This isn’t really a back squat.
Many of the people I train with and compete against seem to suffer from an identity crisis. While they’re out running, they claim that they aren’t runners. While riding, they’ll steadfastly maintain that they aren’t cyclists. While training and competing in any variety of disciplines with a focus, intensity and regularity that borders on obsession, they’ll vehemently insist that they aren’t athletes.
And you know what? I get it. When you look at the front of the race, at the pros, at the world championships, it’s easy to think that those people are doing something entirely different than you. To call myself a mountain biker, in the same sense as, say, Kelly McGarry, would seem to be a stretch of the term and a disservice to a guy who can do backflips over canyons on a bicycle. I can barely do a wheelie, so how could I possibly include myself in the same nomenclature as a guy like that?
But the titles themselves make no claim as to the proficiency of the practitioner. Saying that you’re a runner isn’t saying that you can crack out a sub-20-minute 5k; it’s saying that you run. You lace up your shoes, go out from your house and run, with some regularity and of your own volition, because you decided to do it. That’s what makes you a runner. It’s not your speed, or your distance, or your list of PRs; it’s the choice and the activity.
If you do, you are a doer, no matter the scale or scope or speed of the action.
By selling yourself short, rejecting the title even of a participant in the sport, you deprive yourself of the joy of celebration of your own accomplishments. You set the barrier to entry so high for yourself that you’ll never reach it, and you’ll likely find yourself disheartened and demotivated when your efforts lack any sweet reward. After all, how can you be proud of what you’ve done while still claiming that you aren’t someone who does it?
Worse, others see that barrier to entry and adopt it as their own. “Well, if he can’t call himself an athlete,” they say, “surely I can’t, either.” What a tragedy that is, when people who may be looking to you, as a source of motivation, as an attainable standard, find out that you don’t believe in yourself.
Our society’s obsession with sport in general has resulted in unprecedented access and coverage of professionals in every area. Much like the effect of airbrushed supermodels on magazine covers, we can’t look anywhere without seeing someone doing what we do, only better. And not just better, but incomprehensibly better, setting times and clearing obstacles and moving weights and climbing rocks that we couldn’t dream of approaching if we trained every day for the rest of our lives. We hold up those athletes as the prototypical examples of the sport, and so rule out any possibility of assigning to ourselves the same moniker. The same voice that says “I’m not attractive unless I look like that,” is the one that says “I’m not an athlete because I can’t do it like that.”
That voice is wrong. It’s wrong, and it’s evil, and it’s holding you back from all of the things you can do, if only you stopped listening to it, and started listening to your inner child. The voice that says “look what I can do!” while you pedal up that hill, or cross the finish line at that race, or get that bar over your head. That is the voice that deserves your attention. And when it says you’re an athlete, you’d better believe it.
It’s time for all of us amateur athletes to stop pretending we aren’t what we are. It’s time for us to respect ourselves and those who may be watching enough to gladly accept the titles we’ve worked so hard to earn. We may all have a long way to go, but that’s no reason to cheapen what we have already accomplished by ignoring that we did it. We’ve earned that badge, however modest. Let’s wear it proudly, and help others to earn theirs as well.