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I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: Coaches are great. Everyone, and I mean
everyone, should have at least one.
A few years ago I would never have dreamed of having a coach. Coaches were for
elite athletes, not for people like me. I was someone who worked out, but I wasn’t
an athlete. And even if I were an athlete, I’d never be good enough to need a coach.
Boy, was I wrong. Here are my reasons why you—yes, you, no matter where you are in
your quest for fitness—should find a coach:
- You don’t need to make a big investment. You don’t have to join a gym or
health club. Just look for local groups or organizations in the sport you want to get
involved in. Sports stores can also give you some good leads. Many of these
local groups have a coach whose costs are covered by the membership dues, which will still
be less than a club membership or personal trainer. And even if there’s no official
coach, you’ll gain coaches in your fellow club members who are more experienced in
the sport.
- Coaches are like therapists—they see things about you that you don’t see
yourself. You may have gone through life assuming you had little or no athletic talent,
only to hear your coach tell you that you could be pretty good if you worked on a
couple of things. One sentence like that can change your whole self-image, not to mention
keep you much more motivated to stick with your workouts.
- Coaches make you accountable to someone other than yourself. Do you have
“issues” with authority? Use it to your advantage. Go to your workout even
when you’d rather weasel out of it, because you know that otherwise your coach will
want to know why you didn’t show up.
- Coaches can keep you from making all those mistakes people make when they decide
that they’re finally going to get fit no matter what. They know how to design
workouts to help you get stronger without overtraining, so you can avoid those nasty
injuries that sideline a lot of well-intentioned people.
I believe I can fly
I’ve experienced all of the above benefits and more by allowing myself to be coached.
I described my experiences with my swimming coach, Tim. I’ll be the first to admit that I should go to Tim’s workouts
much more often than I do. But I’ve already gained one of the most important things
he can give me: confidence. Before I started with him I was convinced I was an absolutely
pathetic swimmer, and that there was little point in training because I’d never get any
better. But Tim has always believed in me and in all his other swimmers, regardless of
whether we believed in ourselves. And his belief got me over the threshold. I now enjoy
swimming much more than I did last year, and even with minimal training, I’m
definitely better than I was. Just imagine what would happen if I went regularly?
So now I can say, with pride, that I have coaches. In conversations I can nonchalantly
remark, “Well, my coach told me...” That makes me feel like a stud. And once
you start feeling that way it gets much easier to stick with your fitness plan. You
won’t have to force yourself to work out—you’ll want to!
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