Trust

This is an important concept for any coach/athlete relationship. When new athletes start with QT2, I always try to go over the following two-way relationship: 1) the athlete has to 100% trust that what the coach is giving them will work, and 2) the coach has to trust the athlete to execute the workouts as planned with correct intensity and volume. If there is any doubt in either end of the relationship, the athlete won’t make nearly as much progress as they could and the coach will become frustrated with the relationship and overall progress. I find that the trust on the athlete side is difficult for many since real long term progress is a slow (but rewarding) process. Many athletes want progress too fast. Typically in this quest, they undermine long-term progress and end up injured and/or burnt out. Here’s a more detailed view of the two way trust concept:

1) Athlete Trust: The athlete has to trust that what the coach is giving them will work. If the athlete doesn’t have this trust, he/she is impatient and doesn’t quite do the workouts as planned and in-tern does not illicit the result of the training protocol that was intended by the coach.

2) Coach Trust: If the athlete is doing the workouts in the wrong zones or switching around workouts without telling the coach, when injury or bad race performances come up, the coach scratches his/her head trying to figure out what went wrong. It becomes very difficult to adapt the training program, as a coach, based on outputs if you don’t know what the inputs are. It’s almost worse when you think you know what the inputs are and they are actually different than what you may think.

Out of all of the concepts involved in world class coaching, I think this one is toward the top of the list…if not the top. Regardless of the training protocol used or the coach chosen, this is a common but powerful concept.

-Jesse