You may have been considering getting a coach for a while. You might not be interested at all in being coached. Maybe you already have a coach - fantastic - we are a worthwhile investment. Wherever you stand, read on and hear why having a coach isn’t just worth it - it’s advisable.
The main reason I hear from athletes is having accountability in their training. Knowing that someone is watching from afar, keeping an eye on you and making sure you execute the sessions correctly. I’ve often heard an athlete say that my voice was in their head in a particularly challenging moment.. It’s important to state that accountability isn’t like having a boss - your coach is not your boss. The relationship is a two way street. The coach is accountable to deliver a plan that is within the athletes capabilities and get’s them to their goals. The athlete is accountable for seeing it through without having their hand held every step of the way.
Coaches have a deep and hopefully extensive knowledge of the sport they coach. They should have built this up over time by more often than not competing themselves as well as learning and shadowing other coaches. But a coach really gains experience and miles on the clock from working with an increasing range of athletes. You see you’re all different and present different challenges which a coach will need to work with you to overcome. What worked for one will not work for another. But this knowledge allows them to stop you making common pitfalls in training and hopefully accelerate your progress. Do not trust a coach who tells you that this is the plan and you need to make it work.
In this day and age you can quite easily get a training program from the internet in the time it takes to boil the kettle. Great! But will it work? Honestly, if you follow it precisely then yeah you’ll probably have some success. But the majority of people will struggle with this. Enter the coach. Good coaches will take the knowledge and experience they have of the sport and training and make that plan work for you. Is the plan matched to your ability levels. It may be way beyond your current level. It may be way below it and you may be able to handle more. You might be able to handle more but life just won’t allow it to be that way so the coach will need to make sure that every session counts to your goal.
And let’s not forget we do not live in a perfect world. At some point the proverbial is going to hit the fan. You’re gunna have a bad week for social events, a work deadline, illness. A coach can stop you spiralling and worrying and help find the best way to make the most of your precious time to get the best results. What may seem like a complete failure of a week can often be rescued and put back on track very quickly with a quick chat with your coach. They have a unique position of being able to see the big picture which athletes often overlook or forget as they can hyper fixate on small details when from their perspective things are going wrong.
My greatest takeaway from coaching over the years though is that the best way to describe a coach is a support mechanism. The ‘plan’ is really only a small part of the coaches job. A lot of athletes I coach could write their own plan. But a coach is there to give the athlete objective feedback about a session. To educate the athlete about how and why we are doing something a certain way. To give that athlete a push in a direction they might not have considered. To get them through that barrier that they thought was unbreakable. To catch them when they fall and get them back up quickly. To watch them grow and develop in ways they often haven’t realised or considered.
Great. So how do I choose a coach?
Not every coach is for every athlete - and that’s fine. We can’t be all things to everyone. For me though the best way to choose your coach is talk to the athletes they coach and ask them their experience. They are our best advertisement. Make sure they are properly qualified for what they are offering and have experience in doing so. Everybody has to start somewhere of course but if they have rushed through qualifications quickly and not consolidated their knowledge by experiencing the sport themselves then the likelihood is they won’t be able to stop you from falling foul of bad practice. Following that make sure that the coach is taking time to understand your personal circumstances and what your goals are in sport. Not everybody wants an Olympic medal and not everybody wants to give their lives to training. It works for some people but if a coach has an attitude of ‘Do this and find a way to get it done’ then that’s a hard pass for me.
So are you convinced?
TL:DR - Get a coach as they’ll stop you messing up.