Coaching, Teaching, Competing: It's all a Passion

In case you haven't read any of my previous post and if you aren't someone that knows me personally, I am obsessed with weightlifting and teaching people how to lift weights.  I suppose it was pretty prophetic when I began lifting weights at the age of 16 and thought it was cool and impressive trying to leg press the entire stack.  Maybe it was where I grew up or the fact that I grew up a bit of a tomboy but it never ever occurred to me that lifting weights, let alone lifting HEAVY weights, would be considered atypical for a girl.  It never crossed my mind that I might get "bulky" or "huge" from lifting.  To me I wanted to get strong, I wanted to be stronger than all the boys, and the only logical way to do that was to lift heavier weights. 

Well over a decade after I first stepped into the weight room, I now step into one of the following three "offices" any given day of the week.....

 

Now my days....and nights....and weekends revolve around teaching others about lifting weights and the actual sport of weightlifting.  It's a passion, plain and simple.  Coaching, teaching, competing. 

As evidenced by many of my posts I love competing.  I have always been a competitor.  However I get just as excited coaching.  Seeing the look on someone's face who has never performed the Olympic lifts before and that moment when all the technique work finally clicks is pretty priceless.  I love screaming my face off as one of my advanced guys goes for a big weight.  If one of my guys bombs out, my heart breaks along with them.  I like being the voice of reason to bring someone back from the edge and help them refocus on the task at hand.  The motivator, the drill instructor, the shoulder to lean on, the frustrater, the high fiver, the good bad and ugly, all in one. 

Coaching people in weightlifting and to lift weights in general is just as much of a beast as competing.  Convincing an 18-year-old female soccer player that lifting weights will only improve their performance is just as challenging as convincing a 25-year-old male that there is a rhyme and reason to why I've given him specific exercises to work on instead of just maxing out all the time.  It's not a simple, cut and dried profession where I get to say lift weights and then be done with it.  I worry about how to best approach improving performance, what to do when an athlete or lifter has stagnated, how to prevent and avoid injuries, what to do when there is an injury, how to best balance their workouts to get the most from them, how to approach the individual that's struggling mentally or emotionally.  I think about all of that almost constantly.  No two athletes or lifters are exactly alike and I will never treat them as such.  I want to know what everyone's best of the bests and worst of the worsts are.  Celebrate when they do well and pick them back up when they've fallen. 

I treat coaching as an opportunity to educate people.  If nothing else when they leave school or when they move on from lifting, I hope they have learned a few things from working with me.  Whether it's how to properly execute a power clean or that they're stronger mentally and physically than they've ever given themselves credit for, it's an opportunity to learn something.  If they have learned that the only limits they truly have are the ones they have placed upon themselves then I have done my job successfully.  Coaching, teaching, and competing; it's all a passion.  One I am fortunate enough to live every day.