TENFOLD

Determined, persistent and never satisfied.

Sounds a lot like my old girlfriend's mother.  She was always pushing for something, a wedding, a glass of good Tuscan red, dinner at Maestro's. But it's not.

I spend some of my time working with professional fighters, some of the nicest, gentlest, smartest people in the world. Now I'm not the main trainer. Just one of the guys who helps out, mostly with the strength and conditioning, nutrition and coagulating.

What a lot of people don't understand is good fighters have to travel somewhat to get good sparring. The world doesn't always come to your gym. So there's quite a bit of helping each other out.

 The head trainer can't always accompany them. Sometimes you're getting more than one fighter ready for an upcoming bout. So you spend much time with them.

Bottom line they get to know you and you get to know them. Fighters, to borrow a line from a Randy Newman song, are people, too. When you go on the road for a fight there’s usually some downtime, not to mention the media and the weigh-in, before the fight. And all things pending, the tension.

Often it can turn into a kind of father-son or big-bro-little-bro relationship. Nobody likes to lose. Some of us hate to lose a big bunch, as in it freaking sucks, not to mention the pain. There's a lot of sweat, some disappointment and more than a few laughs. The winning validates it all.

And that brings me to my point. You go through a lot together. The word love gets vented too much these days, especially in sports. But that's what it becomes, a labor of love.Top to bottom I wouldn't trade my guys for anyone's.  And it never disturbs me when I hear someone else in the profession utter the same sentiment.

Determined, persistent and never satisfied. Sounds like characteristics of a good options or commodities trader. At least all the ones I know. 

Some no doubt will object, particularly to that never satisfied part. That's their choice. We all make them. But whatever you do or want to do, those three attributes expand way beyond the realm of professional fighting.

Determined, persistent and never give up. As structured it breaks the rule of parallelism in grammar. But so what. 

Treat them with care and respect and they'll repay you ten-fold.