One of the best pizzas I’ve ever had in my life was from a little Greek place in Seattle called Santorini’s. Tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant, Greek owned and operated, and I’ve been saying for years that they put out one of the best pies I’ve ever chomped on. Anyway, I remember sitting in this joint several years ago, feasting and having beers with a friend of mine. This friend was an elite American lifter from the 80s…World Team member, American record-holder, the whole bit. He and I were in the middle of a conversation about former Olympic gold medalists in weightlifting who had gone into coaching after their athletic careers were over, and how many of them had been successful. It was a fun few minutes of weightlifting trivial pursuit while we tried to recall how many top lifters had gone on to become top coaches. Names like Alexeev, Suleymanoglu, Rigert, Kono, and other superstars come to mind, and we diagnosed how effective their coaching had been based on their country’s world championship performance. In the middle of this conversation, I asked my buddy if he thought world champion lifters made good coaches. His answer was, “I don’t know. Coaching is overrated anyway.”

“Coaching is overrated.” I’ve been thinking about that statement for fifteen years. The point he was making was that athletes either have the natural ability to become champions or they don’t, plain and simple. The ones that have world championship ability will probably become world champions regardless of who their coach is because they simply have more talent than anybody in the world. And the ones that don’t have world championship ability? You could give them the best coaching in the planet throughout their entire careers, and they’ll never make it to the top. That was the general idea of the dinner banter.

I’m a coach, as many of you are. One of the beliefs that I think is common among all coaches is that we control how successful our athletes are. If they win championships, it’s because we guided them to those championships. If they fail, it’s because we didn’t prepare them properly. The statement “coaching is overrated” punches a few holes in our basic belief system, because it basically says that we’re just not as important as we think we are. I think this is damn fine material for an article. And as with most of the subjects we analyze here at Performance Menu, it’s not a simple black-and-white issue. Like a good pizza, there are many different components involved.

Big Al and his Magic Towel…

Does everybody here know who Al Oerter was? Probably not, which is a shame. Al Oerter was one of the greatest athletes who ever lived, no question about it. An American discus thrower, Al won four Olympic gold medals. That’s right, four of them. Even more impressive is the fact that Al set new Olympic records in all four of these performances, and he won a couple of them with torn cartilage in his ribs, neck injuries, etc. Al’s greatness is beyond comparison, and one of the freaky things about him is that he was never really coached in his career. He basically taught himself. I heard an interview with him once where he was asked who his coach was throughout his prime years. Al said, “My coach was a towel.”

What the heck does that mean? Al went on to explain that he didn’t have a coach. All he did was set a towel out in the throwing sector at the distance he wanted to hit with the discus. If he wanted to throw 190 feet, for example, he would just take a white gym towel and lay it on the ground 190 feet from the disc ring. Then, he would just go through his workout and make sure he threw past the towel. No coaching, no input from others, no video, etc. He just put a towel out there and made sure he threw the discus past it. Using this method, he won Olympic gold four times. Seriously guys, I’m not making this up. The guy was from another galaxy.

Now, there are some things that we have to openly acknowledge about this example. Clearly, Al Oerter had a level of natural talent that was beyond human comprehension. The “towel method” worked for him because he simply didn’t need much help from anybody. He was born with an unnatural sense of knowing how to make his body move in the most effective pattern, and he also happened to have the strength, power, balance, and coordination to perfect that pattern. These things are obvious. Equally obvious is the fact that athletes like Al Oerter are extraordinarily rare. People just aren’t born with tools like this on a regular basis.

However, Al isn’t the only example in history. Olympic weightlifting legend Vasily Alexeev was very similar. Alexeev won two Olympic gold medals and broke eighty world records during his ten-year reign of invincibility in the 70s. Like Al, Vasily trained alone and formed his own methodology. He was able to dominate the world for a very long time without any coaching, just by doing his own thing. In addition to these two men, there have been a few other cases throughout sports history where athletes reach world record greatness without being coached. However, do these examples prove to us that coaching is overrated or, perhaps, unnecessary? Well… here’s another angle we have to look at.

Ivan Abadjiev

Okay, most of you probably didn’t know who Al Oerter was. How about Ivan Abadjiev, do any of you know who he is? Anyone? Anyone? Dang it, I hope you’re not zero for two. If you are, let me bring you up to speed. Ivan Abadjiev was the head national coach of the Bulgarian weightlifting team during the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. Bulgaria, in case you don’t know, is a relatively small European country with very little weightlifting success prior to the early 70s when Abadjiev was hired. This man built Bulgaria into one of the most feared powerhouses in the history of the sport. The 80s were an insane rampage of world champions and world records from this tiny nation, as they toppled the massive Soviet Union to become the best weightlifting team on the planet. Abadjiev is widely considered the greatest coach in the history of the sport, and there is no question that he was an iron-fisted control freak who ran his program with a dictator mentality. Abadjiev’s belief was that his program would produce world champions, plain and simple. He understood that most athletes would not be able to handle the inhuman workload of his training program. But the ones that could handle it would become the best in the world. And it worked.

This is an interesting contrast to the examples of Oerter and Alexeev. With those two men, you had a situation where coaching was irrelevant. They had their success with nobody telling them what to do. With Abadjiev and the Bulgarians, however, the level of success was almost entirely attributed to the coach. Through his vision and his direction, the national program was developed into a weightlifting machine. Year after year, the Bulgarians simply pumped new bodies into the machine the way meat is pumped into a sausage grinder. With Abadjiev cranking the handle, the Bulgarian program spit out world champions as reliably as the grinder churned out sausages.

