17 Nov You Don’t Need a Coach
By Daniel Dalenberg
When I first started powerlifting in the early 2000’s, online coaching was virtually non-existent. Most of the information that lifters could get they found through web forums, magazines, a couple of different websites and by traveling to well-known gyms to train with the best. They then took that information back to the gym and experimented until something worked. I don’t ever remember hearing about online coaching until the later 2000’s.
In comes social media and now every lifter becomes infinitely more accessible. Videos and content is being shared in near real time, and anyone can contact most of their favorite and most admired lifters. People started doing online coaching, offering services for a fee and communicating via email and/or social media. These services grew like wildfire, with more and more lifters offering coaching services all the time.
Go to meet now and listen to the conversations in the warm-up room. Everybody has a coach! Every lifter in there is talking about the coach they have, what kind of work is being prescribed. The problem is most of these people don’t need a coach!
The last meet I was at was primarily beginner level lifters. So many of them had online coaches and trained by themselves in some shiny commercial box gym. None of them need this kind of coach! Look, lifters at this stage, those first few years of really training, don’t need programming guidance. They just don’t. From a programming stand point, anything is going to work. Buy 10/20/Life and run it as written. Pick any of the assistance exercises, don’t even worry about the weak point analysis because as a beginner everything is weak. You need work everywhere! Buy whatever e-book you want really, the only thing I would recommend is make sure you deload every few weeks. Besides that, almost anything is going to work for the first few years. Paying someone to program for you at this point is a waste of money.
For these beginners, what they need is someone who they can work with in person to correct technique/form issues in real time. That’s where the real benefit is going to be, an in-person coach who can correct your lifts on the spot and help you improve from rep to rep. I have a couple new guys in the gym right now that I coach. From a programming standpoint, I just have them do the exact same thing as the other raw guys because it doesn’t matter. He’s going to get stronger either way. The way we are making the new guys better is perfecting their technique every week.
So here’s my advice- find the old timer in your area and go train with him, spend your money traveling to his gym and save on the coach.
The other issue I heard in that warm-up room the other week was the number of different coaches that many of these new lifters have had. Most of them had only done a couple meets, but had already had multiple coaches! Brian Carroll has coached me for 7 years. He has learned what I respond well to and has experimented on me over the years. His programming for me has gotten more and more specialized as we have both learned what I need. There is no way to get that without sticking to one coach for a long period of time. I only recently reached out to Zane Geeting to work with him for my next meet. The primary reason I was comfortable changing was because Zane has been coached by Brian for even longer than I have, so I knew that whatever Zane came up with would feel very familiar. Switching from coach to coach, and more importantly, training philosophy to training philosophy every meet completely negates that benefit. No matter how much work your coach puts into your initial assessment, it still takes time to figure you out as a lifter and get the most benefit out of the programming.
So there you have it. You probably don’t need a coach. You need solid training partners to correct your technique and once you get to point of truly needing personalized programming then you need a coach and system that you can stick to for years, not weeks. Invest in finding training partners and solid crew in your area, then add the coaching later.
Disclaimer: I have used distant coaches for years. Brian Carroll has coached me in some form since 2010. I have also recently enlisted the help of Zane Geeting. I made tremendous progress under Brian and so far, my work with Zane is very promising. I believe in distant coaching, but only in certain situations.
Ready to become your own coach? Pick up a copy of 10/20/Life Second Edition Here.
Daniel Dalenberg
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