“Get good enough at anything and you will create your own enemies. Champions get the razzberry; the crowd aches to see them get knocked off in order to bring them down to their own bowl of shit.” -Charles Bukowski

Maybe it sounds corny to say this, but I firmly believe that certain people were put on this earth to do a specific job. At this point in my life, I’m completely convinced that I was put here to be a teacher and coach. I saw AC/DC in concert about fifteen years ago, and when I watched Angus Young wailing on his guitar, I said to myself, “That guy was put on this earth to play rock and roll.” Know what I mean? Anybody else ever thought of this? I think it’s a pretty cool idea…that some people were basically born to do a particular thing, and they never lose their ability or enthusiasm for it.

I have a feeling I’m not the only one who believes this. And because I believe it, I can confidently say that I think some people were put on this earth to be jerkoffs.

This article is going to be about how we all deal with haters. Let me define the word “hater” for you before you run to Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary online (even though I think everybody already knows what it means). A hater is somebody who tries to bring you down with negativity, basically. Haters have negative feelings about you, themselves, everything in the damn world, etc. Their main talent in life is finding ways to take pathetic little insults that aren’t worth a plug nickel and dig those suckers under your skin. These people just bring you down, plain and simple. It doesn’t make any sense sometimes because you can’t figure out why anybody would commit their entire existence to acting like a human turd. But haters do exactly that. They live their lives on a search and destroy mission…trying to torpedo any hard-working winners they can find with their stupid comments and jabs.

Are you wondering why I’m writing an article about this for a magazine that focuses on weightlifting and strength development? If you are, that’s fair enough. So I’ll give you a couple of reasons why I think this topic has relevance for all of us:

A) Everybody who reads this magazine is a winner. You’ve all invested a little of your time and money into this publication because you want to find new ideas that will make you better. That’s what winners do; they look for every angle they can find to get some improvement.

B) Nothing has become clearer to me throughout my life than the principle that all winners will be surrounded by some losers who want to bring them down. I know this as sure as I know warm donuts taste good. I don’t know if I’ll ever totally understand why it happens. It’s probably just rooted in basic jealousy and envy; nothing complicated about that. But whatever the particulars are in each situation, I’m positive that every high achiever in this world has some naysayers around them.

If you’re lucky, these naysayers will keep their distance and you won’t have to deal with more than the occasional little snippy comment. That’s the best case scenario. But there are also the situations where the haters are a constant presence in your life. For some unfortunate set of circumstances, these haters don’t go away and you have to overcome their crap on a daily basis. If you’ve ever been in this position, you know how maddening it can be. There are days when it’s all you can do just to keep from exploding, either internally or externally. It can screw up both your lifting and your business.

So please read on. Some of you might be saying, “I can’t relate to this; I don’t have any haters around me.” Congratulations if that’s true, but I’ll be the one to piss in your Cheerios by informing you that you will experience a hater in your life sooner or later. I just don’t think it’s avoidable, brothers and sisters. And speaking of brothers and sisters…

All happy families are alike…

When I was a kid, I thought everybody had parents who were encouraging and positive. I believed this because my own mom and dad were incredibly loyal and supportive of the things I did. My parents are the two best human beings I’ve ever met in my life. Nobody else is even in the same ballpark. So for the longest time, I just assumed all parents were like this. Seriously, I did. I honestly don’t think I realized that I was wrong about this until I was in my twenties. The early years of my coaching career burst my bubble, big time.

I think I had been coaching high school throwers for three or four years when I got a good look at the other side of the fence, so to speak. I was coaching a shot putter at the time whose father basically took a dump on him every chance he got. The kid was hugely talented, 17 years old and blessed with physical gifts I don’t think I’ve ever seen in another athlete since then. He stays in my memory as the most gifted thrower I’ve worked with. But he didn’t believe in himself at all. Hell, I shouldn’t even say it that way. This kid planned to self-destruct when he competed, 100 percent. He knew deep down inside that he was going to blow it when the pressure was on. The reason he did this, obviously, is because his dad was a piece of s--- who constantly told him he was gonna fail. I’ll never forget a time when we were warming up at a big meet and the kid was getting ready to start competing. He had taken five or six warm-up throws and it was almost time to rock and roll. I could see on his face that he was nervous, but I was pretty sure he was going to be able to hold it together. Then his dad, who was watching from a distance, called out his name. The kid looked over and the dad yelled out, “So are you gonna choke now?” I swear to god, that’s exactly what he said. And do you know what the kid did? He went out and choked; completely lost his composure and fouled out of the meet. If I didn’t think I would have lost my teaching career for it, I would have jumped the fence and beaten his dad into the hospital.

This is when I started to realize that some people are surrounded by haters who are constantly trying to kick them down, and sometimes those haters are family. This was a serious revelation for me. I haven’t really had a lot of haters in my family, and it just never occurred to me that a parent or loved one would try to headscrew their own blood kin. I was dead wrong, because this kid’s own father did it to him every chance he got.

I don’t think anybody should have a free pass to treat you like dirt and get away with it just because they’re family. If somebody really pisses on you, it might make you want to shut them out of your life. Family members can abuse this, thinking that you’ll always wipe the slate clean and love them anyway just because you’re related. They can say anything they want, hurt you in the worst ways, and you won’t have any choice but to forgive them. This must be the way a lot of families operate. I don’t know. I say f--- that. I won’t let anybody stay close to me if they establish themselves as a negative force in my life, relative or not. They’re gone, baby…gone. It’s just too bad kids can’t do this, because they have to fight through it somehow when they’re still living at home.

