My Pirate Map for Lost Coaches

My Pirate Map for Lost Coaches (by Dan John)
- Stretch what is tightening,
- Strengthen what is weakening,
- Have beautiful technique,
- Eat more protein and veggies,
- Drink more water and take Fish Oil,
- Compete with your strengths, but work your weaknesses.
- Make a Difference.

Going Deeper Into Training Active Athletes-Now What?: "The Key to everything in Life" Dan John.

Dan John, in his latest instructional offering, continues to expand on his approach to coaching and training by confronting one of the greatest questions most of us face when developing programs for clients. He has been working hard the past several years to help those of us in the trenches of the world of "health & fitness" to grow and learn. His latest DVD course helps to simplify our role in delivering great services to our clients

Goals & Assessments. How do you balance your programming? By now I would hope that the majority of coaches and fitness/personal trainers are designing and building client programs with at least an attempt to honor a systematic approach otherwise how do you demonstrate that you are making meaningful change for the individual in front you. Is your program resulting in the desired outcome? How do you determine or measure that?

Dan begins by giving a few thoughts we must consider.
Before we begin let's confront "error of the obvious". "Most people know that in order to get stronger, you lift weights", "to throw the discus farther, throw the discus more".  Here's a problem: Most of the time training athletes is easy you should spend about 80% of your time on the sport or skill and 20% training/strengthening. The Problem: Everyone else. Most people are not athletes.

I know from my experience working with clients that most of our clients think of themselves as an athlete. In reality most are professional employees. You know nurses, lawyers, bankers, clerks, teachers, clinicians, brick layers, commercial painters......... But most consider themselves as better than average in their chosen sport/activity/hobby. This is the challenge. Just because our clients believe themselves to be a bit better than the rest should we really train them like full time athletes? Does the 80% / 20% rule realistically apply? Dan has us look at this a different way. Using track as an example he describes how to plot a course for athletes where the athlete is at point A, the goal is point B. But our clients, the non competitive athletes, have a difficult time defining the point B and have erred in placing their point A accurately on the map.

General Rule- Most clients will begin to tell you their goals for training but we as coaches and trainers need to understand that they are most likely trying to tell us what they think we want to hear.

Here's the teaser:
Do you know about Starting-Increasing-Decreasing-Stopping and very importantly can you teach these four concepts to clients?
If not Dan teaches us how to learn how to Start-Stop-Decrease-Stop by introducing us to:

1-Shark Habits- Take things off the table. one time then done (need to be done first; touch it once and be done, one bite)

2-Pirate Maps- Do THIS....from now on. Mark the progress from A to B. most clients want an easy guide to follow to the treasure

3-Peaking-Planning-Programming- Do THIS...until... 

4-Principles- The guide to everything we want to do.

Going Deeper Into Training Active Athletes-Now What?: "The Key to everything in Life" Dan John.

Check It Out at OTPbooks.com

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