Over the years I have asked questions on what is the truth. This path of questioning comes with a price, since the truth may not be what people want to hear. Doing something wrong for years while shouting everyone else is a fool or arrogantly believing they have all the answers. Since 1998 I have been looking at why things work and ask questions every day. I don’t have all the answers but I do know what doesn’t work well as I have tried it or seen it fail with others over the last decade. Most of my athletes have not been Olympic or professional, but high school kids with dreams that place enormous pressure on me as it’s hard to say no to a kid that wants to be a champion. Since I represent the majority of coaches working with youth, I have freedom to voice my opinion and ask the questions that the experts don’t want to hear. It’s painful to the wallet and ego to be wrong, especially by a less established coach or someone younger than yourself. For me, I see training as a sculpture, where errors are just the marble that you remove to get to what your end goal is. Errors are a process of elimination, finding out the truth over time.
Unfortunately time requires those to wait years to see what really works, and from a business perspective, this doesn’t allow for rapid distribution of new products or advancements. So, whatever one is doing now must be right, as you are selling it now in a catalog and speaking of it. How many people followed the previous advancement then to hear it was wrong, only to know that this advancement is not new, but something suggested years ago by others in field? The three Cs of Coaching, Composing, Conducting, Critiquing is what I learned early in my life. I am not saying I am a maestro, or a great mind like Socrates, but I follow the approaches in order to search the truth. The truth is being heard by many, as a chainsaw cutting down a tree may be heard if one wants to listen.
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