What is the best way to learn to coach? The answer is quite simple, get out and coach. There is no substitute for being on the firing line. Not only to write the workout but to coach the actual workout. To make it happen, to make adjustments, change exercises; manipulate rest intervals, to discipline an athlete, whatever it takes. No textbook, no online tutorial can prepare you. Certifications will not prepare you. Internships at palatial training facilities will not prepare you. You must get out in the real world. What do you do if you don’t have a weight room, or a track? What can you do? The best teacher is experience. If you want to be a coach, then start to think like a coach, act like a coach. I knew I wanted to be a coach by my senior year in high school, so I started watching how coaches coached, how they organized practices, how they communicated with their athletes and I coached. During the summers I helped my high school basketball coach. I had coaching classes in school where we had to coach. Gather experiences, put yourself in situations where you must innovate, must organize, must lead. You can never know too much, you must keep learning. Learn from your successes and failures. Above all remember coaching is so much more than the X’s and O’s, those X’s and O’s are people, they have feelings, they have lives. Coaching is about helping to make people better, not just better athletes but better people. I learned very early on that coaching is not something that you do it is something that you are.
