Your Crew is Supposed to Make YOU Better, Not Just FEEL Better

There’s something that happens inside a lifting crew that nobody really wants to talk about, because it feels good and it keeps everybody happy.

The hype.

“That was incredible, bro.” “You’re a beast.” “The best squat I’ve ever seen you hit.” Fist bumps, belt tosses. Every session ends with a chorus of it, and you walk out feeling like you’ve got it figured out. Like you’re on track. Like the people around you see exactly what you’re capable of.

And then you step in front of someone who genuinely doesn’t care about your feelings, and you find out real fast how much was left on the table.

 What I Learned in Ohio

A while back I had the opportunity to train at EliteFTS with Dave Tate at his Train Your Ass Off event. If you know anything about Dave and what EliteFTS represents, you know that place isn’t built for comfort. The culture there is built on grit, sweat, blood and honesty. The kind of honesty that only comes from people who care more about your “progress” than your “mood”.

I walked into that gym on the heels of the best meet performance of my life. Best total. Multiple squat PRs in prep. Best DOTS  I’d ever put up. By every metric I had access to, I was moving in the right direction.

Dave watched me squat and said, “Your squat is okay. Your brace fucking sucks. Your adductors are weak and you rely on your quads too much.”

That landed hard. Not because it was mean, but because I had just hit the best numbers of my career and nobody in my circle had said anything close to it. My training partners either hadn’t seen it or hadn’t said anything about it. The compensations I’d built my PRs on top of were still there, just quieter. The kind of stuff that, when someone finally calls it out, you think: “How long has this been happening?”

The sting faded fast, because what Dave actually gave me was direction. My coach and I had something real to work with. Not a vague “keep grinding” but a specific roadmap: fix the brace, build the adductors, stop leaning on your quads to save you. That one session did more for my long-term development than months of sessions where everyone told me I looked great.

Dave has a way of putting things that cuts right to it. He said something recently, and I’m going to carry this one for a long time, “you’ve never had the privilege of having someone who doesn’t care about your feelings telling you that you suck.”

Again. The “privilege”. Not a punishment. Not cruelty. A privilege.

To be in the presence of someone with enough expertise to see the truth AND enough integrity to say it out loud is a gift. One most lifters never get. 

The Problem With Hype Culture

Hype has a place. I’m not here to kill your pre-lift ritual or tell you to stop celebrating your training partners. Energy matters. Community matters. I wouldn’t be where I am without the people at Team OPS who showed up for me when the work was hard and the progress felt invisible.

But hype without accountability isn’t culture. It’s comfort.

The pattern I’ve seen play out over and over: someone continually doesn’t hit depth on their squat. Their training partner says nothing because they don’t want to mess with their confidence before a big set or mess up the IG reel.. The next session, same thing.“Oh, it’ll be there on meet day!” Now at a meet the lift gets red-lighted. Crazy!

The training partner didn’t help. They just watched and clapped.

Not brotherhood. Not culture. Just nice. And nice doesn’t build better lifters.

-----

What Real Accountability Looks Like

Accountability in a lifting crew doesn’t mean being harsh. It means caring enough about the person in front of you to tell them the truth before it costs them something.

One of the most valuable things I learned in my life is that feedback delivered with respect and intention is one of the greatest things one person can give another. Not tearing someone down. Showing them the gap between where they are and where they could be, and then helping them close it.

It doesn’t have to be mean. It has to be honest.

 Building Culture Worth Belonging To

An honest culture starts with trust. People have to believe feedback is coming from a place of investment, not ego. When your crew knows you’re there to serve their growth, honesty lands differently. It lands different coming from someone who has shown up consistently, learned your tendencies, and actually gives a damn about where you end up.

But it also requires courage on both sides. The person giving feedback has to be willing to say something awkward. The person receiving it has to be willing to let their defenses down long enough to hear it.

Hype is cheap. Anyone can slap their knee and yell “LET’S GO!” when you hit a big lift. Real accountability, the kind that catches a problem during warm up sets and points out a technical flaw while there’s still time to fix it, takes investment. It takes caring about your training partners results, not ego, to grow the relationship. It takes a crew genuinely trying to make each other better.

The trip to EliteFTS didn’t make me feel good in the moment. It made me better. The gaps that got pointed out? I’m working on them. The awareness I walked away with isn’t something you can manufacture by surrounding yourself with people who only know how to cheer.

Your people should make you better. Not just feel better.

If everyone in your crew leaves every session feeling great but none of you are actually improving, it’s worth asking whether you have a crew or just an audience.

See each other clearly. Tell the truth. Care enough to say something even when it’s uncomfortable.

That is the privilege.