For years, I thought my special sauce as a coach was my eye for technical corrections during sprinting and lifting. The unique way I could make athletes better in our first year together was finding and fixing inefficiencies in their technique. I figured the only way for my minimalist programming philosophy to be effective was for athletes to know exactly how to move in the exercises I chose.

See, two of my athletes are remote now, but we had hundreds of training sessions together before distance was a variable. I knew a lot about how they moved, what they did well and what needed work, and had a lot of in-person feedback to refine my mental model during training before I ever needed to write a virtual training program for them.

I thought that history together was why they were continuing to make progress and minimize injuries on the field. I thought that our program was good enough, given our broad, deep base of work beneath it.

Then there was 2023 and I learned just how wrong I was about all of it. Coaching is not about technical correction and it’s not about writing training programs.

It’s about walking together.

The Athlete 1,000 Miles Away

Meet LG – national-level club ultimate player, women’s division.

She did everything right in 2022. She attacked her training before a major tryout, made a team at the highest level, committed to the training and practice schedule, showed up at performance time, and made a strong year of it…until the last regular season game with the strongest team she had rostered on to date, where a concussion put her completely out of postseason play. She had to watch the team’s progress rather than be a part of it.

Everything came to a grinding halt. Fitness slipped, sure, but the fearlessness it takes to play at a national level was the worst of the losses.

Even though I’m “retired” from coaching, one of my current athletes referred LG to me. I had several concerns, ranging from “do you really want to train differently?” to “do I know how to develop an athlete without seeing them move?”

In the end, 2023 was a strong year. LG performed at every occasion. She executed training sessions consistently and got measurably better in every key indicator of performance. She returned to that team and was an impact player. With the same team, given the same high level of play, she made things happen on the field and had gas in the tank by the end of postseason, right into semifinals of championships.

In fact, it all came together well enough that she’s on her way to try out for the next level of play: representing her country internationally. She’s going to compete against the best of the best.

When…as I recall, our goal was just to get back on the field without getting hurt again.

Effective Training Across Space & Time

One of the SHIFT Speed & Strength business objectives is for me to be a part-time champion, with a key result being “explain no exercise twice.” Part-time champion means coaching remains for fun, with minimum necessary time commitment.

I would never give my athletes part-time attention, so it really means every other aspect of this business has to operate with minimal input from me. Repeating work is the ultimate waste of energy.

So I have built an exercise library, primarily exercises I didn’t think were easy to find on YouTube back in the ATX Speed & Strength days or exercises that support the training programs in Fast Kids Don’t Train Slow. But they aren’t always enough. I’m always making little modifications to my athletes’ programs, both for solving specific coordination issues and to keep training “same, but different” (Pavel).

My commitment, then, is each time I need to explain an exercise, a circuit, or a rep scheme to an athlete, I add that resource to the exercise demos playlist. I link to specific videos on our “static” pages like warmups and season overviews. In this way, I receive the question once, I do the research once, I explain the exercise once, and I add it to the library once. That exercise never needs another demo from me.

Another business objective here at SHIFT S&S is ZERO training injuries, with a key result being 1 report per athlete per month of a saved or avoided injury in some performance situation. That could mean they notice mounting fatigue then take an unscheduled day off or they reach a dangerous situation yet have the movement skills to bail safely.

It may seem odd to expect my athletes to report near misses, but it really points to what I do well when coaching in-person: I can see little changes in movement and can predict risks from fatigue. I don’t have eyes on my athletes all the time anymore. So I ask them constantly about specific parts of the body, specific movements, specific practice scenarios, hoping to trigger the memory of avoiding something.

Then I can reinforce what they did well, counsel what to do differently, and adapt the program to plan for similar situations. By demanding that I uncover near miss stories, I’m really making myself responsible for the athlete’s day-to-day well-being, therefore creating a process for hearing how they are doing each training day.

So here’s the point: it probably didn’t matter too much how LG trained. She’s the sort of athlete that can likely get better on any non-destructive program. But with fear of injury being a serious burden to carry through a season at the edge of her ability, offering total clarity in the program and checking in (perhaps excessively) often hopefully relieved some of that anxiety.

