I get asked this more than almost anything else, and I still do not have a neat answer. I was once told that the way to truly seek out a good coach or trainer is a three-step process: education, ability, and action. I do not hold each of those steps at the same value, because the weight of each one changes with the job. A professor needs a deeper education base to teach in a classroom. A coach needs a very strong ability. Ability, in short, is getting the job done in the weight room. Action is showing you believe in your process.
I have put my time in as a coach, a trainer, a writer, a speaker, and a small business owner. I have also come to know a lot of athletes, trainers, coaches, and professors in this field. The one thing I have found is there are no experts. Not one. Nada. I also know we are all looking for the same things: to better ourselves, our teams, and our athletes. As long as those three stay in balance, things move forward.
When the desire to better yourself becomes greater than the desire to better your client, team, or athlete, then your program sucks.
The notes I keep coming back to
Here are the notes I keep coming back to.
1. Wanting to become better.
2. Teaching athletes to teach themselves and others.
3. Making athletes understand no sport is an individual effort.
4. Teaching real life lessons they can use outside of the sport.
5. Knowing what drives each athlete.
6. Learning to see what is being said when nothing is being said.
7. If you cannot find the solution, find someone who can.
8. You do not own them or their success. You are there to support it, and to take responsibility when things do not go as planned.
9. Stop trying to get them to be the same as each other, and understand you are not "them" either.
10. If they leave, it was not a good fit or you failed. Get over it. You are not that great.
That list is the short version. The rest of this is why those points matter.
Get your ass in the gym
Wanting to become better is not a poster on the wall. It is the work you are still willing to do after you already know a few things. I have been training for powerlifting competitions since 1983. I can honestly say everything I have learned about training has been directly related to my time under the bar and the people I have met along the way. When your passion is strength, you always find a way to get better.
I feel the best coaches are the ones who have attained both under-the-bar knowledge and book knowledge. If you had to choose only one, it would have to be the under-the-bar coach. He knows how to get you where you are going because he has been there. After all, how do you know what really works if you never put it to the test? I see a lot of new programs on how to get strong, and the first thing I ask the author is, "Have you done it? What did it do for you?"
Years ago I came to train with Louie Simmons at Westside Barbell. He was semi-retired at the time. We had a big group of lifters, but only two or three were elite and most were below average. I believe there was only one 900 pound squat. When Louie decided to make a comeback and begin training hard again, the entire gym changed. A few years later, we were all elites and had over six 900 pound squats. The rest was history.
Tell me a coach who trains is not a better coach. If you are a coach, get your ass in the gym and get strong again. You owe it to yourself and your team.
Teach them to teach themselves
Teaching athletes to teach themselves is the real turning point. The turning point in the training process is when they begin to know what they need to do, how to do it, and when to do it. I discovered this years ago speaking with very successful bodybuilders, powerlifters, and strongmen. They all agreed there was a time when they became accountable for their own results. They took it upon themselves to discover what worked for them, created their own basic training template, and built the program from week to week and day to day.
The trick is how you take the average guy and get him to that level of thinking. Two ways. Get your ass in the gym. Study the training process. If you do all the thinking for them, they never get there.
No sport is an individual effort, even when the bar is on one person's back. None of us got here alone. Every lesson I have passed on came from someone else who took the time to help me when they had no reason to. A good coach makes that visible. The work is still theirs. The room, the partners, the people who taught you, and the people who will take what you learned and carry it forward are part of the lift.
That is also why the real life lessons matter. Strength is not a destination. It is a way of processing life. Effort, patience, failure, recovery, and repetition show up under the bar and everywhere else. If the only thing they leave with is a bigger total, you left a lot on the table.
Knowing what drives each athlete, and learning to see what is being said when nothing is being said, are the same skill seen from two sides. You must learn communication skills, verbal and non-verbal. You have to be able to read your athletes and clients to know how they feel about the program and what they are putting into it. You also have to know when to push them and when to back it off. Those skills come with time. They cannot be taught in a classroom or a book, because different people will react differently to the same stimulus.
