Back when I was an army paratrooper, we used to say “no plan ever survives first contact.” Heavyweight boxing legend Mike Tyson also famously said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” If COVID-19 and the year 2020 isn’t the biggest punch in the mouth for all of our plans, then I don’t know what is.

As both a competitive athlete and coach in Olympic weightlifting, the global lockdown put me in a spiral. As an athlete, all I wanted was to climb back up the rankings for the season and compete at the national level again. How was I to do that when I may not have a place to train and can’t get in to work with my performance therapist? As a coach, I wondered, what will happen to my club? What will happen to my athletes? Especially the ones aiming to qualify for international meets? What about my revenue? Will my gym even be able to keep up with rent? Luckily, I have learned from and worked with some of the best and most resilient individuals both in the weightlifting world and the military world, and some of the skills I have picked up along the way, be it in the gym, or on overseas deployment, pulled me out of what could have been an endless spin cycle. The two most important being radical acceptance and flexibility; the former a prerequisite for the latter.

Radical acceptance is a foundational skill taught in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. It involves exactly what the term suggests: accepting reality for what it is, no matter how terrible it may be, and letting go of the world as you want it or as you believe it ought to be. Only then, can you proceed wisely, and mindfully, on what needs to happen next. This radical acceptance is what underlies Greg Everett’s article about controlling what you can. Keep in mind that just because you accept something doesn’t mean you condone it, agree with it, or resign yourself to believing that it will always be so. But once you see reality for what it is, only then can you become the master of your fate, otherwise, you’ll be stuck in cycles of despair and denial.

So take a look around. What do you need to radically accept? Maybe you haven’t touched a barbell in months. You more than likely had technical and strength regressions. Or as a coach, maybe you have to adjust your coaching style for more remote training and engage with digital platforms to save your business. The best and most resilient among us will then use their flexibility to adapt to the situation once reality has set in, and turn adversity into opportunity.

In my experience, the best coaches and athletes already exhibit these features, and they are heightened in moments of crisis. They radically accept what is happening, and adapt their ways so that it’s appropriate for the situation they’re in, rather than deny that the world has become invariably different, and maintain their collision course with reality. Allow me to illustrate with a personal example, working with Catalyst Athletics coach Alyssa Barnes as her athlete, and how acceptance and flexibility on both of our parts were the rising tide that lifted all boats.

When I first came to Alyssa to work with her, I was in bad shape. I had just came off of my best competitive season, finishing 6^th at the Canadian Nationals, and all of my old injuries flared up:my bulging disc from years of jumping out of planes was re-aggravated, and I couldn’t even bend over to load plates for my athletes when coaching them at the World Master’s Championships. The day before Alyssa and I worked together, I tried to power through a meet, where I posted the lowest total in four years. I had to radically accept that I needed help, and that the way I had been training was no longer working for me.

Slowly but surely, under her watchful eye, Alyssa adjusted her programming to accommodate my injuries and limitations. My training numbers started to climb back up again. But then I was buried on a heavy single day, and my spine and sciatic nerve decided that they didn’t want to be my friends once more. Again, I had to pull out of qualifying meets, and radically accept that my chances of qualifying this year are slim to none. Then March 2020 rolled around, and COVID-19 delivered the final coup de grace on those goals.

But Alyssa and I remained undeterred. We both agreed that lockdown is the perfect opportunity to revisit the fundamentals and rebuild the shaky foundation that has been at the root of all of my injuries. We had nothing but time on our hands and set off on a new course: only train when it feels okay and possible to get into the gym, loading and volume for any given exercise will be entirely by feel, and exercise selection became a lot more eccentric and a lot less focused on the classic lifts.

Under normal circumstances, this approach sounds like a nightmare for any coach and athlete who understands that successful training plans are built upon consistency, repetition, regiment, and prescription. However, circumstances are anything but normal. I can tell this isn’t the typical programming she would give to an athlete like me, nor is this a typical program that I would normally do. This style of training forced us to be more accountable to each other during this period. I needed to have initiative to determine and understand what my body could handle from session to session, and Alyssa had to maintain a close watch and diagnose my deficiencies and make adjustments on the fly. In the end, radical acceptance and flexibility paid its dividends.

For the duration of the lockdown, I trained at most every other day, as little as twice or even once a week. Exercises I frequented included no feet snatches, clean grip overhead squats, and behind the neck push jerk in the split. I rarely went above the 75% range. Yet here I am, in the last week of lockdown in my city, having gone through a testing week, and got most of my lifts back up into the 90~95% range, and best of all, my injuries are kept quietly at bay.

So for those of you currently stuck in lockdown, I implore you to radically accept your new reality, and figure out how you can turn your adversity into opportunity. Even if you lack equipment, perhaps you can use this time to work on your general physical preparedness, and to increase your fitness and work capacity for when you do return to the gym. For those of you who are starting to return to the gym, radically accept that training will have to look different for the time being, as you ease your body back for smart load management.

One thing is for sure, nothing ever stays the same. How are you going to maintain your presence of mind to meet the new realities you’re facing? Ask yourself, when reality punches you in the mouth, how will you respond? On your feet or on your knees.