Why DONT you have a coach? (please vote) (Page 4)

Same for me. I'm doing triathlons for fun, to get fit and to stay fit. I'm just aiming to finish, and to beat my own previous results. I use pre-made plans and I just do my best with them

I had a coach.  I pretty much ignored him.  I beat him by 52 minutes at IMCDA in 2011.  I use BT friends as my barometer.

Now I will say that a good coach doesn't have to be a fast athlete.  

A different discussion from this thread, but it you look at sports in general, many of the most successful coaches were not great athletes.  Conversely, some great athletes have been terrible coaches.

Mark

This is a super interesting concept that I didn't want to get lost on the previous page.

For sure, this is true. However, I still would not discount the experience of a someone who knows what it's like to compete at a very high level in the sport.

In music, you would never consider a middling performer capable of teaching someone with capability to reach their maximum or close to it. Practice has shown this as well. Triathlon is different, yes, but there are lessons learned and discipline to be followed that does count for something if they've 'walked the walk' before. 

As an AGer, I would never hire a coach who has not been faster than me at some point in their career, even if they were a great communicator. Not saying everyone should do this, but it's a guideline I would follow myself. (I realize that for top pros, this isn't possible necessarily.)

Could Manny Pacquiao's coach ever beat Pac in a fight?  You can know how to be a great athlete and simply lack the ability.

Here's another hassle with coaching (and teams): personal rivalry / animosity between coaches getting in the way of their athletes.

The triathlon community in the Seattle area, especially Ironman, numbers in the low thousands, and a lot of people know each other. 

Here's the situation: coach A and coach B, who know each other from past associations, past teams, etc, clearly have fairly low opinions of each other. Not so obvious as trash talking, but it's clear.  If you're an athlete of coach A, but going to go for a weekend ride with your friends who are coached by coach B, then your ride conversation is what?  Defending "your" coach?  Debating who is "right"?  Discussing how coach A and coach B should just get along?  Shut up and ride? 

You get that crap from teams, too. There was a team in Seattle that had a falling out with a team member who started a "rival" team on the Eastside. So a few years pass, and you join the Eastside team, unaware that Seattle team members have "bad blood" with the Eastside team leader.  You show up in the Eastside kit at some event, and there are five folks from the Seattle team, and you try to have a little conversation but get the cold shoulder. You don't even know these people, but you're wearing the "wrong" kit so they won't talk to you? 

Cool story, bro, right? 

I feel that coaching at the elite level differs greatly from the AGer level. Different priorities, different emphasis.

As an AGer, I will stand by my opinion (and yes many will disagree) that I would not seek out a coach who was not at least as fast as I was in triathlon.

Part of this is also that I'm not that fast - fast enough to podium in M35 fairly regularly, but that's a pretty low bar of entry for an 'expert' in my opinion, and it seems perfectly reasonable to expect that ones coach should have at least had enough experience and ability to contend for an AG podium regularly.  Seriously, what level of expertise are you paying for otherwise, if they'er not even able to podium at local races? 

Your opinion may differ, and I'm 100% ok with that.

What if your coach is 60 years old, or a female. Should they still be faster than you?

I intentionally wrote "was not at least as fast as I was".

I wrote it this way to specifically make the case that I expect the coach to have HAD achieved that level of performance or equal equivalent at some point in their life. I do not expect them that very moment to be able to go out and beat me if the were 30 years older, or other changes.

But I would have expected them to have reached that level at some point in their triathlon career, to be at least contending for your AG podium regularly in regional races. Note that I'd consider a F60 KQer who might have much slower HIM/Oly times than me, to be perfectly qualified as their achievement at their age of KQ is at that level and beyond.

Originally posted by marcag

Originally posted by jonnyo I use a different approach, At Jonnyo Coaching, Results are guaranty or you are fired! Coaching professional athletes is mostly all on % of gain by the athletes. if the athlete perform, the coach make ok/good money. I like it and it sometimes take 2-3 season until all the ''investement'' pay off but the challenge is fun! obviously, this concept would not work for a age group athletes. A professional coach that make a living out of this need some kind of guaranty that he will get paid. a injury happening and it s over. Kind of like saying to doctor...you only get paid if you heal your patient. it aint that simple.

It would be great to see such a model applied to AGer and I don't see why it can't. it is no riskier than a pro The numbers I am quoting are fictitious of course I come to you and say I am 50 y/o, VDOT of 53, watts/kg of 3.8, 1:35/100m CSS. I am willing to invest 20 hours per week. I will pay you a nominal monthly fee (let's say $100) and if you get me to Kona you get a bonus of $5000. You do the math, figure I need a 55 VDOT, 4 w/kg and 1:33/100m css based on historical results. Can you get me there ? Of course there are other details you would consider in your assessment. If you truly believe in my potential to get there within 2 years, you would take this because it's $1200 x 2 years + $5000 = $7400 or more than $300 per month. You do your math, figure out how much you need to improve me, calculate the risk and counter. I can assess how much you believe I can make it and I feel we are in this together. Of course there has to be a way to guarantee payment if I do make it. Maybe there are interim payments if I hit 4w/kg on the way there or 55 VDOT. You can fire me at any time if you do not feel I am going to make it. Why can't this work ? Why can't the coach be paid based on results ?

To complicate that 'ideal' of coaching, you really have to compare against a legitimate standard. Not dissimilar from stock returns - your actively managed mutual fund may have returned 22% profits last year which sounds great - until you realize that the unmanaged SP500 index returned 30%, so you actually LOST money.

Comparing to a stock Pfitz or other stockprogram would be a good benchmark comparison! (I know there's no universally accepted on in tri, but doesn't mean one can't be made.)