CrossFit Athletic Group

One of the things that has been on my mind as of late is the mystery behind compliments. And I'm not talking the "nice shoes" or "you're a beast" kind that are spontaneous positive reinforcement or conversation starters. But well-thought, articulated ones that are commonly seen for... criticism, ironically enough.

Think about the last time you had to tell someone off. How many times did you reherse the conversation in your head? How many words did you sort through to find just the right ones that would perfectly explain what your adversary was doing wrong. Now how many times have you done that to the likes of an unprompted compliment?

Good gawd look at little Kyle

When I say things like...

• JZ is pound-for-pound the strongest kid I have ever trained in CrossFit
• Elizabeth Banet is the fittest 16 (now 17) year old in the state of Michigan
• We have the best affiliate website in the CrossFit community

...people seem to be taken more awkwardly than if, instead, I were to say...

• JZ still has a short fuse and needs to calm the %!*$ down
• Elizabeth's height will be tough to overcome on a volleyball court with great players
• Our website needs a rating system so the old posts don't get lost in the mix

In my eyes, the top three things are not compliments. They're just things. Facts. The exact same way the last three bullets are. In the case of the website statement, it's not me being big-headed or intentionally cocky; it's just that I look at every affiliate website that is featured on the main site and I have yet to see one better than ours. And with the first two points, I'm not playing favorites. I'm not trying to build self-esteem. And there are definitely zero secret motivation tactics behind them. They're just simply true statements in the eyes of the beholder. The only thing calculated about these compliments/true statements is that I do try to drop them randomly and seemingly unprompted. This is because my short experience as a coach tells me it's probably a good thing to do.

The more I think about it, I find more people "going in the tank" after getting compliments than after they get a lot of criticism. Why? Well, I think it's because compliments are much more rare than criticism.

I believe that athletes (and coaches) need to learn how to handle compliments just as well as they handle criticisms. This cannot be accomplished by hiding from them because they're awkward, or holding them back because you don't want to appear to be playing favorites, or throwing NO HOMO in front of them just in case people think you're up to something. Instead, they have to be dropped as casually as a critique. So back to the JZ and Elizabeth examples above. Here are the two options I can see for them:

1. Tell themselves that it isn't true so they don't risk getting satisfied
2. Or accept them as facts, and still have the discipline to train as dedicated as ever.

The first one is called lying. The second one is called confidence. Take your pick.

Luckily, I don't think we have to worry about these two