Recently I have noticed that there are some things that I do when I coach that I don’t see many other coaches doing. Some of these things even go directly against advice I have read and things I was taught when I trained to be a coach. These things may therefore seem counterintuitive to you, but they feel natural to me. What’s more, I have found these things to be useful and effective. So what are these secret methods and techniques I’ve been hiding from the world?

On the whole, they are simple approaches that any of us can apply as coaches, they do however, come with a warning: these approaches might make you appear less like you have all the answers, and in turn this may make you feel like you aren’t as good at your job as some other coaches. Let me explain…

I take my time diagnosing faults

A fellow coach once told me that I observed too many reps before identifying faults and offering solutions. “If you can’t spot a fault in three reps then you’re not ready to coach,” they said. At the time I really took this to heart and began to doubt my abilities. Furthermore, I worried because sometimes I needed to watch a slow motion video to feel sure I had correctly identified a fault. Nowadays I can spot an obvious fault in a handful of reps, but I still rarely comment before I’ve observed a lifter for a half hour or longer, especially the first time I see them lift. Sometimes the fault is really subtle, sometimes I need to decide what to fix first, and sometimes I need to work out if it is a fault or an idiosyncrasy that is best left alone.

In my experience, a lot of coaches are too hasty to diagnose and try and ‘fix’ a lift. They don’t allow themselves time to get an overall feel for how the client moves and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Also, it is often the case that there is a decision to be made about what fault needs fixing first and what the consequences of any chosen fix will be on other parts of the lift. Recently I have begun to formulate some reasoning behind the number of reps it takes to diagnose a fault. It goes something like this: Observe a set of five. For the first rep, observe the entire lift and body, on rep two, observe the start position, on rep three, observe the way the athlete pulls, on rep four, observe the transition, and then observe the catch and recovery during rep five. Then let the athlete rest and repeat the same series of observations for another set of five. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only scientific approach to observing and diagnosing faults. I know people who like to believe you can just observe the overall lift and fault-find based on whether the athlete jumps forward or back and the like. I don’t think this is true. I think you need to really look at small segments of the movement to truly see what’s going on. Repeated observation is critical because--and this is not obvious to everyone! Seeing a fault occur once means absolutely nothing. We are looking for patterns. That, my friends, is science!

I try not to rush when fixing a fault

Lately I have also resisted the temptation to offer a fix too quickly. As coaches, we all have our go-to solutions. For instance, when I have someone jumping forward in the snatch (and their technique is generally okay), I simply draw a line on the floor and tell then not to go over it during the lift, and it almost always works. But there are times that I tell a lifter to leave a fault with me, because I need time to figure my way through what’s going on, to find the route of the problem. If it’s a hectic session, I’ll film it and watch it in slow motion when I get a moment of peace and quiet where I can think properly. I used to feel a great pressure to have all the answers ready to hand. Lately I have realised that some problems cannot be overcome with a quick fix and need some lateral thinking.
 
I allow for different styles of lifting

Contrary to popular belief (not yours, of course) there is more than one way to clean and jerk and snatch. There are some key positions that I like to see all of my lifters hitting, but what happens around those moments is varied. Athletes with unorthodox technique, dramatic muscular and skeletal asymmetry and vastly different limb length proportions have set incredible records in our sport. Not everyone is going to look the same when they lift. Not everybody’s bar path will be exactly the same shape and some people will not be able to make the shapes we consider ‘correct’.

This may seem outrageous but I am always questioning myself when I’m working with a lifter. I ask, “Are they wrong, or do they just look like they’re wrong?” I know that sounds like a bizarre question, but it stems from observing start positions in athletes. Next time you watch a room full of lifters setting up for lifts, make a mental note of how many you think have a poor or odd set up. For months I was puzzled by the way a couple of my female lifters looked setting up, but the more I opened my mind, the more I began to realize the dramatic effect limb proportion has on the set up position. Some people look wrong even when they’re right! I like to spend lots of time using a pattern of observation and reflection in order to build up a picture of what they as an individual look like when they move well. A really common point of difference we all see is the severity of contact through the ‘hip drive’. I used to like to see a convincing level of contact--that is, until I realized that some of my athletes lift just as well with barely any contact.

So far I’ve only talked about how I go against the grain in terms of my technique cues and corrections. But my odd behavior doesn’t stop there. You may have garnered from previous articles that I believe in coaching the whole person and so in my work I find myself applying counterintuitive thought to the emotional and mental side of things as well.

I try my best to listen to my athletes when they bitch and whine

Coaches generally tire quickly of athletes who bitch and whine. I find it irritating when my athletes bitch and whine. In order to coach, we do need to be able to get a word in edgewise, but sometimes the bitching and whining is telling you that the athlete is struggling with their confidence or that their morale is low. We are all human and we have all made excuses when we just can’t be bothered. However, most of us bitch and whine because something is getting in the way of us feeling at our best. The most simple example I have of this is as follows: Some athletes will always complain that a program you’ve written is killing them, but here’s a newsflash: sometimes the programme you wrote them is killing them and you need to change it, because if you don’t it will inhibit their progress. What I’m driving at is this: Almost all athletes bitch and whine but nowadays I’m not so quick to dismiss it, because sometimes it’s feedback on my actions.
I like to get to know someone before setting goals with them.

When it comes to setting goals with an athlete, I always try to get to know them before making any set targets. I once read a comment that somebody had posted in an online weightlifting discussion, they said, “If you can’t snatch bodyweight within three months, you might as well give up weightlifting.” For me this is right up there in the top few most ridiculous things I have ever read on the internet. Everyone is different physically and mentally, not to mention the effect that age, athletic background and genetics can have on someone’s rate of progress. Because I detest this kind of attitude (and not to mention this type of ignorance in general) so deeply, I tend to get to know someone quite well before establishing goals with them. How can any coach make a judgement on what to expect from even the most naturally gifted athlete without several hours of focused observation? Furthermore, I believe in recognizing all success equally because achieving a goal is achieving a goal. Until you’re on the platform on competition day, all achievements are of equal value.

As coaches there is a lot of pressure on us to have the answers immediately on hand, but this doesn’t make sense. We are working with the human animal that is by its very nature inconsistent and unpredictable. The possibilities for variation of movements and mindsets are infinite. Therefore, there is no simple and universal set of ‘fixes’ that can be conveniently learned by trainee coaches over the course of a weekend. The responsibility for tailoring our coaching to every individual we work with lies with us and the learning should be on going. So any time you think you have this coaching business all sewn up, I would urge you to stop following your instinctive reactions (or what you were specifically told not to do as a trainee coach), and try a little counterintuitive coaching.