When I was in college, I took a class called Human Relations Development. The course was required for my education major, and this was the touchy-feely class to end all touchy-feely classes. The professor was a very kind little old man who spoke in a gentle tone and usually patted you on the shoulder at least a few times when you were talking with him. The whole focus of the class was to make future teachers more skilled at communicating with people, listening attentively to their problems, gaining their trust, finding effective ways to assist them with their troubles, etc. You get the idea. It was a class about sensitivity.

As a twenty-two year old weightlifting male with a football background and a testosterone level that seemed to grow by the hour, I was way out of my element here. Most of the other students were women, and men with personalities that closely resembled women. One of the first lessons we completed in the class was an exercise that determined what kind of problem-solvers we were. If I described the whole exercise to you, your boredom would rapidly approach the jumping-out-of-a-window-to-end-it-all level. But the end result of the exercise told me that I was rated as a lousy, unproductive, insensitive problem-solver. I couldn’t understand why my rating was so low, either. To my way of thinking, there was a simple way of handling people when they had problems. My basic idea was, "Tell me what the hell is wrong, then I’ll tell you how to fix it, then you take your head out of your butthole and do what I say." I thought this sounded like a pretty solid approach.

Anyway, the class dragged on and I managed to get an A despite the fact that I didn’t really change much. I learned how to fake the "nice and caring" thing pretty well, but I was still a calloused meathead when it was all over. Now, fast forward sixteen years, I’m thirty-eight years old and I think my professor would be proud of me. A couple of marriages and fifteen years of coaching have forced me to actually learn how to listen to people and care about their feelings. I’m like the freakin Dr. Phil of weightlifting. Because of my transformation, I’m going to write this month’s article about an idea that was recently suggested to me by a very sharp lady. She thought it would be interesting to write about the topic of coachability from the perspective of the athlete. In other words, we’re talking about "what an athlete should look for in a coach and how to handle different issues that arise" between coaches and athletes (I’m actually quoting her e-mail to me). What should an athlete want from a coach? That’s the question we’re going to answer. And to prove even further what a wonderful human being I am, I’m even going to address the exact categories she suggested. We’ll look at specific traits that are essential in coaching and also a few hazards that athletes should be wary of. If this isn’t caring and considerate, then I don’t know what the hell is. Please keep reading, and feel free to bask in the warmth of my empathy.

Category #1: Eye for technique/ability to explain things clearly

Needless to say, this quality is absolutely, positively necessary for anyone who wants to coach the Olympic Lifts. The coach has to have a complete understanding of how a snatch or clean and jerk should look and feel. This is usually developed through years of experience in the sport. Most of the best coaches are people with a large range of experience in both lifting and coaching. It takes years to learn exactly how a snatch is supposed to feel and how to make your body execute the correct movements to make it happen. After that, it also takes years to learn exactly what a snatch is supposed to look like and how to make someone else’s body execute the correct movements to make it happen. When I was young and getting started in my weightlifting career, I wanted to be coached by someone who had actually been a weightlifter. It was important to me that my coach had walked the walk as an athlete. My faith in the coach would be stronger if I knew he had trained and competed at a high level. This may or may not be important to other athletes. There are certainly some very successful coaches who were not high-level athletes themselves. And clearly, there are also many high-level athletes who couldn’t coach their way out of a wet paper bag with their hands on fire. Basically, the athlete’s individual perspective on their coach is what matters in this area.

Regardless of competitive experience on the part of the coach, the one area that is indispensable is the coach’s ability to TEACH. The best coaches are great teachers. A coach can be a former world record holder and it won’t make a lick of difference if he/she doesn’t have the ability to clearly explain to the athletes what they’re supposed to be doing. This is where I believe that most great coaches are very organized in their thinking. When dealing with a lifter who has previously learned the lifts and needs coaching to get better, the coach looks at the athlete and immediately identifies which areas need to be corrected and which ones are already solid. One of the phrases I use with athletes is, "Okay, you’re already doing a lot of things right. Now here’s one area I think we need to fix." (Hint- Always start with a positive comment and always say "we" when you’re working with an athlete. Athletes like to believe that the two of you are in it together.) Good coaches fix one problem at a time. If you give an athlete three or four technical suggestions at the same time, they’ll probably get confused. And please don’t start off with some kind of negative comment like, "Jeez, you’re a total mess." It doesn’t accomplish anything productive and some people are sensitive. They’ll immediately think they’re a piece of crap when you say things like that. Then you’ve lost them.

Category #2: Being open to suggestions from other areas

My perspective on this area might surprise you and many of you definitely might disagree with it. In my experience, most of the best coaches are control freaks who are fairly inflexible in their methods. They’re usually not very open to suggestions from other areas. Now, the general mental flow of our society tells us that people have to work together to be successful. Corporate methodology in the workplace is usually based on idea sharing, think tank principles, and bosses who are open to input from employees. That’s the modern way. Dictatorships aren’t popular nowadays.

