Hiring A Coach
I train hard. I don't lack motivation or drive when I hit the gym. But life is stressful, raising kids is stressful, relationships are stressful and what if one bad day turned into a week and then turned into a month. What if the maintenance of strength became a slow regression, my previous PR’s became a memory of the past. What if the drive just went away one day. What if I walked into the gym and just thought, “what the fuck am I doing? why am I working my ass off to tread water?”
Don’t you worry, none of these things happened. And they won’t happen. I hired a coach. I didn’t leave my motivation and my drive to chance or to having an awesome song blasting or using the stress of life to push me through a workout. There is little I get to control and when I can I do, such as the order of Kettlebells in the studio and the way my pants are folded and when to have York Peppermint Patties. But sometimes we need to ask for help with the things we can’t control. And life in general is pretty out of my control. So instead of leaving my workouts to chance, I hired a coach. He pushes me to work hard and I have accountability to get the work done.
My coach lives on the East Coast, he sends me workouts and I send him videos of my main lifts. I just finished my third week and I am beginning to believe that he is not a horrible person. The first week was HARD. I was sore after every workout and couldn’t figure out how to recover. I complained to anyone who would listen, which was generally no one. Week two was a little better, I knew I could get the work done and started to feel a little less sore. And now in week three I really like the complete change in my training. I’m doing things I never thought to do, my rest periods are timed, my warm up isn't a cool down from my previous class. And on those days that I didn’t sleep well or I just can’t seem to focus on my workout, I get that shit done. It’s all planned out, there is nothing to question. GET THAT SHIT DONE, is all there is to do. Sometimes that is the best workout.
But on top of all the motivation and accountability there is also the focus. The past few months, I’ve been fumbling around for a goal. One week I would spend all my time on the pole and another week do some heavy ass deadlifting. It wasn’t that I was standing still waiting for a goal to pop in my head, I was all over the place reaching for any and every goal. I could have stayed there awhile longer, because honestly it was kinda fun. But I was afraid that my daily workouts would become too random that I wouldn’t be able to see progress if I tried. And I normally write my own programs and that works out pretty well for me, if I have a goal. But without a goal I was doing something different all the time. I could change heavy squats into mobility. I could change a movement based workout into a dance party.
So why do I train hard? Why do I walk into the gym day after day, week after week for years? I don’t need to be the best or the strongest person (although let me be honest, I train to be the best and the strongest AND I’m super competitive) but I just need to be better than I was yesterday. I need to look at myself and like the person looking back. I need to be a confident parent and partner. I need to grow as a trainer and as a person. And sometimes I need a coach to say “you’re doing a good job,” or “I like the way you did that.”