DTR: Defining The Relationship
OR: How Coaching Works
I get a lot of questions about how coaching works, how onboarding works, what kind of athletes I take on, etc., and I wanted to throw this out there!
Who Do I Coach?
Well, to give you some idea of the diversity, I’ve worked with motorsport athletes, triathletes, a professional Spartan racer, runners, cyclists, and skiers of all kinds. I’ve worked with athletes as young as 12, and as old as 77. I’ve worked with men, I’ve worked with women, and I’ve worked with those who don’t identify as men or women. I’ve worked with people who couldn’t give two shits about racing, and I’ve worked with people for whom racing was the only goal. I’ve worked with people for an hour, and I recently parted ways with an athlete I coached for 15 years. I’ve coached athletes to their first 5K, and I’ve coached world class athletes. I’ve trained athletes for events lasting two minutes, and events lasting six continuous days.
These days I mostly coach multi-sport mountain athletes whose events are 5-120 minutes. They race skimo in the winter, and then do some mountain running and/or mountain biking in the summer. For some of them, skimo is the main sport. For some of them, summer sports are main, and skimo is secondary.
The general theme of those who’ve seen the most gains:
Progress is a priority. The athletes who see the most gains are willing to do (within reason) whatever it takes. I’m not talking about quitting jobs and extreme diets and cutting off friends, I’m talking about giving me a large amount of influence over their workout time, and then trying to do a good job of not being a complete asshat outside of those workouts. On the flip side, if you come to me and give me a goal and a bunch of limitations (“I won’t go slow/fast, I won’t make any diet tweaks, I won’t hike, I will say yes to any invitation”), then there isn’t a whole I can change and if you didn’t need to change, you’d already be as capable as you wanted. This is a mindset, not a place in life. I’ve had mothers and fathers and CEOs nail this, and had young single people be terrible at it. Notice that I’m not saying “you need to give me 20 hours per week.” I’ve had people give me large amounts of control of 6 hours and make a ton of progress, and people mostly ignore my advice for 20 hours a week and go nowhere.
Excellent communicators. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on, how your legs felt in your workouts, whether you’re in a good head space, what days you have travel coming up, etc. The more you tell me, the more I can help you. Obviously there are limits. I’m not a therapist, and I’m not your best friend (yet?). But there’s a strong trend that those who talk to me the most see the most results.
Willing to play the long game. No good fitness gain comes quickly. If you want to level up, it’s going to take years, not months or weeks.
What’s My Coaching Philosophy?
Long Term. If you come to me and say “I want to do this in 3 months” I’m going to encourage you to do that same thing in 15 months, but with much higher ability levels. Remember how much all nighters in college fucking sucked, and how shit the result was? Training for something scary in three months is cramming, it’s not training. If you take 15 months to do that same thing you’re going to learn more, gain more, stress less, be injured less, etc.
Risk Management. This is something I’ve learned the hard way by burning out a few too many athletes: Taking a slightly conservative approach is almost always going to beat taking an aggressive approach. Those who train the most quality workouts in a year are going to progress the most. The biggest threats to consistently stacking up quality workouts are illness, injury, and burnout. The biggest cause of illness, injury, and burnout is excessive fatigue. Do many workouts to the well, or really long and hard workouts, or rest poorly, or whatever, and you’re going to have inconsistent training and shitty results. Thus, I focus managing the training process to avoid these risks.
Whisper, Don’t Shout. This goes along with risk management. Your body is smart. If you make it a little tired using a certain stress, that’s enough. You don’t need to be a puddle at the end of a workout to get enough signal to adapt. My goal is to accumulate enough time in the right efforts/modes/stresses to see modest gains week to week and month to month. The goal is not to make you tired, that’s a byproduct of good training that is necessary, but to be minimized. Generally, those who train the most while accruing the least fatigue will make the most gains.
Consistent Intensity. Contrary to what you might think about from the paragraphs above, this means I like to do quite a few intensity sessions! You can likely plan on two to five sessions per week with some kind of intensity work in them, all year round. The key is that this intensity is closely controlled and easily completed. If you touch on the intensity regularly, but don’t smash yourself to pieces each time, you can progress really well.