Then, there’s the internet…

If family members are examples of the closest possible haters, internet d-bags are the polar opposite situations. These are people who hate on you from the furthest conceivable distance…through an online computer network.

Make no mistake about it; the internet is the greatest invention in the history of civilization for people who want to talk s--- with no immediate consequences. It’s like the discovery of the Holy Grail for passive aggressive schmucks. Obviously, we all love the internet. I love the internet, too. Heck, you found this magazine on the internet. The internet is probably one of the most amazing technological advances the world has ever seen.

And that brings us to message boards and forums… You probably know where I’m going with this, right? How many of you have mixed it up with somebody on the internet? I’m betting there are some hands rising right now. Message boards and forums were created for people to communicate, share ideas, network, and socialize. In real life, they’re used to argue, insult, crap on other people, and cultivate enemies. I can’t tell you how many intellectual, philosophical, civilized internet discussions I’ve followed that ended with people calling each other retards and scumbags and threatening to kick each other’s asses at the next national championship. Hell, I read an argument on a powerlifting message board once where the guys eventually started talking about their concealed weapons permits. It started about a disagreement on squat technique and ended with thinly veiled threats of murder by gunshot.

I am openly going to admit that I’ve been sucked into this before. I don’t think I’ve had an internet war with anybody in a long time because I finally mastered the art of not letting myself get pissed off at every single thing I read. But back when I started getting on the internet regularly…that’s a different subject. I’ve had some verbal clashes, for sure. When I was doing my best lifting, I remember getting on the forums and reading a bunch of comments from no-name losers who constantly dumped on American weightlifting and how pathetic we were compared to the rest of the world. This is hard to swallow when you’re a regular on the national scene because they’re talking about YOU. The anger builds up, and it culminates in a barrage of posts from your computer where you let yourself get sucked in and tell all the wankers exactly what you think.

Here is where there’s a point of interest for those of you who are coaches or gym owners. You have to remember that the things you say online are going to reflect on your gym and your program. It doesn’t take much to get a reputation, and it can happen on the internet faster than anywhere else in the world. If you spout off a lot of disagreeable crap, or even if you just get into the habit of constantly fighting with everybody, you’re developing an image that might keep people from wanting to be associated with you. This can cost you members, which can also cost you money. And it all happened because you couldn’t ignore haters. You let them get in your head.

Seriously though, how can you keep quiet when some idiot is spouting off verbal diarrhea with nobody challenging them? Or what if somebody is openly attacking you, or somebody close to you? Damn it guys, it is really hard to keep your fingers off the keyboard when you’ve got a world-class mental midget who’s just begging for annihilation. Trust me, I understand. But I want to say, honestly and confidently, that I do think it’s possible to avoid all of these traps. You actually can rise above the haters. There are just some modifications you need to make in your thinking.

We should actually love them…

I think if you’re doing the right things in life, the people who are doing the wrong things are going to hate you. Yin and yang, it makes sense. Every high achiever is going to come with some low achievers, and those low achievers become the haters. I started this article with a Charles Bukowski quote. He also once wrote, “Damn fools rarely get assassinated.” I think he believed if you’ve got haters coming after you, they’re probably doing it because of your success, or because of some great qualities you have that they don’t possess. Nobody hates on losers. They hate on winners. If somebody hates on you, it’s because you’re a winner and they’re not.

When you look at it like this, it’s probably a good thing when losers come against you. Would you want the losers to love you? Why would you want the support and admiration of somebody who’s committed to being a tool? I look at certain people in my life and say, “If that idiot starts to approve of what I’m doing, I’ve got a problem.” Think about the biggest douchebag you know. Do you honestly want that person to think you’re awesome? If they think you’re awesome, that means they probably think you two are alike in some way. And do you want to be like this person? No. So screw their opinion. The dump you took this morning is more important than what they think.

However, I want to finish with something positive. I’ve been talking a lot about losers and idiots, which are both insulting terms. It’s probably not cool to go off the deep end with them. Don’t get me wrong, I think some people definitely earn these titles. But there probably comes a point where we have to remember that all of these people are human beings just like us. In addition to this, we all know damn well that we’ve done things ourselves that have earned these titles, too. Everybody can look like a hater on a bad day. Still, even if we don’t act right, it doesn’t mean we should be sent to a gas chamber. Same goes for the haters that come against us. The reason they are the way they are is that they don’t have self-respect and confidence. So maybe we end this analysis with the understanding that inner strength is the nucleus of everything. If you have it, you’re going to need to use it when people doubt and criticize you. They don’t have it, and it’s a waste of your time to hate them for what they lack.

You’re a winner. So get out of bed every morning and act like one. Winners don’t sag down to lower levels because of negative barbs that get thrown at them. It’s fine to get pissed off, but it’s not fine to let your behavior show it. Losing your composure can do two things. It can put cracks in the confidence you have in your own lifting, and it can drive people away from wanting to be coached by you. Neither of these are good, and that’s why you’re not going to let it bother you when some jerkoff tries to get under your skin. You’re a Performance Menu reader, brothers and sisters. That means you’re stronger than they are, inside and out.