Imagine you are invited to dinner with your favorite athlete. What do you do? I personally would be a mess. From what to wear down to making sure everything is immaculate, there are tons of things to do. And the most important part? How to act! Like I said, mess. Now imagine doing it regularly. Renowned personal trainer of LeBron James, Mike Mancias, faced something of a similar situation.

You might argue that meeting with a celebrity on a regular basis might make one behave normally. But LeBron? Really? You think you will ever be able to stop screeching with excitement each time you get anywhere close to the King? For Mancias, he had to teach himself to maintain composure.

And he had a great teacher to help him with that. As Mike is to James, Tim Grover is to Michael Jordan. Of course, Grover has worked closely with the late Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade, but his time with MJ is the most talked about. And per Mancias, he spent just four weeks in total with the Attack Athletics’ owner, but he sure learned some very crucial lessons that he would carry with him for life. 

“I was around him for two weeks, two summers in a row when Jordan was coming back to play for the Wizards,” he said, by way of context in his appearance on the High Performance Podcast. “I learned it wasn’t about the exercises, it wasn’t about the working out. It was about how to handle myself around greatness. I watched Tim; how he handled himself around greatness and around MJ. And so I took more; I learned more from that than I did the exercises.”

Clearly, those four weeks did its job. But why was this so necessary?

LeBron James’ trainer details the importance of maintaining that professionalism

When someone is constantly surrounded by greats like LeBron James, Michael Jordan, or Kobe Bryant, keeping calm is a skill you would pick up along the way, right? Apparently, that isn’t the case. Per Mike Mancias, being a trainer (or for that matter any designation you carry that puts you in charge of making these athletes the best version of themselves) requires real training. And why is that?

Simply because outside of the star power, or the otherworldly skills, or the glamorous lifestyle they lead, they are essentially like you and me, subject to different moods. And he provided the example of Jordan and Grover. “If one day MJ came in, in a mood [and] Tim was there and he would provide the energy for Michael.” In fact, Mancias pointed out that Tim would even “supersede it!”

And the key to it all is patience. Or if we were to get technical, it’s called, “reading the energy in the room.” How does that work? We’ll let Mike explain it himself. After all, it’s what he learned in the process of helping these men in the kind if illustrious career they have.

“If I’m just working one-on-one with an individual, if he or she comes in and they’re in a mood, I don’t do any digging … If they want to talk, they’ll talk. But my energy doesn’t change,” he explained. What he does do, though, is push them to work harder. Challenge them even more.

“Because by me challenging them, they forget about their problems and feel better after their workout … [In fact], they usually figure out a way,” Mancias stated happily.

It seems the proverb, ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’ is just as applicable in the case of these men, as well. Behind the success, tenacity, and longevity of the athletes we look to as our role models lies a dedicated group of men and women who work just as hard to help them achieve their dreams. Be it learning how to handle greatness or help them on their way to greatness.