Book smart is not gym smart
If you cannot find the solution, find someone who can. Education is important, and it comes from a lot of places: trade journals, conferences, other coaches, magazines, websites, seminars, and books. You should also look outside the strength and conditioning profession for ideas you may never have thought about. Staying only in your own field will limit your growth, because you will only be using what has already been done. If you want to learn strength, you have to get to the source and talk with the people who possess it.
The most common problem I see with trainers and coaches is that their education is over-killed to the point of being ridiculous. They look like they have spent thousands of hours reading with no time in the gym. That is great if you want to be a professor. If you want to get results as a coach, you need to realize there is a huge difference between "book smart" and "gym smart." To this day I still hear remarks about very smart people such as, "Yes, he is smart as hell and has a very high IQ, but he has no common sense." It is the same with coaching. "Yes, he really knows his stuff, but his exercise technique is the worst I have ever seen."
Education still matters. Without a real base of it, you are training in the dark and your program sucks. It all has to work into your own training philosophy. We all come from different places, with different experiences, so why do so many people try to copy someone else's training philosophy? Strength training is as much an art as it is a science, and the only way to have a high level of success is to build upon what you truly believe is correct. I am blown away by how many times I have asked a coach or trainer what their training philosophy is and all I get back is a blank stare. Yet they still have a ton of questions. How can you ask a question when you have no idea how you will use the answer? Your questions should always be building on what will help your philosophy. Keep in mind that your philosophy can and will change over time.
That is point nine in different clothes. Stop trying to get them to be the same as each other, and understand you are not them either. One size does not fit all. You do not own their success, and you are not the reason they did all the hard work.
Ability is making a good athlete great
Ability is the part a lot of people skip. You must have the ability to make your team or clients stronger. I do not mean taking someone who is below average and making him or her good. Anyone can do that. You have to have the ability to make a good athlete great.
Ability is taking your philosophy and making it work. If your training philosophy holds strength at a very high level, then you have to be able to make your athletes or clients stronger. That determines the success of your program. I am amazed at how many times I have heard, "We have a great program, it is from so-and-so university and it always works for them, but it did not work for us." No. It worked for the coach who had the ability to implement the program because it was based on his philosophy. How can you be expected to have the ability to implement a program that is not based on your own philosophy? The same thing is true for everyone who says, "We tried the Westside program and it did not work for us." I would also bet those same coaches have tried many other programs, and those did not work for them either. If they do not have the ability to make it work, then no, it will not work.
So how do you develop ability? First, pick a program you believe in and know. That will be a program based on your training philosophy. Second, learn to communicate, including the things that are not being said. In short, you can have great education, but without the ability to put it to use, your program sucks.
Action: the coach has to train
Then there is action. This, to me, is the most important of the three. The coach themselves must be above-average in the weight room. That is a biased opinion, and I will own it. Look at it this way. The average personal training client will not last one year. The high school strength coach will have an athlete for three to four years. The university-level coach will also have the athlete for four years. Most of the time you get those athletes and clients with a very limited training background. If that is all you have, then the only knowledge about training you will have particular experience with is with athletes who have one to four years of training. That cycle continues over and over, and what have you really learned? Compare that to training yourself, seriously, not some get-in-shape fitness program, for the past ten years. You would have ten years of evolving experience to build off.
You will also gain experience that does not show up in a textbook. What real straining should feel and look like. What being in shape is really about. How to set the bar for each lift. What it means to stay tight. How to breathe under tension. How to grip the bar for the best results. How the slightest correction can make all the difference. That strength can be limited depending on who is coaching it. What bar speed feels like. Plus a million other things you will not read in books.
You are not that great
That brings me back to number ten.
If they leave, it was not a good fit or you failed. Get over it. You are not that great.
Do you have athletes or clients that, if they left to work with a very respected coach, would they get better? If you happened to get an athlete that spent a few years working with a very respected coach, could you make them better, or would they get worse, injured, or quit?
If you are honest, you will realize you are not that great, so stop taking credit for all of their hard work and achievements. They did the work, and dealt with the pain and other bullshit that comes with the territory. You are, can be, and most likely will be replaced, if not sooner than later.
Do not think you are more important than you are. Do your part, play your role, and never keep them from becoming the best they can be.
If THEY can be better than you can be your ass, so can YOU.
Live, Learn, Pass On.
Dave Tate / elitefts
