And this belief leads to failure in the field 100% of the time.
“There’s a trend with new age ‘performance coaches’, aiming to make coaching about themselves.
Look at all the cringe photos they post of themselves ‘training athletes’.
Coaching will forever be a selfless endeavor.
If you can’t accept that, success will forever be beyond you.”
-Ray Zingler on X
“Strength & Conditioning Coaches do what they do because they live for the everyday, not just the gameday. We spend 99% of our year working behind the scenes, preparing athletes so they can shine for that 1%. We embrace & maximize the mundane so that they can experience the monumental. That’s the job.” -Ryan Horn
I don’t know that a greater representation of truth regarding what we do in our field has ever been articulated. I’m not sure if this quote will ever be beat, either. Just pure beauty.
Coaching isn’t about the coach, it’s about the athlete.
Coaching, by definition is a selfless act.
As a coach you’re taking your past, your mistakes, your successes, your experience, your knowledge, your wisdom, and your life lessons and packaging them up so that you can present them to people who don’t have near the experience you do and then working tirelessly to cut their learning curves.
You’re trying to give away what took you thousands of hours to accrue in dozens.
That’s what coaching is.
But now?
Now we have mid 20’s (and sometimes younger) “performance coaches” with no past, a lot of mistakes, no experience, no wisdom, and superficial life lessons aiming to make coaching about themselves.
Don’t believe me?
Check out every “new age” performance coach’s Instagram page.
What you’ll see is an athlete doing some (usually ridiculous) hurdle hop drill, while the coach awkwardly stands in action mode cueing the athlete so that an off brand photographer can take a picture.
Then, said experience-less, pencil neck coach takes the photo straight to Instagram, writes some horrid ass caption about “grinding” and puts a Lil’ Baby song in the background.
It’s the cringest failed attempt of clout chasing I’ve ever seen.
But as long as these bros are getting fire emoji comments from other bros (who also don’t know what the hell they’re doing or what coaching is about) the ego train rolls on.
It’s sad that this is what our world has come to.
People are getting into the field for the wrong reasons and because of this, failure is not probable.
It’s 100% inevitable.
It aint about you bro, it’s about them.
And that’s why sustained success will forever be beyond you.
