Throughout my life, I’ve been on a wide variety of teams. As a kid, they pretty much involved sports of one kind or another, from a formal Little League team to whatever teams we would cobble together to play pick-up football, baseball, Wiffleball, street hockey, basketball or the always classic “war” (which involves 10 year old boys running around with pretend guns blasting the bejeezus outta each other).
I’ve always loved the team environment, which is a bit interesting because I am an introvert at heart. Some people recharge their batteries hanging out with big groups of people whereas I need some quiet time by myself to decompress properly.
But still, the dynamics of the team (especially one that works well together) has always resonated with me in a deeply satisfying way. These days I end up on teams in the workplace to a degree, but I maintain most of my outlet for teaming in a competitive sports venue with soccer. I play on two teams, one of which as just a player and the other as the captain (see our handsomeness from a few season ago here):
Admittedly being the captain is sometimes akin to being a glorified secretary and babysitter (yeah… that’s right… babysitter… stuns me to think the extent to which I have to shoo along people in their late 20’s and up to get them to the damn games), but I do love it.
So why all this team talk?
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to opening up my home gym to anyone else who wants to come and train. It’s been a bit of an interest process of contemplation for a lot of reasons.
- Who would I open it up to? Friends? Complete strangers, but people who are as committed to training as I am?
- How would it work? This is at my house, so what if I was unable to train one day. What would the other people end up doing if they came to rely on my gym as their sole training spot?
- What happens if it’s not a good fit and I get people who are not nearly as focused as I am or are just complete douchebags?
In the end, I can’t help but think what I am missing out on by training solo. Don’t get me wrong – I have seen a helluvalot more benefits to training at home versus a commercial gym. I can do any lift I want, play any music I want, be as loud as I want and do so without any… umm… “distractions” (that would be the fairer sex whom I love to pieces, but can completely throw any rational guy out of his rhythm in the gym… that’s just science. But I would definitely have women as training partners – no doubt).
And getting beyond just thinking about the team as a means to measurable results, I think there is just a ton to be said for the relationships forged as part of a group striving for a common (or at least very similar) goal and being there to push your teammates along the way. I miss that camaraderie to a big extent, so I might be looking for a few good men and women to join in the quest to do a little better, be a little stronger, push a little harder and go a little farther than any of us thought possible. Isn’t that one of the great joys in life anyway
So who’s with me?