I just wanted to give her confidence, day after day, session after session, rep after rep. A coach’s job, as Dan John says constantly, is to walk with you to your goals. I always perceived that literally, insisting on being physically present with my athletes throughout their journey. But working with LG in 2023 showed me how presence occurs on many levels. I think the rhythm we settled into worked well for us.

Relationships Depend on Environment

But our constant communication via text message, comments on the training program, and quarterly-ish phone calls still weren’t enough. It was obvious we both cared about how the training and the season were progressing. It was obvious we were both invested in laying the strongest foundation and building the highest peak possible. I believe LG felt my concern when I sent notes after each game in a tournament or when I kept tabs on her personal commitments around the training schedule.

What reinforced the rhythm we found was making time for that one special visit. Every relationship needs this, whether it’s the early encounter that makes long-distance seem worthwhile or the “at last” meetup that justifies all the effort to-date.

In our case, LG and team were coming to my metro for a tournament. It overlapped my workweek and was about an hour’s drive from home…but 45 miles through the city is a lot different than 1,000 miles across state lines. So I checked the tournament schedule, checked with LG, and arranged to see her perform.

What’s fascinating to me as a coach is that she asked for performance feedback. No way! I’m seeing you move live for the first time, seeing how you’ve put together all the qualities we’ve worked to develop, seeing how you get utilized by your coach, seeing how you manage space and competitors and pressure and fatigue. My brain was reeling with the new information coming in. There was no way I could produce meaningful, actionable, considerate feedback on the spot.

That’s a coach’s job, providing useful feedback on the spot. And I simply couldn’t do it that first time I got to watch LG play. But instead of scratching and clawing to do so, I admitted that there was too much to process and I’d need some time. I asked for 5 days. Feedback was sent in 3. And closing that loop was the key piece – a consummated promise.

What the constant communication could not achieve on its own that showing up, watching, thinking, and following up completed was locking in trust. I needed to trust myself to come through for LG the way I had always done with the athletes who went remote after several years working together in-person. LG needed to trust that I could still add value to her athletic journey. The very fact that she was there, suited to play and on the field performing, meant we’d already achieved the primary goal. We got her back up to speed. But where was our relationship going from that?

What Makes Long-Distance Coaching Work

SHIFT Speed & Strength has a 3-part philosophy:

1. Assess the athlete & intervene every day.
2. Assess the program & simplify after competition.
3. Assess the business & prioritize every quarter.

Then I have 4 values in coaching, two of which are:

1. Care about the whole person.
2. Serve the stated goal.

It’s the three parts of the philosophy and those two values that I believe are essential to making long-distance coaching work. But then, all five statements that I consider essential could be summarized in the title of two important books: Extreme Ownership and Radical Candor.

At every step, in every interaction, with every word, I have to take responsibility for an athlete’s success. Therefore, if they do well, I have to assume they might have succeeded without me; if they do poorly, I have to assume I missed something that could have helped them. When I tell an athlete I can help them, that’s my level of commitment to them. I will never consider myself their authority, but I refuse to knowingly let them fail.

Then, I owe any athlete who commits to following my lead both honesty and constant attention to their best interests. I will call out poor attention to recovery just as quickly as I attempt to modify the program to minimize overload. I will point out coordination weaknesses directly and urgently, yet I will seek the simplest exercises to rebuild those skills as though my own success hinges on it.

That’s what happened with LG. Here’s how it all maps to her 2023 training.

• I checked in by comments on the training program after every single session in the first 8 weeks, then by text every week (plus bonus messages when it felt relevant)
• our only measure of performance was actual performance – recreational play, joining other teams’ practices, tryouts, early season tournaments – but I dug into every aspect of performance
• I chose the basic, basic, basics in training and only advanced the complexity of a movement or volume of a session if it was clear she wouldn’t progress without it
• her life and her schedule drove our training plan; I modified the planned work every week to accommodate anything she had going on, so there could both be fun + flexibility and so I could control the training dose
• most importantly: she kept our commitment to constant communication and fed me information week after week

I believe in speed and rest and minimalism. But that wasn’t her priority – it was being able to play hard without fear. In the beginning, we did “a lot” of work each week, meaning we looked for tough conditions to play in. Tired legs, neural fatigue, intentional handicap, etc.

