Taking yourself and your clients to the next level!
- Blake Gould
- 4/8/2011
How do you take yourself to the next level in this industry? I have thought about this question many times, as I am constantly trying to better myself. Do you meet the right people and learn from them? Do you constantly read material from reliable sources and implement it into your training? Do you come up with new, innovative, purposeful and science based exercises or methodologies? In my mind, to take yourself to the next level in this industry, you must incorporate all of the aforementioned into your training and life. You can't just sit back and wait for something great to happen....you must be proactive and make things happen. Be driven to succeed each and every day when you wake up and get to work. Always know and have confidence that you can get better, don't settle for mediocrity, because you would not allow the athletes you train to settle. One of my favorite quotes says it perfectly: "The only place success comes before work, is in the dictionary." Put in the work, network, study, be proactive, be creative....achieve personal and professional success. Doing things to make yourself more successful, will in turn, make your company more successful.
How do you take your athletes to the next level? This question can be answered many ways. I believe to make your athletes better, you first need to know your athletes. What sport do they play? What's their fitness level? Do they have any injuries that may limit performance in regards to balance and flexibility to be able to perform strength, power, and multi-directional speed training? What is their age? What gender are they? As a strength coach, you need to be able to take all of these elements into consideration when trying to trying take your athletes to the next level. Even in small group training, look at each athletes individual needs and write your workout to accomodate everybody. I often have interns and other coaches ask how you can write up a workout to accomodate every athlete, being as you might have athletes of different sports and ability levels. When training in a small group setting, this is going to occur, plain and simple. You need to know progressions and regressions of each exercise ,so that some athletes can advance while other athletes may need to stay at the same level, or even regress. Look at the athletes in the session and find the common movement patterns from their sport, then base your workout off of those. Are you training a group of young females? If so, focus on the elements of training that are going to keep them safe on the field or court (i.e. ankle and knee stability, ROM through the posterior chain, hamstring flexibility). When training youth athletes (ages 7-11) build your workouts around fun, competitive, game based exercise to keep them engaged. With these workouts, make sure you still know the "whys" behind the exercises you choose. Knowing the reason behind everything you are doing as a coach is probably the biggest component to taking your athletes to the next level. Don't just write up a workout to kick their butts, have a purpose and a goal within each workout. Another thing I believe helps take your athletes to the next level is being a motivator. You don't have to be "ra-ra" all the time, but make sure your athletes know that you care and that you want to see them succeed.
Prepare to be great! Be great! Achieve success!
