Coaching athletes is far more mental than it is physical.
“How was your day? Everything going okay? Can I help you with anything?
Most coaches are concerned with exercise selection and set and rep schemes.
I care about that stuff too, but I’m far more concerned about people.
Serving people is how you maximize their performance.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
Training athletes is far more mental than it is physical.
In all honesty, the neck down stuff is fairly simple.
Assess the athlete, define needs based on areas of needed improvement, training age, injury history, sporting demands, and personal goals.
Then, simply apply modality to fit the bill and apply a ton of consistency to it (that’s the REAL HARD part).
I spend far more time learning who my athletes are than I do trying to wow them with some super cool, ‘different’, stand-alone work out that looks cool on Instagram.
Yeah, I do the opposite of what you see most trainers doing on Instagram.
Notice I use the word trainer and not coach. Coaching is much different. Coaches coach athletes, trainers prescribe (oftentimes bullshit) exercises.
Back on track.
What is their body language telling me?
How are they carrying themselves?
What are they telling me with their words?
To take it a step further, how is their tone in what they are saying?
Is this typical or atypical presentation of this athlete?
Do they have a tendency to present this way and “that’s just them?”
Or is something off today, leading me to believe I need to make an adjustment to todays training session?
When a work horse of mine tells me, “Ray, we need to lay off ‘x’ today,” with no questions asked, we call an audible.
When a kid who has a tendency to not ‘like doing x’ this is when I press in and encourage hard because I know it’s a preference issue and not an “I physically can’t do this, today” issue.
This is a little bit more than printing out a nice, clean, crisp, spreadsheet and just telling athletes how many sets and reps to do of certain exercises.
Like I’ve always said, as a strength coach, it’s never about how much you know or how well you can write a program. It’s always about how well you can read athletes and make (real time) adjustments, when necessary.
S&C isn’t a “weights” or “sprints” field.
It is a people field.
The best way to help others to improve their performance is to serve THEM.
Not your own ego, ideologies, or biases.
Without the athlete, the need for a coach ceases to exist.
It’s about them.
It’s always about them.
