Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Yes, and here’s why.
On Tuesday I did a workout with one of my clients. The workout was “Lyssa” (at WFA we name our benchmark workouts after our dogs, and sometimes, our cats). “Lyssa” is: 400m farmers carry; 20 sandbag thrusters; 20 sandbag down-and-ups; 240 feet sandbag toss-and-chase; 20 sandbag step ups; and 20 sandbag clean and press.
Yep, that’s a lot of work. It took us both about 22 minutes.
But at the end, we had a conversation about our strengths: Joe is stronger than I am (he can press and deadlift more), yet I beat him by almost a minute, and I did the whole workout with a heavier sandbag – I’ve got more work capacity.
And guess what Joe prefers to train: yep, strength. And guess what I prefer to train: uh huh, work capacity.
Humans are predisposed to want to do the things we’re good at, and left to our own devices, a lot of us would just keep reinforcing our strengths, without addressing our weaknesses.
And that’s where a coach comes in. They uncover your weaknesses, and push you to address them, while leveraging your strengths.
A coach can also help you with goal-setting.
A huge number of people I work with started down the road of health and wellness with a desire to lose weight, look better naked, or just feel better about themselves. And these are totally worthwhile goals – they’ve been the starting point for many, myself included. But these are really just the starting points. At some point, we’ll hit the number on the scale, or maybe we won’t, depending on what the target had been. And you can only get so lean, or so thin, or so light. But…
When you set a performance goal for yourself, the sky is the limit.
For the athletes I work with who make continual progress, they usually fall into two camps:
- They have a performance target in mind. For some it’s having the best-ever ski season, or looking great in a bikini over Christmas break, or being able to do twenty pull-ups, or crushing their mountaineering objectives.
- They have learned to love the process.
And the ones who truly crush it, hit their goals, smile all the time (perma-stoke!), and always look like they’ve having more fun than you?
They have performance goals, and they love the process.
What’s a coach have to do with this? Everything.
- A coach will help you set challenging-yet-attainable performance goals.
- A coach will help you map the path to success with your goals.
- A coach will build a balanced program that gives you some of what you want, and some of what you need.
- A coach will stand by you when you win, and when you lose, and help you put the outcomes in perspective.
- A coach knows you well enough to push you with the right why and how, and will tell you when you need to back off.
I love coaching, and as I mature as a coach, I understand the meaning of the word more and more. A coach should be someone you’d be willing to eat dinner with, invite to a birthday party, and who you could use as a therapist. But at the same time, you should probably curse at your coach, flip him off, tell her she’s a terrible person. A coach should push you to be the best version of yourself.
I recently fired one of my “coaches.” The relationship wasn’t there. The program was good, but it wasn’t backed up by the interactions or support. Find yourself a coach who will give you what you need to move you towards your goals.