All in

 

A common mantra among sports teams today is to declare that they are “all in.” What does that mean, exactly?

Does that mean that you will do anything to win? Cheat, lie, steal? Tennis can be a strange game. For the most part, players make their own calls. I watched a high school player recently that consistently called anything close as out. He was good. He didn’t have to cheat to win. But he cheated anyway.

Despite tons of public education, performance enhancing drugs are still a huge presence in sports today.

In my day, it was anabolic steroids. Little was known about them and long-term effects weren’t even considered. At 18, I wanted to play college football. My problem was that I was the same size then that I am now—5’11” and 200 pounds. Couldn’t gain an ounce regardless of what I did.

Before that, I had the same problem. I was 5’11” and 185 pounds as a high school sophomore. I remember my high school football coach telling me that if I would forget about other sports and focus on football, that I could get a college scholarship.

That’s all it took. I spent tons of time in the weight room. Worked hard. Ate everything in sight. The ladies in the cafeteria at school took care of me. The lunch rules were one plate per person but because my mom had worked with them for several years, I was allowed to come back for seconds anytime I wanted to.

All that and I by my senior year, I was 5’11” and 190 pounds. So much for my college prospects. An old family doc in my hometown offered to put me on this stuff called Dianabol, which promised to add muscle to your frame.

But then when he was out of the room, I read the little slip of paper that accompanied the drug which listed the side effects. I’m reading along and get to the part that said “impotence.” I may have been a country boy but I knew what that meant.

Huh-uh. Not doing that one. I knew even then that I wanted to be a father. Football wasn’t worth that to me. I had a friend in college that had played football but had a knee injury that ended his career. He then turned to bodybuilding.

A year later, he was a 6’3”, 240 pound monster. Planning a career in health care at the time, I was sort of the dormitory doctor. So this guy calls me into his room and asks me what I thought about the fact that his testicles (sorry—too much information, I know) were the size of pinto beans.

He not only was unable to father children, he had a heart attack in his 40’s.

Years later, medical professionals were still saying that steroids didn’t really add muscle to your body while the bodybuilders knew different. And slowly, we realized the terrible side effects. Not just impotence but heart problems, stroke, and early death.

Yet, that hasn’t stopped the use of performance enhancing drugs. Lance Armstrong was the most drug-tested athlete in sports and passed every one of those. I defended him up until the proof was undeniable. The NFL? Lance proved that drug tests could be beat.

All in? It doesn’t mean that you’ll do anything and everything to win. It means you are committed to doing the little things. It means you eat right, get plenty of sleep, and stay hydrated.

All in means that you put in the work. You don’t just show up for practice, you give it everything you have. All in means that you are coachable, that you are a good teammate, that you are always prepared.

All in means committed to being the best you.