This is the end of the beginning, dear player-coach. What began as a case study to my own self-coaching process has reached the core of yours. We’ve explored how to identify what athletic qualities are needed to build productive training sessions, how to arrange training sessions to balance work and rest or to build lots of opposed qualities, how to monitor your progress across a month or season or several years, and the impact of your beliefs about sport and your potential on training decisions.
I pointed out in Part 2 that your “why” for being in sports at all shapes every decision you’ve already made about your training menu, your metrics, your principles, and your philosophy, even if you haven’t stated that why explicitly. This is the time to make it explicit.
To do so, you need two images as an athlete: your “immediate” dream and your vision of yourself.
Then, as a coach, you need one model of your athletic self: your mission when developing the athlete.
Coach Dunte’s Athletic Objective
Dream: Masters World Champion, 110 meter hurdles, age 35-39.
Mission: Be fast and technically beautiful in terrible conditions.
Vision: A centenarian decathlete.
The images you paint with the dream, mission, and vision need to be vivid. When you can see what type of athlete you need to be through these statements, you’ll also see what work is essential to getting there. I’ll break mine down briefly, then point out how these can vary for different athletes.
Dream: Masters World Champion, 110 meter hurdles, age 35-39
There’s a lot going on in this one. First, I’m not trying to be the best high hurdler in the world, age 35+ or otherwise. That’s unbelievably rare air and I have no probability of reaching it, partly because Grant Holloway and his contemporaries are superhuman (most amateur athletes can’t run 12.81 over 100 meters, much less 110 meters with barriers in the way!) and partly because there are other important things in my life keeping me from training full time.
Second, I don’t have to realize this dream to have done all the right things. Masters Athletics is fascinating to me. If you just show up for long enough, you might well win. But, more important, to have success in Masters Athletics then to sustain it, I have to train with all the deliberate attention and dedication of an elite athlete without ever making a single risky decision. That means committing to speed, power, flexibility, and arousal management. Muscle mass begins to decline at 35 without aggressive action to counter it; pursuing excellence in the high hurdles over the next 5 years is my aggressive action of choice.
Besides, or perhaps third, I love the hurdles and hate that I gave up on them as a teenager. It doesn’t matter how fast I run a race because I am addicted to the feeling of running the race. There are worse addictions!
Mission: Be fast and technically beautiful in terrible conditions.
This is my north star as a coach (to myself). If I only train slow while refining my technique, I won’t race fast. If my technique is sloppy as an athlete without the speed or flexibility reserve of the elite, I won’t race fast. If I only practice in perfect conditions on warm days with the wind at my back, I won’t race fast.
I’m most proud as a coach when spectators, coaches, or other competitors ask my athletes who they’ve been working with. That’s what stokes my ego. So I want to be such an effective, proficient hurdler in Masters meets that people wonder who I’ve been working with. To reply “I’m self-coached” in that context would be a peak achievement.
Plus, winning a hurdle race at 9pm in a downpour makes for a great story. (Only race I ever won. Ask about it!)
Vision: A centenarian decathlete.
There’s more luck to this than effort, but that’s not the point.
I’ve read about centenarians entering 4 events at Masters meets. I’ve seen videos of an octogenarian completing a decathlon. And I’ve watched a lot of folks fade away as early as their 60s because they feel there’s no purpose to striving anymore.
The decathlon is as beautiful as it is brutal. It requires a wide range of abilities and it rewards athletes who are composed, consistent, and capable. I want to be as resilient as possible for as long as possible at the highest level of accomplishment possible.
To be a centenarian at all, barring the role of my genetics and the uncontrollable risks of life in cities with cars, will require that I take sleep, nutrition, and health care seriously. Emphasis on longevity early bears fruit late in life.
To be a decathlete at all will require that I stay committed to speed and power, that I train and compete in a variety of events, and that I keep my cool regardless of my results in meets. Speed grows like a tree, so I want to tend to that tree early and often over the long haul (paraphrasing Tony Holler and Dan John).
This vision keeps my eyes on the distant future so I don’t do anything dumb now to compromise the possibility.
Your Objective Isn’t Like Mine
But your dream, mission, and vision won’t look anything like mine. Nor should they.
Dan O’Brian’s memoir “Clearing Hurdles” pointed out how, for a while, his sole focus was becoming Olympic champion in the decathlon after his no-height at the 92 Olympic Trials. Nothing else mattered. His dream was clear: #1 on the world stage at Atlanta. The narrowness of his dream probably contributed to the string of injuries over the next 8 years that forced his retirement.
And yet…he set a world record in the dec in 92 and won Olympic gold in 96. He achieved his dream.
For me, as a husband and parent first, as a coach second, a professional third, and only then as an athlete, I am not willing to make that much sacrifice. So I can pretty reliably assume I won’t achieve that type of success. Thus, my dream is not to have that particular form of success. You could argue I’ve set my sights much, much lower, but I would retort I’ve set my sights on an objective more personally meaningful.
