Coaching a National Champion: Insights and Experiences

I am a lifter and I am also a coach.

I try not to let those roles overlap too much as it can throw me into muddy waters.

What I mean is, I try not to let my abilities as a lifter affect my abilities as a coach. There is no doubt that certain areas of programming comes from being a lifter and spending mtime under the bar. However, the strongest lifter is not necessarily the best coach, and neither is the best coach the strongest lifter.

A caveat here though, as a coach, I better be lifting some weights. This will help me relate to my clients better and have the same empathy when they tell me that high volume training day sucks.

Those thoughts popped into my head when Luke asked me to coach him. As a lifter, Luke is much stronger than I am. He is the current national champion with his Wilk’s score being almost 40 points higher than mine. Despite being a much more qualified lifter than I am, he decided to hire me as his coach because he believed I could help him achieve his goals.

Since he believes in me, I better be damn sure I believe in my own ability as a coach and that I am able to help him smash whatever goal he set his mind to.

My coaching knowledge comes from a ton of reading and learning training principles and fitting them to the demands of life, for both myself and my clients. Books and scientific literature definitely plays a huge role in informing the recommendations I make when it comes to training and nutrition, but I always apply in to context of the individual lifter.

That’s the most important part about coaching, understanding the every lifter is a different individual.

Understanding the lifter

In this case, Luke is a national champion coming back from injury and looking to break the national record in a lower weight class than what he previously competed in.

The sport of Powerlifting is a long term game, and the lifter that can make consistent progress while keeping injuries to a minimum is the one that would succeed in the long run. Taking that into the consideration and the fact that Luke has just recovered from injury set the precedence of my programming.

We first started out through a pretty extensive hypertrophy block that would still help him maintain/make strength gains but develop muscles mass at the same time. This would help him pack muscle around his weakness that was caused during his injury.

For instance, Luke injured his lower back so I had him do a ton of lighter weight, high repetition work on back extensions, good mornings and avoid heavy load spinal loading as much as I could. The reason behind this is to build muscle mass around the injured area so that it will be stronger in hope for future injury prevention.

Something I’ve noticed with most people returning from an injury is their eagerness to jump right back into the strength game and start lifting heavy loads. However, we are weakest at our weakest link and not addressing it before jumping back into the heavy loading might cause your injury to act up.

We did not completely stay away from the main 3 lifts as specificity is still king when it comes to exceling in a sport. However for the main lift I never programmed anything close to failure as the more fatigue we are, the higher the chances of technical breakdown when using relatively heavy loads.

However for assistance movement used to target weak points, we used a higher rep scheme with lower load and performed it close to failure. Some of the weights used were very light and you might think that it terms of muscle gain or strength, lighter weights wouldn’t have a profound benefit, but this was not the case.

The assistance movements were used as support for the main lift. Besides, more emerging evidence are showing that lower loads done to fatigue or equated for volume produces similar gains in strength and muscle size as heavy loads. So why put ourselves at risk when there can be a safer method that could produce equal improvements?

Educating the lifter

I’ve always believed in the phrase “ Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you’ll feed him for a liftetime”. As a coach, my job isn’t just to write training programs (it actually is) and have my clients follow them like a robot, I find that teaching explaining the rationale behind it is important as well.

This is especially true if you are introducing a new method or “periodization scheme” to the lifter. Breaking away from what someone is used to would create a ton of questions, and instead of playing the “trust me” card, I used this opportunity to educate and help Luke understand my rationale behind the training program.

Luke trained mainly using a rate of perceived exertion (RPE) training routine working up to a heavy single/triple in the main lift hitting a certain RPE. The reason behind this is to create a stimulus for heavy loading but letting the daily demands of his life dictate that load.

Luke works at 6am in the morning and trains pretty late in the evening, if something pops up and recovery or sleep isn’t adequate this would affect his lifting performance the next day. Using the RPE method to dictate the load he would lift would create heavy stimulus without pushing himself towards a certain fixed number that is based on a certain percentage for the day.

This is not to say a program based on % of your 1RM isn’t effective, we just need to put it into context that Luke is coming back from injury and the last thing I want him to do is to push himself so hard on a shitty day and tweak his back because of a certain number the program requires him to hit.

Throughout the entire coaching process, I constantly reminded him “You control the weight, don’t let the weight control you”.

Initially he said he felt better doing a % based program like he usually did, but after explaining why we’re doing a RPE based program, he trusted me and I’m sure he couldn’t be more glad with the results!

Building trust with the lifter

Trust is paramount during coaching.

When we watch movies of a mentor or teacher that teaches a sidekick, it’s like a father/mother bringing up a child. Just like that, without trust, the coaching process won’t be as effective.

*insert Luke I’m your father quote here*

The important factor when it comes to building trust initially is to educate the lifter. This is important because no matter how good a training program is written, people are often a little sceptical to something new, so education shows that you’re not hiding any secrets and are willing to lay down your “magic formula”.

You pretty much need to give trust to gain trust.

I have also found that when you start investing time and effort into someone, they take notice of it. When they do, they’ll be more than willing to trust you with their training knowing that you are invested in their progress as much as they are.

An example would be the feedback I ask Luke during the down days he had during training.  We’ve gone through a couple of sessions that lifestyle demands took a toll on his performance and helping him overcome it or giving encouragement to help pull through the sessions when performance is subpar goes a long way. My role as a coach is to remind him that we’re in this for the long run and not to let one or two bad days knock you down.

You have no idea how many times the phrase “ Why do we fall luke? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up” was used in our conversation. But at the end of it all, trust was built between the two of us, I trusted his ability to perform and do well in competition and he trusted my programming and for me to call his attempts during the meet.

This whole relationship of trust manifested itself on meet day where I stayed up from 3am till 7.30am (meet was in Malaysia, while I’n im UK) to coach him via the live stream of the meet.

Every number I gave him for his next attempt, he took it. At the end of it all, he hit a 232.5kg squat, 150kg bench and 252.5kg deadlift to set the new national record for all three lifts and brought home the gold medal.

The end result was, Luke got what he came for, which was breaking all 3 records and doing it without any pain or injury. We then jumped on a Harley and rode into the sunset with the medals and the feeling of awesomeness.

Luke is a coach at Honey Badgers Coaching facility (check them out if you haven’t already), a wicked place that offers amazing coaching services. He has helped a ton of people get strong and improved their fitness. As coaches, we understand that sometimes even we need coaches too, because it helps to get someone from the outside look at how we train and then offer recommendations.

This does not discredit our abilities but I think it complements it. I’ve hired coaches in the past and I must say that sometimes not having to crack your head and write your own program is a huge relief. Just like how Superman, probably the strongest hero on earth seeks Batman at times, sometimes coaches need coaches too.

Just like how Superman, probably the strongest hero on earth seeks Batman at times, sometimes coaches need coaches too. <—– Click To Share this Quote!!

Nonetheless, I must say I am absolutely thrilled with the results Luke achieved and there’s only greater and bigger things to come.

By that I mean much more fist bumps, high fives and ice cream devouring sessions. Well done Luke!

Summary:

1. It’s important to understand the background of a lifter before writing training programs or nutrition guides.
2. Trust goes a long way when you coach someone.
3. Coaching is much more than simply writing the best program, soft skills and relationship building plays a much integral role.
4. Coaches need coaches too, don’t be afraid of asking for help.
5. Superhero references was responsible for 20% of the gains.

I hope my experience gave you some valueble insight on the coaching process. Was it helpful? What would you like me to cover more? Any questions regarding certain coaching or programming process? Leave your questions below and I’ll be sure to answer them!

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