Eat Your Frog
Bryan Clay
Every athlete who competes in multiple disciplines has that one problematic event. It’s the challenge that seems to rise higher than all of the others and threatens to turn success into failure. For me, as a world-class decathlete, that event was the 1,500-meter run.
When I reached the height of my sport and won the gold medal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, I was more than 300 points ahead, my right shoulder was in tremendous pain from my javelin throw, and only the 1,500 meters remained. I was exhausted and in pain, and even though gold-medal glory was waiting on the other side of the race if I just managed to finish, I could hardly make myself step to the starting line. I had to ask a fellow competitor and friend, Roman Sebrle from the Czech Republic, to pace me so I could get through it.
The road to athletic triumph is paved with a series of grueling decisions—to work out when you don’t feel like it, push yourself harder than you think possible, and make yourself endure something like the 1,500 meters when everything in your mind and body screams that you can’t do it. It’s this idea, of conquering the hardest thing in front of you, that inspired the unique name for the series of fitness studios I helped create three years ago.
When my partner Joe Culver and I developed the plan for our new fitness business, we were looking for a name that was unique, memorable, and symbolic of the impact our studios could have on the people who worked out there. First, Joe brought up the fact that Navy Seals are called Frogmen, and that led us to this quote from author Mark Twain: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” And Eat The Frog Fitness was born.
It’s a fantastic name because it’s just quirky enough to be memorable and to prompt people to ask questions, but it’s so much more than a brand name. We believe that Eat the Frog is a mindset, a call to action. The message is this: “Stop procrastinating, stop putting off the things that you know are going to be beneficial to your success or changes that you need to make for your quality of life.” And it resonates with people immediately. They understand that if they do the one hard thing first, everything else on their to-do list will be so much easier.
For twenty years as a professional athlete, I would wake up, push myself past the point of exhaustion in the weight room, move to the track where I ran until I was lying on the ground, cramping and maybe throwing up, then get up the next morning and do it all over again. I made it because I adopted a mindset. I decided that the hard tasks were the path to victory.
And that discipline has also guided me as I seek to grow in my walk with Christ. Even if the people who visit our studios aren’t training for the Olympics, they can be transformed by understanding that by willingly stepping into the most challenging task (which for many is fitness) other parts of their lives will fall into place as well.
When I was first being introduced to the world of business, I discovered that in the fitness industry, just as in world-class athletics, there are people who are only concerned with what you can do for them. I chose to partner with Joe because we both put the needs of clients ahead of anything else, and we see Eat the Frog Fitness as an impetus for overall life change. We are determined, through Eat the Frog, to glorify God in our business dealings and to provide genuine encouragement to our clients.
By crafting the Eat the Frog program, I am hoping to emulate those who encouraged me along the way. I think of friends like Sebrle, who paced me in the 1,500 on my most memorable competitive day. And then there’s Chris Huffins, a role model of mine and Olympic bronze medalist who, when I was a 16-year-old just getting started in decathlon, saw my ratty training shoes and gave me his own shoes, which were customized for him and emblazoned with his name.
I have never forgotten Huffins’ amazing gesture—it drove me on every step of my ascent toward the Olympic gold, and it reminds me today of Eat the Frog’s core mission—to understand each person’s fitness journey and give them the encouragement they need to tackle that difficult thing head-on.