Last week, I covered five of the most important lessons I’ve learned in a decade of coaching. This week, I’ll unveil the next five. You can read the full article here, but to recap:
- Care More
- Ask More Questions
- Overcomplicate Before You Simplify
- Be a Good Lifter
- Set High Standards
Let’s start the second half, shall we?
6. See the Big Picture
Building strength is a lifelong process. As Matt Wenning says, “He who lifts the longest gets the strongest.” There are no overnight sensations in powerlifting. Even if it seems like some hot new semi-celebrity lifter is setting world records moments after they arrived on the scene, no doubt there are years of hard work and dedication that occurred before they entered the spotlight.
With that said, it’s important to take a 10,000-foot view of your training. Seeing the big picture means:
- Delaying gratification. Sacrifice what you want NOW for what you want MOST.
- One single workout is not life or death, but…
- Today + Today + Today = Your Life. You gotta show up each day.
- If you get injured, better to take it easy for a week to get back to 100 percent instead of pushing through it, making it worse and missing even more training time.
- If you feel like you’re not making enough progress or making fast enough progress, ask yourself, “Where was I at this time last year?”
I was finishing up a deload a few weeks ago and my squats were feeling heavier than I thought they should. I was doing a couple singles at 500 pounds, trying to reacclimate to heavier weights so that when I started a new training block in a few days, the weights wouldn’t crush me. I had to remind myself of when I first squatted 500 pounds and thought it was a lifetime achievement. Now it’s a deload weight. Gotta keep it all in perspective.
7. Overcoach at the Beginning
Similar to “overcomplicate before you simplify” from the previous post, new coaches tend to overcoach when they first start working with clients. They use too many words, take too long to explain and demonstrate an exercise, and then bombard their client with coaching cues and feedback as the set is occurring. Many clients are already nervous, intimidated and overwhelmed when they walk into the gym, and overcoaching can just make it worse. But I think new coaches have to overcoach to learn how to coach.
Why? For the same reason you have to overcomplicate before you simplify: when you don’t know much, you have to woodshed your skills before you can separate the big concepts from the unimportant details. And when it comes to developing your coaching skills, you kinda have to over-explain and over-demonstrate exercises and give too much feedback so that you can understand how to refine your explanations, demonstrations and feedback. It’s unfortunate for those clients early on in your coaching career, but you gotta break some eggs to make an omelet.
I know a lot of coaches read my blog, but if you’re a lifter who’s been on the receiving end of a newbie coach who’s overcoaching you, be patient. Understand that they’re learning too. But also, be honest and upfront if their coaching style is confusing or frustrating. Tell them, “I’m having a hard time understanding this. Can you simplify it for me?” I wish more clients had told me that. Feedback is a gift, and if you give it tactfully, both you and the coach will ultimately have a better training experience.
8. Use Constraints
A constraints-based coaching approach involves setting up a task and the environment in such a way that the correct way to perform the task can be self-discovered by the athlete. It’s a more hands-off approach for the coach, but is often learned and retained more readily by the athlete because the answer isn’t spoon-fed to them.
This approach is becoming a hot topic in sports performance and strength training in general, and for good reason. It’s made a world of difference for me as a coach. My lifters learn quicker and become more self-sufficient when we lean on a constraints-led approach to teaching the competitive powerlifts.
Common examples of a constraints-based approach in team sports might include:
- A basketball team scrimmaging with no dribbling allowed; only passing and shooting.
- A right-handed baseball player taking batting practice with a screen to the left of them, only allowing them to hit the baseball to the opposite field.
- A soccer team scrimmaging on only half of the field, crowding the environment to encourage faster decision making.
We can extrapolate this approach to powerlifting via our exercise selection and the feedback coaches give to their lifters. Anecdotally, this is a far superior method to giving verbal feedback. A well-selected exercise with built-in constraints will give lifters immediate feedback during a set, which helps them self-correct and develop their movement skills more rapidly.
