Shield me…

During practice 7 with a team of eight, a couple teammates learned the difference between “throwing one under the bus, half-assing it in the middle, and having anothers back.” Normal teammates live in the middle. Rarely do they throw their teammates under the bus and they almost never take one for the team. Normal teammates just kinda let stuff slide and make sure nothing sticks to them. This is the essence of CYA. At BTL we hold practice to build the disciplines that lead to whole-hearted teammates covering for each other. This takes time, TRUST, and lots of practice. Team of eight, you are making strides. You have a long way to go. You will become ONE slowly. Division comes naturally; unity, not so much.

The Spartans understood this. So, they practiced everything before the crucible of war brought chaos and division. Practice. Deep, intentional, practice settles individuals, teams, and leaders when the moments of truth arrive. Every week these moments arrive, don’t they. The more practiced you and your team, the better you perform in the moments that separate victory from defeat regardless the game. ONE is not the squishy thought so many think. ONE, distinct and deeply connected is the heart of high performance. And, only deep practice makes it possible.

“Nothing fires the warrior’s heart more with courage than to find himself and his comrades at the point of annihilation, at the brink of being routed and overrun, and then to dredge not merely from one’s own bowels or guts but from one’s own discipline and training the presence of mind not to panic, not to yield to the possession of despair, but instead to complete those homely acts of order which Dienekes had ever declared the supreme accomplishment of the warrior:to perform the commonplace under far-from-commonplace conditions. Not only to achieve this for oneself alone, as Achilles or the solo champions of yore, but to do it as part of a unit, to feel about oneself one’s brothers in arms, in an instance like this of chaos and disorder, comrades whom one doesn’t even know, with whom one has never trained; to feel them filling the spaces alongside him, from spear side and shield side, fore and rear, to behold one’s comrades likewise rallying, not in a frenzy of mad possession-driven abandon, but with order and self composure, each man knowing his role and rising to it, drawing strength from him as he draws it from them; the warrior in these moments finds himself lifted as if by the hand of a god. He cannot tell where his being leaves off and that of the comrade beside him begins. In that moment the phalanx forms a unity so dense and all-divining that it performs not merely at the level of a machine or engine of war but, surpassing that, to the state of a single organism, a beast of ONE blood and heart.”

Taken from Gates of Fire, by Steven Pressfield.

ONE, distinct and deeply connected, is the heart of performance. This is the one you want. This is why we practice. Come ready. Come ready for REAL,HARD,WORK. There is nothing squishy about becoming one. There is nothing squishy about shielding your teammate. And, you are not as close as you think. Come. Practice. Come. Shield me.

We’ve got some unity we’re after. Come and see…