Questions To Determine Your Objective
That’s the real point: if you’re going to self-coach, you get to serve your own dream, not someone else’s dream for you.
Is the level of success that compels you to get invited to a national-team tryout?
Is it to be a league MVP?
Is it to become skilled enough to coach your kids?
Maybe it’s to be skilled enough to beat your kids!
Your dream should exist within a 10-year timeline, though it could represent a timeline as short as 6 months. Shorter than 6 months is simply a training objective, perhaps a peak or a key competition. Longer than 10 years is your vision for yourself as an athlete, how you’ll spend your career or life in sport.
Your dream is a goal to achieve – but one ambitious enough that, in striving for it, you inevitably improve and can enjoy the process. Your vision is a statement of your athletic identity.
Are you an athlete for the accolades?
Are you an athlete for the community it plugs you into?
Are you an athlete for the feeling of improving yourself?
Are you an athlete because you can’t imagine being anything else?
It doesn’t matter to me what your vision is. It matters to me that you can express it in a sentence. The shorter the sentence the better, because simplifying demands clarity.
Are you in the game for the next 4 years or the next 40 years?
Is it critical to you to become the absolute best you can be or to be able to keep showing up?
Does it matter which sport you attach yourself to or do you just need to stay in motion?
Your vision should answer all of that – and your dream should narrow your focus enough that you know how to train right now.
How SHIFT Athletes Determine Objective
As a professional coach, I demand answers like this from my athletes within the first few hours working together.
“What goal do you want my help to achieve?”
“What would it mean to you to achieve it?”
“If you don’t get there, will our work have been meaningful?”
“If you do get there, what else do you want?”
For those athletes who stick with me long term – looking at you SL and ML! – we dig into the vision slowly.
“Why are you playing this game?”
“What does this game mean to you?”
“If you had to quit tomorrow, how does that affect who you are?”
“What else would you do with your time if you didn’t do this?”
An athlete’s immediate dream determines what work we choose to fit into the weeks and months of preparation. An athlete’s vision determines what we’re willing to compromise, what we’re willing to risk, and what is non-negotiable.
When the dream is to be world-class yet the vision is to play for decades, we have to accept slower progress to minimize risk of catastrophic injury.
When the dream is to level up a few tiers yet the vision is low-commitment, we have to balance training with other interests in life.
When the dream is the make the professional ranks and the vision doesn’t contain athletics, we can burn the boats!
My mission as a professional coach never changes: serve the stated goal. I align our training sessions, our programming, and our measures of success to the athlete’s goal within the guardrails of my philosophy. That philosophy becomes the filter for whether I’ll work with an athlete or not – is my method appropriate to help them achieve the stated goal? Are they bought in to my ideas enough to improve at the necessary rate? If either answer is no, I wish them the best and we part ways. If both answers are yes, we get to work.
The Challenge Of Self-Coaching
As a self-coached athlete, you have to do all of this.
You have to paint the picture of your future, both near and far.
You have to define the mission in terms that set your priority.
You have to articulate the philosophy and principles that guide your decisions.
You have to identify the performance metrics that tell the score.
You have to analyze your sport to select the key athletic qualities.
You have to arrange sessions and exercises to build up those qualities.
And then, at the end, you have to trust the plan you’ve made, show up every day, and execute.
I wrote a much shorter piece months ago about the challenges of being a self-coached athlete.
This series is every part of how to actually do it.
The reason I have struggled so much to take a singular focus in my two decades as an athlete is because I’m a professional coach. Part of my ongoing study of the art of coaching is the risk that I’ll learn something I’m eager to try. Trying lots of new things is the ultimate deterrent to trusting the plan I’ve made, showing up every day, and executing.
But if your vision of yourself as an athlete is clear, if your immediate dream is clear, if your mission is clear…
If your philosophy is genuine and your principles are reliable…
If your metrics are meaningful and your training menu is sensible…
And if your commitment is sustainable…you can thrive as a self-coached athlete.
You have to have the courage to do less. If, like me, you feel tempted to do everything, I recommend you work with a professional coach. Hand off the planning to them. Hold on to your vision and be willing to follow their guidance. That’s how a strength & conditioning coach makes you better – they guide you toward your goal.
Even if you choose to work with a coach, you didn’t read this series for nothing. You have my map of what a good coach will provide for you. Use it to ask about the milestones along the way. Use this series to evaluate if your coach is really in your corner or if they’re just taking your money. They should be able to describe every element I’ve demanded you reflect on.
Use this map, with your own objective as the north star and your own metrics as the scorecard, to feel confident you’re on the path to your measure of success.
My goal as a coach has always been to work myself out of a job. I want you to succeed and I want you to not need my help to get there.
For whatever reason, oh player-coach, you have to coach yourself. I hope you see how to thrive while doing that.