You could tell when one of his PE classes had ended. The guys in his class were laying on benches, muscles still quivering, trying to recover enough to clean up and head to the next class. Everyone else had left the area before those in Coach Colbert’s weightlifting class were able to sit upright. We were the survivors.

He told us on the first day of class that half the students would drop within a few weeks. He was right. He told us that if we survived the semester, we deserved an A, but the university would not allow that, and that we would be required to take a test at the end of the semester. He told us not to worry, none of us would die during a class session. Besides, he reminded us, he knew first aid and CPR.  He told us that by the end of the semester, we would be able to complete his end-of-class routine – 100 pushups – before heading to the locker room. He was right.

He inspired us to dig deep. I weighed 130 pounds and could get a single bench press of 210 and get multiple lifts at 170 or more, depending on the day. That was 50 years and 80 pounds ago, but I forever remember Coach Colbert and what he was able to get his class survivors to accomplish. He had expectations and we met them. We met them because we believed that he believed we could and would. And we did.

The program was based on circuit training on Universal Gym equipment. Within a couple of weeks, the movement around the equipment – cycle ends, move to next set, set weight, get in position, start at the whistle…all in a matter of seconds – was almost choreography. As guys dropped out of the class, the cycles became even smoother.  We became a system that moved from station to station.

I signed up for the class again, but the instructor was a grad student. He was un-inspired and un-inspiring; he wanted us to work out but didn’t seem to care if we succeeded. He was the antithesis of Coach Colbert.

I’ll never forget Coach. He believed and that inspired. I’ll never be able to accomplish physically what I did under his guidance, but I’ll always have the lesson that the first step to inspire someone to accomplish more than they thought possible is to believe in them. The second step is to provide them the guidance they need and hold them accountable. The class was called weightlifting, but the lessons were about life.