Failure is good. It’s fertilizer. Everything I’ve learned about coaching, I’ve learned from making mistakes.
Rick Pitino
I had a great session today with my new friends at Crossfit Lawrence and I hope to continue our knowledge trading workouts. As a coach myself it was fun to train with other coaches. That is something I have never done. I have trained with more experienced lifters as I have mentioned in other posts, but today was the first time lifting in front of a coach in several years( since I was trained many moons ago.) All day with my athletes and students I review form and give cues to improve their lifting technique, and while I think I do a good job at this I have never been critiqued myself other than when I learned the lifts originally. Thomas, the head trainer and owner of CFL was watching as I did a dynamic effort deadlift workout, and gave me some cues for approaching the lift. Now here is the thing, I use these exact cues with my athletes, yet here I was reverting to old habits and not practicing what I preach. I mostly lift at my house with friends or by myself ( due to time of day I lift) and havent noticed that I wasn’t setting up right for the lift when doing bar speed work. I was so focused on going quick all of my mental checklist items were out the window as soon as I changed the lift a bit. It was so refreshing to have Thomas give those cues and realizing I wasn’t setting up right. This backs up my last post about training partners. Although I new better, and was a bit embarrassed to have made a mistake I wouldn’t normally have done, it drove home the lesson that you have to focus on every lift, and that we as coaches can easily take these things for granted. I feel I am a better coach after a bit of humility today, and that is a lesson well learned. Thanks to Thomas and his eye catching me slacking. Coaches making coaches better at coaching is the community we are aiming to build.
As the sign in my home set up says quality is what we strive for and I was reminded of that today! Now have fun with the bent press CFL!
