I have always had a firm stance on coaches in a sport like ours; everyone needs one. Whether it be a remote coach or the preferred in-person experience offering critique with every drop of the bar, a watchful eye is necessary to turn out a good lifter. By good lifter I mean having cultivated individualized advantageous technique in order to lift heavier and heavier weight, maintaining said technique. Coaches themselves aren’t an exception should they decide to lift competitively as well.
 
I myself have been coaching weightlifting since 2014, and I’ve been competing since 2015 under the supervision and guidance of a coach all the while. When I was called to the barbell from my beginnings in CrossFit, I began to experiment diligently rather than training, as I was conducting my field work as a coach to learn the sport on a deeper level, in the competitive arena itself. I desperately wanted to know the intimate details of the lifts in a way that I could teach my clients with great detail and direction. Tinkering on my own only got me so far. I didn’t know that I should’ve taken videos of my attempts for analysis; I didn’t know that ramping up to a maximum attempt three times in one hour would be an exhausting disappointment; I didn’t know that my Do-Wins were a disservice to my lifting (Zigmunt’s words, not mine!). So I found a local weightlifting coach.
 
Since then I’ve worked with three coaches; the first taught me to find a better coach, the second taught me to fiercely face the bar with confidence and certainty, and the third taught me how to find love for the sport in my darkest times. In my time with each one of them, my technique has only improved to its current peak of evolution. The same can be said for my coaching. It is not to say that simply being coached directly translates to how and what I am coaching my own classes and clients. Moreover, it has been the experience as a weightlifter—five days a week, almost five years deep, and who knows how many hours later—that has been the most valuable tool in teaching others.
 
Any coach of any kind can be too far removed from their subject if their job is to observe, preach, and teach rather than living it for themselves. In weightlifting ,that can be pronounced in self coaching, where in one direction the fate can be paralysis by analysis (not hard to do!) and too far in the other direction is an ego so big you don’t know a crappy jerk when you’ve received it shaky and overextended.
 
When you’ve enrolled yourself to be a weightlifter— to say your dreams out loud, to be spit out by a clean, to lose a love interest to your training schedule, to spitting in a cup with your teammates in the car with your winter coats on and the heat full blast, to earning one more kilo in your total—you’ve signed up for an incredibly rich ride for the mind and body. The job as a coach is to steer the ship between and through these times of heartbreak and triumph. My job.
 
But what I’ve really wondered about is my role as an athlete working under another coach. I’ve already had a look behind the curtain, with years of experience turning my words into another person’s movement; I know the tricks. It's a linguistics job, really–using the right words, invoking the right feeling to conjure the right response in adjusting a lifter’s technique. But I can’t seem to turn that part of my brain off. Watching my teammates, watching videos on Instagram even, my head is cocked to the side watching the path of the bar relative to the shins, knees, and hips. I can’t help it. I’d like to think of it as a help rather than a hindrance to my weightlifting career, but I cannot say that has been the case for other parties involved.
 
A single coach never has all the answers. They’d be lying to you if they said they did. In weightlifting there are universal truths, but they show up in each body so differently. Then there are methods of learning—visual, verbal, sensory, analogous—and that REALLY comes up differently in each athlete. A coach is a scientist in this regard; we test the physical stimulus, the cues, and the lifestyle management and their effects on the outcome. We make changes to these variables and do it all over again in hopes of a more favorable outcome and keep hold to what worked. But as a coach we have to remember that each athlete is unique in these combinations, and often we have a lengthy roster to keep track of. But what about the athlete who’s also a coach? An athlete who sees what you see? An athlete who knows when you are trying to bend their work with your words?
 
I see it as an opportunity. Some see it as a threat.
 
I may not have a full picture of the collaborative efforts that neighboring clubs and coaches have with one another, but from where I’m standing, it’s nonexistent. The efforts that I’ve seen made have been entirely misconstrued as poaching, challenging one’s qualifications, or an intrusion on one’s financial viability. I only became a coach (as quickly as I had!) because when I learned the ways of the bar, I read everything I could get my hands on, went to every seminar I could find, and played on the bar every chance I got. I’ve never loved reading, I never loved being in the gym, and I never had a community like I had found until I immersed myself in weightlifting. So yes, I would like to have others to nerd out with as well! In my experience, the efforts to collaborate, to clarify, and to dive deeper are mistaken for a rejection of the gym hierarchy. A hierarchy? In the place I love the most? Ridiculous.
 
I can attest to and encourage putting trust in the person who coaches you through the sport in the name of growth and success. Whether you pay them or are sponsored, or even if the coaching is casual and off the cuff, having someone to go to that you trust and respect will take you much further than going at it alone. But if you’re coaching a coach, remind yourself that you are both looking from the same perspective, do them the honor of speaking their language, rather, your language. To think backing off of the old shoe of dominance in a coach-to-athlete relationship would risk the potential of the athlete is a sad story to play out. What a dream of mine to be collaborative with my young and eager peers who have the eye and interest of a coach. Should we confine one another into simply an athlete’s box or a coach’s box, we stifle our learning and lifting potential on a personal and communal level.