Athletes and Bulldozers, what do they have in common?

When you’ve been around nearly sixty years you’ve had a lot of time to do a lot of different things. Hopefully you’ve learned from each of these experiences.

In my early twenties I practiced karate for a few years. It’s amazing how close to triathlon training, martial arts training really is. Thousands of repetitions of each movement, done perfectly until all the body knows is perfect technique. The end result is that under pressure, you don’t have to think what to do or how to do it. You just do it. A bit like the Nike add?

One of the businesses I established and continued for around ten years involved buying new Cat machinery and operating an earthmoving/landscaping business. The reliability and longevity of earthmoving machinery is heavily dependant on maintenance.

Caterpillar machinery is the undisputed king of machinery. The company supports owners like no other company in the world. One of the services which they offer owners is called SOS, scheduled oil sampling. By taking samples of engine, transmision and final-drive oils at regular intervals, these samples are analysed in the lab to detect wear and help schedule rebuilding/maintenance.

The serious athlete should be doing this same procedure with blood testing. The blood tests, done before something goes wrong, can either indicate that all is good or give advanced warning that something needs to change.

If the owner of an earthmoving machine sees a slight cracking in the paint, he investigates the possibility of a crack in the steel (earthmoving machines often do things they were not designed to do, causing stresses not anticipated by the manufacturer). If the owner/mechanic detects a crack starting he doesn’t keep working the machine. He puts it straight into the workshop to weld it up.

How often do we see athletes pushing on with their training when cracks are starting to appear?

Every three months your car goes into the workshop for service. A Cat gets serviced every day. After every days work, the machine is greased and a brief check of all oil levels and running gear is carried out by the operator. Fueling and greasing a machine of the value we’re talking about is simply insuring it’s ready for the next days work.

How often do I have to “harp on” to athletes in my squad about the value of refuelling? How often do my athletes get a massage or chiropractic adjustment.

These machines I’m talking about have working lives of 20-30years, that’s a lot of solid hard work. Many are still working well at 40yrs. How many cars go that long, a taxi works similar hours and generally retires after 3yrs.

The message I’m delivering here is.

* Maintenance prolongs the life of the machine and the athlete.  

* Little things attended to soon enough, don’t become major breakdowns.

* Even the toughest machinery in the world will crack if enough pressure is applied (or if it’s asked to do what it was not designed to do in the first place)

* Refuelling and regular maintenance prepares the machine and the athlete for the next day/weeks work.

There are a few athletes out there who think they’re tougher than a Cat. Next time you’re driving down the highway and you pass some earthmoving gear, stop and walk up to one of them and see how you measure up. They’re built tough to do a tough job. They have no excess trimming, every part of them is functional.

If you put dirty fuel into them, they’ll let you down. Think of that next time you buy KFC.

Also they’re a message here for the bigger athletes. When Cat make a machine, they give it a motor big enough to do the job. A D10 bulldozer weighs 50ton, it has 700hp. A D3 weighs 8ton and has 65hp.

So when you’re out there training and you pull out the old excuse that he/she’s only 60kg and you’ll never go as fast as them because you weigh 95kg. When God builds humans, he uses a similar scale to Caterpillar, he gives the bigger ones bigger engines. So if you weigh 95kg, and if it’s not all lard, when you hit that next big hill, think of yourself as having 700hp.