Who’s coaching you?

March 17, 2023

Who’s coaching you? 

Everyone’s a coach these days. The industry is more saturated now than ever before. There’s a gym on every corner, and it appears that the only qualification you need to convince people of your credibility as a source of good information is a blue tick next to your name. Gone are the days of actually needing to know shit, apparently. I’ve been in this game for a while, so you’re not fooling me, but for the few people who are prepared to read some text, rather than needing to consume all their information via a 20 second reel, I’m talking to you. 

If your training is important to you, check your coach. Your body, energy, time, and money are far too valuable to be wasted with someone that's going to send you up the garden path. You’re risking injury, wasting time, and just generally doing a less efficient job of getting closer to your goals if you’re not approaching them in an optimal manner. Training and dieting and all related activities are way too difficult and tiring and painful to be doing it without the return you deserve for your efforts, so make sure the person you entrust is guiding you in the best possible direction.  

Owning a set of focus mitts does not make you a boxing coach, just like owning a set of golf clubs doesn’t make you Tiger Woods. Some of the absolute nonsense I’ve seen passed off as ‘boxing’ lately is horrendous. If your coach has never fought, never trained fighters, or experienced in any way the practical application of the information they are trying to pass on to clients, then what business do they have teaching? Boxing, kickboxing, combat sports as a whole require levels of technical proficiency that you just can't pick up in a weekend pad holding seminar to keep your ‘CEC’ points up. It requires years of practice and understanding and dedication to the art form. Letting loose underqualified rookies on the general public is a surefire recipe to get people hurt. At the very least we lose them to the industry because if one boxing coach is a bit shit, then we all get tarred with the same brush. 

Strength focussed training seems to be much the same. Does your coach understand how the human anatomy works, or are they just regurgitating the technique they saw some strong guy using on TikTok? Has your coach taken athletes and made them better lifters? Not just stronger, but better (and there is a significant difference between the two). Not just in the interest of preventing injury (because you cant get stronger while you’re on the shelf), but in the pursuit of tailoring what the athlete does to elicit OPTIMAL results for the individual. Can the coach make adjustments to suit everyone uniquely, or is it the athletes fault when they fail to reach their potential? Trust me I’ve heard some amazing excuses from some shit coaches over the years.

Does your coach PRACTICE what they preach? I’m not prepared to ask my athletes to do anything that I don't believe in enough to do myself! 

In another scenario, there are so many athletes out there that are doing extremely well DESPITE their coaches, rather than because of them. There are some people out there with some amazing natural ability, and if you throw enough mud at a wall, some of it is going to stick. Don’t be fooled by the braggarts, lets see what they can do with your least gifted athlete, not your genetic outlier. 

So this little rant may come off pretty negative, and I suppose it is. It might be a little offensive to some people, and that's fine too, you might be one of the clients or coaches affected by what I’m talking about. Actually, my aim is to make you think about where you’re sourcing your information. I know so many amazing coaches in a variety of different fields, and I want to see THEM succeed, and I want to see the spread of GOOD information within our industry, because god knows it's really deteriorated over the time I’ve been around. 

Be diligent with your decisions, ask lots of questions, make sure that the coach can justify their decision with reason! I’m not saying that your coach needs to be a world champion, but at least make sure they have enough runs under their belt that they have a solid understanding of the WHY, not just the HOW. If you’re fine with blindly following someone that can’t explain why you are doing certain exercises or technique corrections or programming styles, your results are probably not that important to you anyway, so carry on…

Lets have discerning athletes that make coaches accountable for their knowledge or lack thereof!

I welcome any and all discussions on the subject, publicly or privately, as it’s something I happen to be very passionate about. 

Yours in strength,

Dan