It helps to see common verbal cues side-by-side with constraints-based exercises designed to accomplish the same task:
| Exercise | Movement Problem | Verbal Cue | Constraints-Based Exercise |
| Squat | Lifter falls forward at the bottom | “Chest up” | Pin squats below parallel |
| Bench Press | Lifter flares elbows too early as they press back up | “Tuck the elbows” | Close grip Spoto press |
| Deadlift | Lifter rounds upper back as they start the lift | “Take the slack out of the bar” | Band-distracted deadlifts |
All these exercises will be more effective in helping a lifter understand how to adjust their technique than simply telling them what to do.
9. Get Outside Your Comfort Zone
We’ve all seen the classic anti-Venn diagram where “comfort zone” and “where the magic happens” do NOT intersect. It’s true: challenge creates change.
Most of the best events in my life happened directly on the other side of unbearable discomfort:
- Leaving a 9-5 job to intern at Cressey Sports Performance (which led to my then-dream job)
- Leaving Cressey Sports Performance to open The Strength House
- Having kids
- Giving up my co-ownership of The Strength House to open Bonvec Strength
Similarly, many people are afraid to start going to the gym, afraid to hire a trainer, afraid to change coaches when they’re not getting the results they want, afraid to sign up for their first powerlifting meet. Understandable. All these things create potential discomfort and conflict. But as the saying goes, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
However, after coaching for 10 years, I’ve realized that when people are TOO uncomfortable, they often shut down. Learning and growth grinds to a halt. It’s tough to have your beliefs and views challenged. So it’s the job of the coach, professor, presenter, etc. to deliver information and feedback in a way that can be openly accepted by the person being made uncomfortable.
This is no easy task. That’s why as a coach, I try to quickly find common ground with new clients to build trust. If they tell me they’ve been told something or believe something that I’m about to debunk, I try to let them down easy. I’ll say, “I understand why you might think that. Let me see if I can show you why we might try it a different way.”
So if you’re the one making an uncomfortable decision, know that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. And if you’re coaching or guiding someone who’s clearly stepping outside their comfort zone, show empathy, patience and understanding.
10. Sweep the Sheds
James Kerr’s book Legacy dives into what makes New Zealand’s All Blacks rugby team one of the most successful teams in the history of sports. One of the core lessons is “sweep the sheds.” That is, despite being the best in the world at what they do, the players would still help clean the field, locker room and stadium after each match was finished.
This lesson never resonated deeper than when I opened my own gym. I’d finally built up the confidence and courage to open my own brick-and-mortar facility with dreams of doing exactly what I wanted, whenever I wanted. Turns out, that involved a lot of vacuuming of floors, scrubbing of toilets and treks to the dumpster with overflowing garbage bags.
But I was ready for it. And still do it. I’m not always enthusiastic about it, but whenever I’m feeling lazy, I remember a moment during my Cressey Sports Performance internship that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
On the very first day, a full-time coach and internship coordinator was going over the cleaning duties with the interns. Given that it was our first day on site, most of us were eager to make a good impression, even if that meant dusting and mopping a 15,000-square-foot facility.
However, once we broke the huddle, one of my fellow interns uttered a sentence that will ring in my ears for eternity: “I shouldn’t have to clean. I’ve got a Master’s degree.”
I had to literally place my hand over my face to keep from laughing. How out of touch could you be? I had a Master’s degree too. And the gold-standard strength coach certification. And I couldn’t find a coaching job. We all were interning by choice AND necessity: none of us were employable due to a lack of real-world experience. We weren’t in any position to decline cleaning based on our resumes.
Fast forward nearly a decade and that intern is woefully underemployed. No surprises there, right?
You’re never too big, too smart or too experienced to do the little things. Lead by example. Sweep the sheds.
A Decade of Lessons
Well, I officially feel old. And I feel like there’s still so much to learn. Here’s to many more years of lifting, coaching, learning and helping lifters get stronger.