Too busy to get better

Take home message

Catching up with coaches/players outside of your sport is mentally refreshing and stimulating.
we understand everyone is busy - make the time.

For Coaches

Make a commitment to meet with a coach outside your sport. There will be reciprocal benefit.

For Athletes

Athletes generally know players from other sports in their area. Can you facilitate a link between coaches. They will appreciate it.

When was the last time you watched a training session that was not yours – gym or field session?  What about talking to another S&C coach not in your immediate day-to-day circle? I can’t remember. 

Currently, my best personal development (commonly known as PD) are probably podcasts and Twitter.

I’m busy.  Your busy.  Everyone’s busy.  But I don’t believe that is necessarily the badge of honour it once was (remember when working 14 hour days was cool and sleeping 5-6 hours was the thing?  It’s not.  Who started that?).  Like many in our industry, I don’t like being idle – I’d rather have something to do than nothing and no sooner have I finished something I am onto the next task.  I am lucky that there are so many really exciting things to be working on for my athletes and coaches.  There is not just enough time, but somehow, I take on more and more, trying to get more done instead of working smarter (I will discuss time management later… when I get a moment). 

In my current role I have isolated myself.  I am at risk of becoming stale, out of touch and a disservice to the athletes I work for.  I have isolated myself in my work and my bubble has become a self-built cage. 

So I am trying to work out how this “cage” has been built and how to get out.  Reflecting, I think it is common in S&C, due in part to the formative years of our coaching when we are eager for experience and our working life is comprised of multiple part-time roles. The start of my working career was divided between finishing my study, working at the UWA Fitness Centre, S&C at a local football team and my regular job at BP. I became good at juggling many commitments, early starts and late finishes. When I progressed to the WA Institute of Sport, like many coaches in the institute network, I was working with athletes who worked or studied, meaning I had early morning starts and late afternoon/evening finishes.  I was working across a few teams and multiple athletes so there were frequent sessions to be coached and programs to be written.  Working long hours became the norm.  And I enjoyed it too.  At the time (20 years ago) I had no family commitments, so I would work long days.  Add to that a lot of athletes, a long task list and hunger to constantly do a better job and I have become too much head down and have not looked out of my trench for a long time.  A long time.

Some coaches I know are tremendous at keeping the link.  A mentor of mine would constantly email colleagues, just to keep the links alive and it is a trait I cannot encourage enough.  One that I struggle with and at times like this, remind me that I need to get better at keeping links.  I think there is a genuine appreciation that S&C coaches are busy and cannot always reply immediately, or we do change that meeting time (training schedules are fluid).  But we can keep in touch.

So the task today is to make contact.  Just one coach in my local geography to catch up.  Either they come to my session or I go to theirs, but I need an exchange of ideas.  Then, create that reminder each week to contact another one.  And it couldn’t be easier with email (or a Twitter DM) to stay connected.  And I think S&C coaches in general are a very open bunch. 

Given I love a list and some tasks, surely this is one task that is worth putting on the list to get better.