Walk in the Jungle, Not the Zoo

There’s a big difference between a person walking in the jungle and one walking in a zoo. In a zoo, you get to stroll casually and safely past bored, captive animals with a series of safety barriers between you and them. Walk in the jungle, and suddenly you are no longer solely a spectator. You are being watched as much as you watch, and there are no safety barriers to protect you from an animal wishing to get a little taste.

The jungle doesn’t care if you paid an entry fee. It is wild and free, and it cares only about sustaining itself with food, water, and shelter. Once inside, you might become one-third of that equation. Animals in the jungle don’t care who you are, where you’re from, how much money you have, or who you know. If they decide you look like a meal, they are going to do whatever they can to have you served up for dinner.

In a zoo, the environment is controlled and safe. The visitor is practically guaranteed success in seeing wildlife, whether the animals are eating, playing, sleeping, or altogether disinterested. The entry fee guarantees the visitor a successful experience. The zoo’s Google reviews depend on visitors safely seeing animals in exchange for payment.

Too often, people approach athletics like a zoo instead of a jungle. Parents pay a personal trainer to work with their kid and to tell them the kid is getting better with every payment. They buy all the latest and coolest shoes and gear so their kid looks like a serious baller. The kid looks the part in their home gym and thinks they’re something special. But the athletic jungle doesn’t care about any of that. The jungle animals care only about hunting prey. Athletes who have not been exposed to the big cats and tusked animals of the athletic jungle have no weapons or defenses of their own. They are meals waiting to be had.

Athletes need to be exposed to the jungle. Get out of your gym and go play at someone else’s. Go out to a park with some 40-year-olds who still have something to prove to themselves, and find out whether you can hang with veterans who rely more on their brain than their vertical. Study and learn the lessons of the jungle.

Every gym in America has its best player. That’s great for that kid. They are naturally talented and they worked to earn that status. But if they stay in their own gym and only measure themselves against those players, they will never reach their potential or grow to survive against bigger, better competition. They have to get out into the jungle.

There is no guaranteed success in the jungle. There is only success or failure. Kids don’t like failure. Parents, especially, don’t like failure. But kids need to fail. They need to challenge themselves against better talent and fail. Then they need to fail, get back up, get to work, try again, and learn to succeed. Learn to survive. Learn to eat in the jungle. They need to be chased and they need to survive. They need to be the tenth-best player in a gym, fighting to be the ninth-best, and so on.

Ironically, the flip side is that hunters are not challenged in zoos. Athletes need to learn to become hunters. Hunters don’t want to “window shop” in zoos. They want to stalk and pursue their prey. That prey could just as easily stalk and pursue them. That is the challenge of the jungle. The best hunter is the winner. Athletes need to become hunters. But you can’t learn to hunt in the zoo.

Life is a jungle, not a zoo. Life has no safety barriers. Teaching an athlete to fight and survive in the athletic jungle is also teaching them how to fight and survive in the jungle of life. Successful athletes thrive in the jungle of life. They are hunters, not prey. They have weapons and experience that keep them healthy and alive, prospering in what they do. Get out of the zoo and get into the jungle. Hunt and be hunted. Learn how to survive and thrive among the beasts. That is how champions are made.