We have examples where championships are won without any coaching at all. And then we have other examples where coaching is almost the sole reason for the championships. So, getting back to our original question, is coaching overrated?

It’s All About Levels…

The answer to this question has to be a little long-winded, so let’s break it down in a way that makes it easy to understand. Let’s take a look at different levels of athletes:

Al and Alexeev Level

With these athletes, coaching isn’t even necessary. They have so many God-given gifts that they can simply operate on their own and they will still rise to the top of their sport. Okay, we understand. And we also understand that athletes at this level are one-in-a-trillion. They’re the Haley’s Comets of sports.

Not quite Al and Alexeev but still way ahead of everybody else Level

Here, we’re looking at athletes who are extremely talented, but they still need coaching and direction. These are freaky studs, but they don’t quite have the athletic genius to be able to operate on their own. The interesting thing about these athletes is that they will usually be successful no matter who their coach is. As long as they’re being coached by somebody who knows the basics of training and knows how to manage personalities, these athletes will win championships. Their success doesn’t come from their coach, not really. Their success comes from their natural gifts, and their coach is more of a “talent manager” than anything else. If you happen to work with athletes like this in your coaching career, the best advice I can give you is “don’t over-coach them.” These athletes will need much less input and instruction than most other athletes. With these cats, the coach basically just needs to make sure they train consistently and show up for the competition on time. These are the ones that make life easy.

The Massive Majority Level

Now we’re talking about the area that almost all of your athletes will fall into. This is the level where the athlete has solid athletic talent and good work ethic, but they will not rise to the top without very well-planned training and preparation. These athletes don’t have the same physical gifts as the athletes in the two higher levels that we just examined. And to be totally realistic about it, these athletes should not be able to beat the athletes in the two higher levels. However, this is where life can get interesting. Because if you have Massive Majority Level athletes who have astonishing work ethic and amazing commitment, and they’re competing against Al and Alexeev Level athletes who have unparalleled physical gifts but also happen to be lazy and stupid, then you might just have a shot. Massive Majority athletes are not supposed to beat Al and Alexeev athletes, make no mistake about it. Donkeys don’t usually outrun thoroughbred race horses in the Kentucky Derby. But if the coach, the program, and the mental qualities of the Massive Majority athletes are exceptional enough, then there could be exceptional results.

Genetic Cesspool Level

Groan… These are the athletes who, God bless them, just don’t have it. They can barely stand up straight and cough at the same time. You could coach these poor critters until judgment day and they’ll never win championships. You’ll know these athletes when you see them. And you want to know the hardest part of it all? These athletes often have the highest work-ethic, commitment, and love for what they’re doing. They suck and they know it, but they freaking love the sport and they’ll bust their butts harder than anybody. Some coaches turn these athletes away, and I say shame on them for doing that. Because one thing I can tell you for sure is that these athletes can very easily become your best volunteers, most loyal supporters, and most faithful contributors. I always tell people that if they work hard, contribute something to the program, and don’t cause trouble, then they’re welcome members of the team. You should do the same.

Are we ever gonna get an answer?

“Coaching is overrated.” True or false? We can say that this statement has some truth to it. At the end of the day, an athlete’s talent level will be the deciding factor in his/her career. Average is not supposed to beat exceptional. Superior shouldn’t lose to normal. These things are true, and coaching doesn’t have much to do with it. I’ve seen some really phenomenal athletes who are coached by borderline incompetents. The athletes still win championships because they’re just better than everybody else. Nothing complicated about it.

However, the best coaches are the ones who build great programs. A great program is one that produces high-level results year after year, even if there aren’t any Al Oerters or Vasily Alexeevs running around. Abadjiev built Bulgaria into this type of program. Now, it’s obvious that there were a lot of exceptional athletes in the Bulgarian program throughout the 70s and 80s. You can’t be a world champion without being an exceptional athlete. But the point is that the Bulgarians achieved the highest levels of success for many years, and that success was driven by the coach who set the whole operation up.

One thing I would say about great coaches is that they can design effective training programs, but even more important than the program is the environment they create. Great coaches create great training environments. The “environment” is the atmosphere of discipline, enthusiasm, intensity, and respect for the team that you see when you walk in a gym. This is, in my opinion, the most important element of coaching. Athletes have to be able to actually feel a sense of responsibility and high expectation when the coach is present. They have to feel like everything is under control when the coach is there, because that is the feeling that will propel them forward to greater results. If a coach is panicky, disagreeable, or negative, then the athletes will develop those same qualities. Pretty soon, you’ve just got a gym full of losers.

Is coaching overrated? Well, I guess we can admit that nobody every turned horse manure into pancakes just by pouring syrup on it. None of the JV discus throwers on the track team I coach will probably ever break Al Oerter’s record of four Olympic gold medals. But if I do my job as a coach, I might be able to get that JV thrower into the finals of the state championship in three years. At that point, we’ve seen exceptional results from an average kid. That, my friends, is where coaching is most definitely NOT overrated. We took something normal and we turned it into something special, just like a great pizza maker does. Anybody can spin dough and then toss some toppings on it. But think about the best pizza you’ve ever had in your life. Go ahead, think about it right now. That pizza was perfect because somebody took a bunch of ordinary ingredients and made something amazing from them. Not just any hick from the street could make that pizza taste as great as it did. It was great because it was made by a master. That’s coaching, and it makes all the difference in the world.