(Regarding my extended absence. I wasn’t coaching much, I wasn’t training much. And who wants to just read some dude’s opinion if he isn’t practicing what he preaches?)
If you want to get better, you have to start by serving yourself a slice of humble pie. Only after you recognize your own shortcomings, can you go about fixing them. Remember the classic four stages of learning:
I fear too many coaches are still stuck on the first step. As in “Not only are you teaching the squat poorly, you don’t even know you are teaching it poorly. Most inexcusable – you aren’t trying to get any better.”
If you already think you are a great coach, you’ll never improve. Personally, and as a coach for a couple years, I’m just starting to recognize how much more I have to learn.
Repeat after me.
“I am not done learning as a coach. In fact, I have just started learning as a coach. The only way I am going to get better is to recognize how novice I truly am. ”
I find this concept so powerful because it applies to so many other things besides just coaching. Duh.
-I value your service.
-I want to know who you are. Expect that I’ll want to learn something about you before we get down to business.
-I always want to know up front what you expect of me in the meeting.
-I read the read-aheads.
-Honorifics matter to me. If you want to call yourselves by your first names, do it on your own time. You’ve earned your rank or title, and I’ll acknowledge it.
- I respect everyone’s opinion. Never denigrate anyone else’s view in my presence.
-I want to hear from the person with the knowledge I need regardless of rank.
- I always want to understand problems before being asked to solve them.
- I expect alternatives not ultimatums.
- I really enjoy serving in our Army. There’s no reason we can’t celebrate our profession while solving difficult problems along the way. Stated another way, I have no tolerance for whining.
- You may have heard that I dislike powerpoint. It’s true.
- Every morning on the way to work, I walk past the pictures of all the former Chiefs, and then I drive past row after row of the headstones in Arlington National Cemetery. If you find me eager to get things done, that’s why.
Dear Crossfit Version of Matt Damon from Good Will Hunting,
I’m writing you out of concern – mainly because of your recent behavior. Something has got to change. I get it – you hate your 9-5 job, so you spend all day on Crossfit websites reading message boards, watching videos, and listening to the “Paleo Solution” Podcast. You can rattle off a fish oil prescription in your sleep, refer to Crossfit HQ trainers by their first names, and have been doing Crossfit since “around 2007″.
For that, I applaud you. Your quest for knowledge is admirable – Kudos. I really mean that.
However, you are starting to get annoying.
The first time I noticed you was when my good friend Brian PCF had an article posted in the Crossfit Journal called . In the article he basically said, “Here is what I’ve done, it works, now out of the goodness of my heart I’m going to tell you how I did it”. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the “theoretical underpinnings” of the article, there is one undeniable fact. It works – His athletes were better when they finished his program than when they started.
“You can’t do that, because it doesn’t fit into XYZ part of the Crossfit model”
or
“Forced Negatives: never more than three at any given sitting if there are no full ROM movements in their quiver” (Not to pick on Chef because I like him a lot)
——-
Here is the official Barbells and Bacon response to you: Who gives a shit? You remind me of the old quote that goes something like “An academic is someone who isn’t content with something working in practice, it must also work in theory”.
I mean really? Show me your athletes. Show me your numbers. Show me your gym. Don’t pick apart something that a coach or a gym has done in practice, with something you have only done in “theory”. I encourage you, once you actually get some coaching experience or ownership experience, to call BS on something that a “theory” tells you to believe, that you know is untrue.
Just to show you I mean business, I’ll throw out an example of this from my personal experience:
I don’t recommend fish oil for most of my beginner athletes. (I can hear it already… But doesn’t EVERYBODY need to take fish oil?).
No. I coach in the real world. In this “real world”, people who are just starting to change their lifestyle are looking for a quick fix. You cannot give it to them. If you do, they won’t actually make the changes that are truly neccessary. Giving them another pill, even if it is effective pill, is like giving crack to a crackhead.
BTW, I much preferred your performance in Team America, included below for your reference.
“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work–as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for–the things which I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?’
–But it’s nicer here…
So you were born to feel “nice?” Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
–But we have to sleep sometime…
Agreed. But nature set a limit on that–as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota. You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash and eat.”
I was spending my Saturday afternoon watching old Milton Friedman videos, when I ran across this gem. Fast forward to 29:09 to see future SecDef Don Rumsfeld make a guest appearance.
I'm an athlete and coach at Potomac Crossfit in Arlington Virginia. I'll mostly write about how to take average Crossfit athletes and coaches to higher levels. I'll also write about my (occasional) training, stoicism, poetry, libertarian economics, and nutrition.