However, I think coaching is an area where this rule has to get broken. Great coaches usually have a dictator mentality. When coaches spend years building a successful methodology and then use this methodology to consistently produce outstanding results, they usually don’t welcome alternate ideas from outside sources. I coach track and field for a living and one of the things I say to my athletes every year at our first-day meeting is, "Make sure you understand something. This is a my-way-or-the-highway program. I’m the coach and you’re the athletes, and you’re going to do what I tell you to do. This might sound like a dictatorship, and that’s what it is. But you also need to understand that you’ll benefit from this, because the way I coach you is going to make you better. If you do what I tell you to do, you’re going to be successful." Over the course of the season, I blend this approach with a lot of humor. I also let the athletes know in every possible way that I care about them, I respect them, and I’m committed to their success not only in track and field, but in life. This has worked for me. I’m a control freak, and I make them believe that’s a good thing.

But as with anything else, there are special considerations to keep in mind when discussing dictator-type coaching. First of all, most of the best international weightlifting coaches in history have come from communist societies where the people are already adjusted to the idea of submitting to government control. This is America, where you’re going to encounter some very willful personalities. That skews things just a bit. Also, working with adults is different from working with young people. You can’t treat an adult like a sixteen year-old kid and expect them to stick around for long. If you push the totalitarian attitude too hard, you’ll turn people off. My general advice to athletes is that the coach is the boss, and you have to be willing to obey the coach if you want to have a successful relationship. That doesn’t mean that you have to tremble in fear and prostrate yourself when the coach walks in the gym, but it does mean that you have to be a disciplined pupil. If you were coached by a legend like John Wooden, Vince Lombardi, or Ivan Abadjiev, you would have no question about who was running the show when you came to practice every day. This is a good thing.

Category #3: Work ethic

This one is easy. As a coach, how can you ask an athlete to work hard if you’re not willing to show up every day and work hard yourself? If you’re lazy, you’re going to lose athletes quickly and you have nobody to blame but yourself. Simple enough? Good, then let’s move on.

Category #4: Personality

Aahhh, the glue that holds it all together. How can I say this clearly? Let’s put it this way: when you enter into a coach-athlete relationship with somebody, you’re making a commitment to spend a large portion of your life with that person. You’re going to be around each other all the time. There’s no way this can work if the athlete doesn’t like the coach. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that there will never be maximum results unless the athlete LOVES the coach. When I say "love," I’m obviously not talking about romantic feelings and passionate experience (this is unprofessional and it’s usually one great big recipe for disaster, by the way). I’m talking about the type of love family members share with each other. I’ve been lucky in my sports life to have a couple of coaches who I felt this way about, and I’ve been incredibly lucky to coach a lot of athletes in the same way. When you get one of those rare situations where the coach and the athlete truly believe in each other, and both of them would sweat blood for the other one, then you’ve got something special. If you throw some athletic talent and coaching expertise into this mix, then you’re going to be looking at some championships.

Coaches have to be driven to make their athletes better, but the best coaches are the ones who impact their athletes’ lives in a much deeper way. Athletes want to know their coaches care about them. If the coach doesn’t care, you can bet your bottom dollar that the athletes will figure it out rapidly. Now, can coaches and athletes have success if they don’t share this type of deep bond? Sure they can. If a coach is talented and the athlete is committed, then the results will be positive even if it’s just a business-type relationship.

But if the athlete simply doesn’t like the coach, then it’s a dead duck. The relationship might work for a while if the athlete is a particularly tolerant person, but it will eventually sour. Also, make sure you remember that there’s a difference between liking/loving somebody and being pissed off at them. You can love somebody and still get angry with them from time to time. If you want to truly learn this, get married. Coaches and athletes will have the same types of experiences. It’s not all going to be baskets full of puppies and pineapple ice cream, believe me. If you’re in a weightlifting coach-athlete relationship with somebody, you’re going to have moments when you want to attack them with an ice pick. But once the anger subsides and everybody cools off, how do you really feel about your coach? If you still have loyalty and respect for your coach/athlete despite the rough moments and you still believe that you’re with the right person, then you’ve got a good thing going. If you take an honest look at the big picture and you decide that you simply don’t like the person, then it’s time to move on. If there are no other coaches in your area to train with, then it gets really tricky. You’ll need to get creative at that point.

When we come full circle, it’s clear that a good coach has to have a special combination of qualities. It’s not an easy gig, and it takes a lot of trial and error to perfect it. If you’re an athlete and you want to say something to your coach, go ahead and say it. Make sure you pick the right time, obviously. Any coach worth a plug nickel will do exactly what I was taught to do in my Human Relations Development class...LISTEN. Now, you (the athlete) also need to be prepared if the answer isn’t exactly what you wanted to hear. If you want a coach, but you also want to be the one running the show, then you need to back up and examine your own personality. The coach isn’t the problem at that point. You are.

But my guess is that if you and your coach both have sensible, functional personalities, then the two of you will most likely be able to work together. If you have any tough times, try using an exercise where you both sit down and write a poem about each other. That sounds like a special way to share sensitive feelings of happiness. Just don’t start your poem with the line, “There once was a man from Nantucket…”