500 Words a Week - The One Question as a Coach

Recently, I was lucky enough to get to hear Stu McMillan present in person. While he discussed a range of topics, Stu posed one question at the end of his talk that hit home. He asked, “Are you positively impacting your athlete’s health and performance?”

This is our job, this is what we are in our positions for. Someone has indebted us with a mountain of trust to try to assist them in reaching their potential. If you are employed by an organization, there is even more emphasis on the question above, as the athlete has essentially been told you should be trusted whether they like it or not. It’s up to you to show them that you can be trusted by answering yes to the question above. If we can truthfully answer yes to this question, we are performing our jobs well. If we can’t, we need to change.

At times it’s not enough to just assume we are, we must objectively look at certain key performance indicators to help us answer this question.

Thinking about this question also greatly helps us sort through the fluff from the meaningful work. Are we the controlling S&C coach who insists that the athlete must do everything on the programme that we wrote 4 weeks ago? Are we the person who attempts to fill up our allotted time simply because we have been given more time? Without considering what is truly best for the athlete. Keeping the above question in mind helps us avoid these situations.

Sometimes we must learn the hard way. We make mistakes and we can’t answer the question above. It’s times like these when we really see what matters in our role. Not the extra sets of whatever exercise for the sake of it.

When I began, I had grand ideas about how I was going to write the best S&C programme. We would squat one day, RDL the next and trap bar the following. The only good thing about this programme and how it was prescribed was its ability to ruin the athletes adaptative resources.

By learning through our mistakes, and keeping the question above in mind, we can develop a well-rounded coaching philosophy. An aspect that I never learned about until the above mistake and that has since begin a centre tenet to my thoughts around S&C is using a minimal effective dose approach. We do the minimal amount necessary to drive health and performance gains. This allows us more room for when things might need to be intensified, or volumes increased to achieve certain outcomes. Think of how cumbersome it is to try and start a car in any gear not 1, sure with a bit of luck it can work, but we will be slower off the line than the person that started in 1 and worked their way patiently up through the gears. Getting the most out of each stage rather than skipping or rushing phases.

To close, I repeat Stu’s question: “Are you positively impacting your athlete’s health and performance?”