As an ambitious teenage immigrant kid growing up in Sydney’s west, I played football for an under 15s state league team out in Stanmore. In this Stanmore team, mid-season our coach got sacked due to poor performance, and we got Ross instead. Ross was your typical no-bullshit middle aged, educated wog from Sydney’s Inner West. He was of average height, on the heavier side of the scale but solid, and wore those square glasses you’d see any international Eastern European medical student wear. Before Jiu Jitsu I still had a running and football (soccer) obsession, I mean who didn’t, I played from age 6 to 16 before quitting. I genuinely believe my generation grew up in the peak of world football, from Ronaldo vs Messi to the 2010 South Africa world cup, but that’s another conversation. Back to Ross, this dude did not believe in a mellow training session, he arranged for a right-hand fitness man to attend all our training sessions, this attaché was a tennis fitness coach, and he wasted no time trying to revamp our team.

We had struggled during the beginning of the season because of our old coach playing people out of position, exercising favouritism, and not organising training sessions properly. All we did was passing drills, games against the older teams, and random exercises. He lacked vision and the team lacked hunger, the losing streak piled up, and we were headed to the bottom of the table. Ross changed that team morale. He used to message us before training, telling us to bring running shoes, when you saw that message on a Tuesday after school, you knew it was going to be hell. He’d line us up at the bottom of a steep hill footpath in the Stanmore suburbs somewhere where we trained. It was so steep that you could probably touch the ground in front of you effortlessly if you leaned in. We’d all line up, in our yellow shorts and white training tops, with no indication of how many runs we had ahead of us or for how long, and we’d sprint up that hill on command.

When you sprint uphill with maximum effort and jog down hill and do it again, your muscles fatigue but you build up so much lactic acid that vomiting wasn’t a rare occasion. Vomiting during these sessions can make you feel better, but reaching our threshold didn’t in no way indicate to Ross the end of the exercise. He’d just tell us to do two more, and when we made it to the end of the hill he’d laugh and just keep adding. When this newfound training regimen was put into place by Ross, my whole team dreaded training. We did hills, sprints on grass, box to box runs, circuit strength training, and a little bit of ball work. But he made sure there was little competition, and in our suffering, as the numbers at training lessened, the team chemistry skyrocketed, and our in-game performance excelled. We would start games off slow then absolutely kill teams in the last 20. Our fitness peaked so much and when we incorporated ball work, our results got better. Even though our table position was too late to salvage, we all finished the season with a different mentality regarding the game and sport in general.

This era in my teenage years was my first exposure to the one more rule. Its not so much a rule, but even in the coming years of football then onto Jiu Jitsu and weight training, I always try to reach fatigue or failure in exercise, then just try to do one more. I’d sit there binge watching my lectures at university, then when I finish, try to do one more. Because I knew with everyone around me, I was not going to be lazy, you get pushed by your teammates or other friends or students. I always tried to stay at the front in every run or maintain my form at jiu jitsu during every roll even though I was gassed. But the day comes, when it is just you and you have dreams and aspirations, but no one is by your side to give you that push or help compete with you to propel you forward. It must be in your head ingrained that you will always do one more, again and again.

Exit sport for a moment now and look at yourself in third person. I know what its like to be in a mental rut, hell, I weave in and out of depressive and happy episodes all the time. Not sure if something is wrong with me or if that’s human nature. But whenever you are in that negative headspace, I want you to give it another day. Sleep on it, think about it tomorrow. Break down your responsibilities and goals and spread them out. And when you get into flow working and whatever it is you want to do, when you reach the end, do one more. One more day, one more week, one more word, one more page, one more rep, one more set, one more kg, one more kilometre, one more good deed. I know it is such a basic concept, but when I look back on my life, there were sometimes if I didn’t believe in myself and give myself one more day, I wouldn’t be here writing this piece for you to see. I swear it’s the little things. I do not remember long speeches I heard as a student or blocks of time. I do remember the little things though, like the one more concept or a quote I seen on the back of someone’s car. That stuff sticks with me, I hope in your quest you find little nuggets of wisdom that give you life and stick with you too.

All The Best

H