you to act—as an athlete, literally one who “contends for a prize,” and then to perform until you win the prize. Of course, how you define winning is a huge factor in whether or not you achieve success. I will discuss more on this shortly.

Performance is all about winning. To get from here to there—the very foundation of goal setting—you must have some kind of strategy. It’s a plan. It’s a program. It’s a vision of the route or journey.

And, the vision is bound to be wrong. Plans are often wrong and I’m fine with that.

I live by two great quotes from leaders of the Second World War:

“You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.” ~ Charles de Gaulle

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” ~ Winston Churchill

Preparation is my basic strategy. Preparation is my “secret” to coaching. And, almost universally, preparation is repetition.

Make sure you are repeating the most important tasks for the goal.

Finally, before I hand out advice, I always walk through a three-step process:

First, in many cases, I let other people take over and I stay away. For examples, think of poisonous snake removal, EMTs, trauma surgeons, and lifeguards:

Let the experts work!

Now, certainly I can advise everyone on the basics of not getting into many of life’s bad situations with the classic: Don’t smoke, learn to fall…wear a seatbelt.

Oh, and don’t TRY to be stupid. Watching that how-to video on getting rattlesnakes out of the basement does not make you an expert.

Second, I focus on my mom’s advice for most diet and exercise:

“Starches make you fat.”

“Go outside and play.”

“Are your legs are painted on?”

My mom believed cars were only for going to church or the grocery store.

I make my living with a summary of her advice:

“Eat like an adult. Lift weights and go for a walk!”

Third, when dealing with elite training goals, I always find someone who is:

Elite
Has accomplished the goal

Then, I advise you to do what that person did.

Live to Learn. Give to Earn.

PS. This publication is a for-fun project, applying Guardian Academy Principles to fitness and sharing some of the best, no-nonsense fitness insights. It appears that we may be expanding. Expect Dan John’s continued contribution and an introduction to the one and only Dr. Lynn Wagner (we call her Doc Wagz) soon.

More From Dan John:

For books, you can see his bookstore here and his Amazon books here.
For socials and more content, Dan’s Instagram and Youtube are updated consistently.
Dan’s favorite Guardian Academy principles are Raising The Floor and What Is Enough? Both are also discussed in Bumpers.

Commandment One

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