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Category: Philosophy (Page 1 of 3)

Remembering a Mentor

RIP Frank Engel (Nov 2, 1961 – Jan 7, 2020)

You wouldn’t be reading this were it not for Frank Engel.

Back in 2004… it would have had to be around fall… my hockey coach, Rocky Trottier, told us that we were old enough to start lifting weights. So many of us did.

I had spent countless hours of my youth hurling hockey pucks at garages, nets, brick walls. I had a piece of plastic fake ice. I liked playing with a longer stick because I could really confuse attackers when they came through. I liked taking slap shots because I wasn’t good at wrist shots. I practiced stick handling fast, but never learned how to do it without looking down at the puck. And I spent my other free time playing hockey video games.

I wanted to be a professional hockey player, and I knew that I would need to practice — to get better — if I were going to get there.

So when Rocky recommended we start lifting weights, I was on board. That’s something that athletes do, so I should do that.

I remember walking in the first day. There’s lots of commotion. I’m not a loud guy, but I at least knew a few of the people around. I had no idea how to do any of the lifts I was about to do.

So I walk up to this hulking, scruffy dude who tells me the workout is on the whiteboard. I think he even gave me a notebook to track my workout. He gave me all the weights, told me to walk around to the different pieces and just do the workout. The last one was a trap bar deadlift: 150lbs for 10 reps. “That one’s gonna kick your ass,” he told me.

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You’re Not Normal, And That’s Why I Like You

If you’re reading this, you’re my kind of person.

The people who come to this site aren’t just normal humans. They’re the people who are pushing our industry forward.

They challenge their thinking, asking…

Which of my long-held beliefs are no longer serving me?

They push to improve on failures, asking…

Why was I unable to solve this problem?

They even force themselves to re-evaluate things that are working, asking…

How can I make this better?

I just want to say thanks. You’re an inspiration.

What are you working on improving these days? There are a couple of prompts above to get you going. Maybe you want to learn more about movement or get ideas from some new books.

And hey, it’s okay to sit back and enjoy what you’ve done thus far.

Cheers to the future.

Your life isn’t margaritas on a beach in Jamaica. That happens now and then. Those are exceptions.

Your life is how your wife greets you at the door when you come home every day. Because that’s, like, 10 minutes a day.

Your life is how you treat each other at the breakfast table because that’s an hour hour and a half or an hour every single day.

You get those mundane things right, those things you do every day. You concentrate on them and you make them pristine. It’s like: you’ve got 80% of your life put together. These little things that are right in front of us, they are not little. That’s the first thing: they are not little. And they’re hard to set right. And if you set them right it has a rippling effect. And fast, too. Way faster than people think.

Jordan Peterson
From “The Joe Rogan Experience”
Episode #1070, 1:59:13
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