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From The Desk Of Clarence Bass

Take it from Tiger

Tiger Woods is a role model for the ages. He’s a golfer, but we can all learn from his example. A "never-give-up, always-try-to-improve" attitude, like his, can make winners of us all. We can’t all be a world beater, like Tiger, but we can all improve.

As practically everyone on the planet knows, even non-golfers like me, Tiger just became only the second player in history to win three "majors" in a year, with a spectacular come-from-behind victory in the PGA Championship.

Notah Begay III, a teammate of Tigers at Stanford and one of the few golfers to beat him head-to-head (Notah is a hometown hero here in Albuquerque; he went to high school with our son, Matt), summed up for an AP reporter what sets Tiger apart from other golfers, many of whom are disheartened by his seeming invincibility:

"He’s continually testing himself. When he fails, he goes back and evaluates why he failed and re-builds it and comes back stronger the next time. That’s why it’s so scary how good he is now, because he’s going to continually try and improve and make himself a better player."

Read that again, because it’s the secret to success in just about any endeavor you can name, including bodybuilding and fitness training. It’s why I’m still training, and improving, as I approach my 63rd birthday. In 50 years of training, I’ve never stopped looking for ways to improve. I always try to get better in some way or another (see the article on this Website describing how I trained to make a new recent-PR in chin-ups). I believe that’s the secret of my success and that it will work for others as well.

It’s the reason why Jenny Thompson, 27, and Dara Torres, 33, are going to be swimming in the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, later this month, at ages that not long ago would have classified them as senior citizens, and definitely over the hill. They’re not just getting older, they’re getting better as well. Rather than rest on their laurels –Thompson has won five gold medals and a silver at the Olympics and Torres was an Olympic gold medalist in 1984 and 1992 – they are beating the 17- and 18-year-olds who used to dominate swimming, and breaking world records. At a time when other swimmers have long since retired, they are still looking for ways to improve. Torres has re-learned her stroke (she now looks at the bottom of the pool and puts the power at beginning, not the end, of the stroke), much like Tiger has re-engineered his golf swing, and Thompson has worked endlessly on her strength and her strokes, gaining a 100th of a second here, and a 100th there. They have both gotten smarter about their training. Rather than spend eight hours a day in the water, as swimmers did a decade ago, they now do much more cross training. Richard Quick, who trains both of them, says a typical day now includes two to four hours in the pool, as well as a combination of weight training, spinning classes and flexibility training.

So again, take it from Tiger, Jenny, Dara and me, if you train smarter and keep trying to improve, you will get better, maybe not week-to-week, but month after month and surely from one year to the next. Challenge Yourself!

Ripped Enterprises, 528 Chama, N.E., Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108, Phone (505) 266-5858, FAX (505) 266-9123, e-mail:  cncbass@aol.com (no attachments please).  Business Hours:  Monday-Friday, 8-5, Mountain time.

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