BYO Motivation

I remember seeing a quote from a fellow Perth coach once, it went something like:

I will bring the knowledge and advice,
You bring the motivation

What he meant by that is that he didn't consider it his job to motivate his athletes to train, that bit of had to come from themselves. I have to say, I couldn't agree more.

A coach can bring energy and enjoyment to sessions, make the experience more fun etc, but that is different to dragging athletes to each session and pushing them through the session, that isn't our job. We aren't babysitters, generally we are coaching adults and we expect the athletes to behave that way. We are there to help people train smart and effectively, but the will to be there has to come from the athlete, we can't provide that for somebody.

I don't say this just because I am lazy. True, a coach can drag an athlete through a training session, probably even through a few weeks of training sessions, however, eventually an unmotivated athlete will stop turning up. Without that internal drive it is only a matter of time before an athlete gives up, getting your drive and motivation externally just isn't sustainable.

I say all this because I had a number of athlete appointments today and a couple of them bought the aforementioned quote to mind.

Busselton Half Ironman is in 4 weeks, which means we are at just about the perfect time for athletes to start panicking about being under prepared, which is exactly what they are doing. Two of the conversations I had with athlete's today went something like, 'I have been missing sessions and I haven't trained enough and now I am panicking'. To be honest, as a coach it is hard to know what to do with a conversation like that other than nod and say, 'yep'.

I generally don't do that, but boy it is tempting.

All my athletes are fit enough to make it through the day, so I can give them that re-assurance. Are they fit enough to achieve their chosen goals, to be honest, no, some of them are not. It is hard to offer them more than that and so some of them are going to have to come to terms with realigning their expectations for race day

The accountability for training sits with just one person, the athlete. As a coach I can help them find the path, but they need to walk it.