Objective Metrics: This is a challenge in all the sports I mainly coach, but at some point if we’re working together you’re likely going to do a bunch of workouts that you can measure so that we can make training tweaks and really know what works for you and what doesn’t.
Athlete Owned. I’m not the boss, you are. I am a mentor/advisor, but only you can get this done. If you want to half-ass the process, that’s up to you. I’ll tell you you’re half-assing the process, but I’m not going to get in your face about it.
How Many Athletes Do I Coach?
Generally between 25 and 30. I make this distinction based on my workload and mostly my emotional energy. My systems are really good and I have plenty of time to coach more athletes, but I find that if I take more on it’s hard to keep track of the person on the other end of the relationship.
How Does Coaching Work?
I use a piece of software called TrainingPeaks. At its basics, it’s a shared calendar. I put workouts into that calendar, and you can see them. Then you can connect your watch or cycling computer to TrainingPeaks and then I can see your training data.
Here’s what it looks like for most of my athletes (Note that I have athletes who do things a little differently, so know that this isn’t a locked in process, and I’m willing to work with you if you want something (slightly) different).
You make sure your “Life Calendar” is up to date in TrainingPeaks.
I write plans one week at a time, usually on Thursday or Friday for the coming week.
You go train.
You upload training data from your workouts. This is at least heart rate (from a chest strap) and time and GPS if you’re outside.
You review your individual workouts and comment on them in TrainingPeaks. Note that comments are critical for me to understand how you are responding to training. If you don’t comment, I can’t help you much.
I send out an automated email on Sunday with prompts for you to use to reflect on your training week as a whole. Once I get your reply with the answers to those prompts, I reply with anything I would add/challenge about your reflection, giving you a couple things to focus on for the next week.
Based on your data, your comments, your review, and my review, I write you a new week of training.
Repeat until you’re as fit as you want to be.
What Does the Onboarding Process Look Like/How ?
First, you fill out this form. I know it’s long. I made it that way to weed out people who lack the kind of patience that training well takes.
Second, I reach out to you and we have a meeting (in person coffee or a phone call or a zoom). In that meeting you tell me lots about you, and I answer any questions you have. We probably both know at the end of that meeting if we want to work together.
Third, if I think we’re a good fit (If I think there is a coach who is a better fit than me, I’ll refer you to them), I send you an onboarding email, which has the following parts:
The Contract. It’s not really a contract. There’s no time requirements (if we don’t like working together after a month, then we shouldn’t work together), I just want to make sure we both agree on services and costs and how billing works.
How to get a TrainingPeaks account if you don’t have one.
How to connect your TrainingPeaks account to my coaching account.
And any other info (usually any gear I recommend for you).
A request for information about your upcoming schedule.
Our Athlete Guide
Fourth, you sleep on it. If you don’t want to work with me, please let me know as soon as you know.
Fifth, if you want to work with me, you fill out the forms, and once I have the signed contract and TrainingPeaks connected, and your schedule limitations, then I get started on your plan
And then we’re coaching!
Other Good Questions:
“Why do most people stop coaching?” Most people stop because they realize they can’t/won’t make the changes in their life to make progress. They realize they value their “normal” process more than they want the gains that will come from changing that process. Some will stop because of life changes (new job, changes in custody, long-term injury). Some will stop for financial reasons. Some will stop because they only had a short-term goal.
“Do you work well with women?” I think so? I typically have about as many women as men on the roster. I have five younger sisters and have always had good relationships with female friends. I’ve certainly coached as many women to elite results as I have men.
“Do you talk to your athletes like you talk on instagram?” Hah! No. In real life I’m pretty calm and considerate. My social media (and sometimes writing) approach is purposefully antagonistic, which isn’t “me.”
“I want to learn, will you teach me?” FUCK yeah. I love teaching. Most of my writing comes from athletes asking me a question and wanting to answer it thoroughly. I love questions!