I woke up this morning to the sound of a horn in my ear.  My football coach was standing over me screaming.  He said that I had two minutes to get dressed and ready to get out to the field or else I would have a severe punishment.  I was sprinting the 100 yards to the field from my dorm room.  I could hear the coach counting off the time.  I was 17 seconds late.
I had been sitting on the edge of the old, wooden bench when all of a sudden a ball came whipping past my face.  I had barely turned my head in time to miss the ball.  I asked, “What was that?” and seconds later, I could hear my coach yelling from the distance.
He screamed out, “You’re lucky that my aim was off.”  I asked my fellow teammate what I had done wrong, and he reminded me that there was no sitting down during the practice.  “Stand up and do something”, he said.  I stood up as quickly as I could before my coach found ways to be even angrier at me.
The whole team was forced to do wind sprints just because I had sat down when I was out of breath.  I could hear people whisper about how they were angry at me for causing them to have to do more conditioning.  After the third set of sprints, the quarterback of the team begged the coach, “Can we please have some water,” in which coach replied by telling the quarterback, “Water is for the weak who cannot find enough strength in their body to keep on going.”  I swear that everybody on the team moaned at the same time, but nobody else had enough courage to stand up and ask the coach to please let them have water. 
Our legs were burning, and we could hardly stand up without collapsing to the ground.  The coach told us that we had one more sprint, and if we all could get from one end of the field and back in under 45 seconds, we would be done.  We all sprinted as hard as we could, and most of us finished at about 35 seconds.  The linemen, who were bigger than the rest of us, were having trouble getting done on time.  Everybody that had already finished the drill encouraged the linemen to go as hard as they could, and the last guy finished at exactly 45 seconds. 
Luckily for the players, one of our linebackers that was returning from last year remembered how harsh the coach was and thought of a way to cool off.  He snuck ice into the bathroom so that when we felt overheated, we could tell coach that we need to go to the bathroom where we would sit and eat ice to cool down.  While I was in the bathroom eating ice, the team captain came into the bathroom to relieve himself from all of the gallon of Gatorade he had drank before practice.  He came in looking like a dying man and told me, “I can’t take this anymore. These practices are intolerable!  What coach is putting us through has to be illegal!”  I was so tired that the only way that I could reply was by nodding my head in agreement, and even that was almost to exhausting.
After I returned to the field from my “bathroom break” practice was almost over, and the coach was ready to deliver one of his motivating speeches.  He lectured us by saying, “I know I may be hard on you guys, but I assure you that the hard work that I put you through will all be worth it when we get our third-straight national championship this May.  You are probably feeling the burn in your legs right now, and I promise you that your legs are going to be sore every day for the next three months.  But it will be worth it when you’re running faster and are better conditioned then all of the opponents that you will play against.  It will feel as though the games that you play are easier than the practices.  Just imagine the glory you will feel when you are known as national champions.”
Suddenly, we were all rejuvenated with energy and we were ready to endure another four hour practice right then and there.  I may not agree with all of his coaching tactics, but I truly believed that our coach was going to get us into winning shape, and we would be champions soon enough.