As the season went on and successful performances accumulated, we gradually did less work yet continued to perform. It wouldn’t work for me to push an agenda on her. This athlete chose to follow my lead, meaning she had just as much choice to leave at any time. We needed to find a balance between the training that gave her psychological safety on the field and the training that I consider optimal. We needed to find our happy compromise. And we needed to trust each other – I needed to trust that she would believe in my approach and she needed to trust that I would optimize for her not for my marketing.

What To Look For In A Remote Coach

I hate one part of my own book on speed development for ultimate players. I hate that I had to write a general training program for every reader to follow. I hate that I had to construct one box, then expect every athlete to fit into it.

So a remote coach is not a training program that you buy online. If all someone is offering you is a static program that they write once then leave you to it, you’re not getting a coach.

When you seek out a remote coach, you want all the things you get from a co-located coach, plus a few specific behaviors:

1. Expect a remote coach to have a communication plan – what channels will you use to communicate, how often will they send messages, what’s expected of you as an athlete, and what’s acceptable for personal/emotional/performance emergencies?
2. Expect a remote coach to listen, listen, listen and do very little talking – what kind of questions do they ask in the consultation, do they follow up on each thing you say, are they interested in your goal, are they actually answering your questions directly, do they just seem genuinely interested in YOU?
3. Expect a remote coach to cherish you – do they follow through on commitments, do they speak highly of their other athletes, do they seek your criticism, do they share additional information that could help you perform?

2023 was an incredible year. I’m proud beyond words of the performance LG had in her biggest tournament of the year. I’m honored that she chose to work with me, did work in our relationship, and invited me back to support her preparation for the world team tryout.

I’m proud that my principles helped me help her. That what I believe about coaching reaches beyond immediate interactions and can work across miles and time zones.

And I’m surprised that more of this isn’t happening.

Long-Distance Relationships Are Still Hard

Oh, there are plenty of remote coaches. There are plenty of athletes seeking help. But looking at two experiences my wife has had with her own remote coaches, I see it takes a deliberate commitment by both coach and athlete to make a long-distance relationship work.

My wife’s first coach didn’t check in often and didn’t offer program updates in response to disastrous training weekends, illness, or poor performances. My wife was frustrated at times, but generally glad to have a structured plan to follow. Most of the time, it worked. Some of the time, it was an utter failure. Advice was a little impersonal, conversations were infrequent and short, and the relationship was a little cold. My wife and her coach had drifted apart well before they broke up.

What she has noted about her new coach has little to do with the actual training – she reads & responds to the comments in the training program, she watches the performance numbers during test days and races, she has a regularly scheduled coaching call that goes deep into how the training feels. So my wife feeds information back accordingly – when she could have pushed harder, how she’ll try to back off, what she feels each day and each session. This relationship is warm, supportive, and deepening.

I don’t know if it’s causal or simply correlated, but the training program is really high-quality, too. It seems that the best coaches have all the technical chops to choose exercises and sequence sessions…it’s just you don’t notice that about them. Athletes can’t care what I know until they know that I care, to paraphrase wise words.

As a coach, I have to care about you, deeply, in order to listen, respond, and adapt appropriately to your needs. As an athlete, you have to trust me, deeply, in order to speak up, share your feelings, and ask for what you need. A coach-athlete relationship is like every other relationship. It’s nice when you can be together, but with the right commitment and a routine that we take seriously, it can work however far apart we are.

The magic of a coach is not that we can see and correct every movement you make. The magic of a coach is that we will walk with you toward your goals and know the path just well enough to nudge you, lovingly, back onto it when you wander.

I was wrong about remote coaching and I’ve never been more glad to know it!