Avoiding Burn Out In Coaching

Too busy to be productive.

This thought came to be while talking on the phone with a fellow strength and conditioning coach Chad Herring (shout out to Kosta Telegadas for the connection here) as Chad will come on the Strength Coach Network Cheeky Mid Weeky Podcast next week.

What Chad and I talked about was the fact many times us S&C coaches get too busy and we cannot find time to be productive. And many times we wear this as a badge of honor.

This does not mean you stop doing your job of training athletes.

What it does mean is you work with your teammates to cover and move to get the job done.

If you work with all the sports and you are the only S&C coach - this means you can't go to practices. It might also mean you can't see every team lift and that means you have to coach up the sport coaches to run the session.

It is not your fault the admin won't hire anyone else. You are one person, coach up those that work with you - maybe push for them to get their certification so there is a certified coach in the room - but we all know having a cert doesn't mean you can coach, just like not having it doesn't mean you can't coach.

So work within your means so you can still accomplish the task - training and impacting the lives of athletes.

If you work with a team of coaches - cover and move for each other. You have an athlete that has to miss the team training and come at a different time, cool. This doesn't mean you need to or should do 1-1 with them.

Talk with the other coaches on staff, see if any of them have the same conflict - then make a conflict lift group time. Rotate daily who works with that group. In this way, you don't get brunt out, nor does your colleague. When you do this, it also forces everyone on staff to have the same language and lift card template.

​​​​​​​Whoever is covering your lift needs to know what the movements are in your lift card - you all should speak the same language.

Hopefully this helps at least one coach.

This was something I struggled with until I first heard SCN founder and friend of mine Keir talk about it and the importance of working on the system and in the system.

Many businesses have production team (working in the system) and research and development team (working on the system). As the S&C coach you have to do both, yet 95% of S&C coaches only spend time on working in the system.

Maybe that is where you start, 95% in the system and 5% on the system. Then make your goal to be 94% and 6%, then 93% and 7%, you see where I am going with this.

Doing so can potentially help you:

1. Avoid burn out

2. See things more clearly

3. Solve problems easier

4. Enjoy life more

Shout out to the mentors who helped me with this, and if it helped you - kindly share this with them to help them.

Thanks,

Justin