The Art of Coaching Is Real Part 2

Despite the fact that many of our coaching styles may differ (as they should), many of the problems we face and puzzles we need to solve are the same.

Let me ask you, how many of the following struggles sound familiar to you:

• You have athletes or clients who always want to somehow modify the training program you created even though you spent every waking minute working out every last detail of it, and you explained every aspect of it step-by-step. They are easily influenced by “out of town” experts and highlight-reel YouTube videos, so they think they need to be doing something different.
• You hear them tell you about their goals, but then watch as their consistency and level of effort falls off over time or at the first hint of hardship. After a while, they maybe even begin showing up late for training, missing sessions, or talking back to you. Like an infection, their negative attitude spreads systematically across your team or spills into the training environment.
• You have athletes and clients just going through the motions. They plod through training on autopilot, doing the bare minimum. Why don’t they have the same drive as you or some of the other athletes who work hard every day?

Let me be clear, every single coach and trainer runs into problems like this. However, the way we respond to these situations or stop them from happening in the first place is what separates good coaches from great coaches.

And this is the second truth about the Art of Coaching: The Art of Coaching is the defining variable for the success of any training program or intervention.

You can have the highest-level athletes, perfect programing, and the best training facility—but all of this is only worth something if your athletes buy in to you and your vision.

Yet many of us never receive any formal education in these matters.

Even worse, often there’s a certain element of shame around this since we tend to believe you’re either born with great communication skills or you’re not.

So let me tell you: Very, very few people are born knowing what influences other people’s behavior and, more importantly, how we as coaches can influence that behavior to resolve (and even prevent) challenges like those listed above and improve performance outcomes.

I have spent years learning and researching the Art of Coaching so that I could share this with other coaches and help our community to keep improving.

In the next article, I’ll share the last and maybe most important concept around the Art of Coaching.

For more info, please check out my bio.

For more info on products mentioned in this article or for info on current product specials, please contact your personal Elivate Account Manager.

 If you don’t know who your Account Manager is, please call 800-537-5512 to find out.