Stop Learning...Start Dying?
What a fantastic quote by Lillian Smith. Too often coaches get set in a routine that becomes 'comfortable'. When you ignore current research, advice, science breakthroughs, in relation to your training programs, then it is time to die.
Don't neglect research at the expense of comfort. Mike Boyle said it best, "We shouldn't be punished for learning". If your program hasn't changed in 3-5 years, then you must seriously question what you are doing. Are you being a coach or a babysitter?
I tell the coaches I work with that in 5 years, what we are currently doing will be proven wrong and ineffective. I'd like to believe we are training on the cutting edge research but with new scientific breakthroughs and detailed research coming out in the field of Strength & Conditioning, I believe what is current will be proven wrong in a few years. It is my job, as a strength coach to continue following the research and make sure that we're always adapting to the latest research.
I believe principles and foundations should remain the same, however, the application of those principles will change based around the latest scientific findings.
What That Means In Practice
I wrote the paragraphs above years ago. They hold up. But they deserve more than a paragraph. Here is what a learning-driven coaching career actually looks like.
1. Comfort Is The Career Killer
Every coach reaches a point where the program runs itself. The templates are built. The sessions flow. It feels like mastery. It is actually the beginning of decline.
Comfort whispers that you have arrived. The research says otherwise. Exercise science moves every year: new findings on tendon loading, on velocity-based training, on sleep, on monitoring. A program that has not changed in five years is not a proven system. It is a fossil. Ask yourself honestly: are you being a coach or a babysitter?
2. Principles Do Not Change. Applications Do.
This is the distinction that keeps you grounded while you evolve. Progressive overload is a principle. How you apply it, percentages, velocity zones, autoregulation, will look completely different in five years. Specificity is a principle. What "specific" means for a volleyball outside hitter keeps getting refined.
Young coaches often chase new methods without understanding the principles underneath. Veteran coaches sometimes defend old applications as if they were principles. Both are mistakes. Hold the principles tightly. Hold the applications loosely.
3. Experiment Like A Startup
Open experimentation is foundational to any performance team serious about development. Run your program like a startup incubator: form a hypothesis, test it on a small group, measure honestly, keep what works, kill what does not.
This requires a culture where safe mistakes are allowed. Fear of a mistake should NEVER lead to a failure to take action. The coaches who grow are the ones willing to run the trial, face the data, and say "I was wrong" out loud. That is not weakness. That is the scientific method wearing a whistle.
4. Learn In Public
One reason I started the Decoding Excellence Show was selfish: it forces me to keep learning. Every conversation with a coach, a scientist, or a practitioner outside my bubble challenges something I thought I knew.
You do not need a podcast. Write. Teach an intern. Present at a clinic. Argue respectfully with a colleague. Learning in public creates accountability that private reading never will. And teaching is the fastest way to discover what you do not actually understand yet.
5. What I Tell Young Coaches
To every young coach reading this: assume that in five years, much of what you are doing now will be proven wrong. That is not an insult. It is the nature of a growing science, and it is liberating once you accept it.
Your job is not to be right forever. Your job is to stay current, stay humble, and keep adapting. The coaches who last twenty years are not the ones who found the answer. They are the ones who never stopped looking.