Home » The Reasons why everyone needs a Strongman coach

The Reasons why everyone needs a Strongman coach

By Sam Brown



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Strongman is becoming more and more popular. You can find Strongman implements in most gyms that are worth their weight. You can also find a Strongman gym near you with ease using the Strongman gym locator. With that in mind, the world of competitive Strongman is getting, for a lack of a better word, more competitive. Athletes are becoming more and more accustomed to the equipment and the techniques required to perform each event effectively.  Gone are the days where an entire contest of people are all blissfully unaware of how to pick up a stone, or run with a yoke.  There are simply more and more resources becoming available to take your strongman skills to the next level if you are willing to put in the work. The process of programming for Strongman Athletes,  and the specific event training parameters they need for a contest are not as widely known.  There are key nuances to setting up a Strongman program that only somebody with Strongman experience will understand.  That is why I believe that everyone who competes in Strongman should hire a coach at one time or another. I mean everyone.   From the greenest of beginner, to the most seasoned of veteran, everyone should utilize the services of a Strongman coach if they are serious about getting better. Let me explain. https://store.startingstrongman.com/product/online-coaching/

Makes Training/Nutrition Simple

Having a coach allows you to focus your mental and physical efforts on training and living your life outside of the gym.  You no longer need to spend time during your week trying to figure out exactly what sort of rep scheme you need to complete, or what sort of RPE or exertion level you need to hit.  All you need to worry about is opening the document, email or app, and hitting your numbers.  Simple as that.  It is an amazing feeling knowing that all you need to do is the work that was given, and leave the gym.   I know a lot of you enjoy the programming side of your own workouts, and like to take up a lot of your free time thinking about and dissecting the ins and outs of your particular training session. However, I recommend putting it into somebody else’s hands.  You will make more progress and have more free time to accomplish other goals.  This goes for nutrition as well.  It is much easier to follow the diet that a professional gives you, rather than trying to find out exactly what to eat at every meal of the day when you do not have a plan in place.  Prep your meals, eat them, move on with your day and let your coach do the job you hired them to do.   https://store.startingstrongman.com/product/renaissance-diet-auto-templates/ This is especially important if you are personal trainer like myself.  I spend my days programming for my own clients, and by the time it is time for me to hit the gym, I realize I am just winging it because I never programmed my own workout.  The point is, however busy your daily life is, hiring a coach will keep you on track with effective programming and save you time.  Honestly, since I have been working with Pro Strongman Matt Mills, I have been able to shift my daily focus from figuring out what the hell I am doing in the gym, to being able to better spend my brain power on more productive things during the week.  It is a real mental energy and time saver.  

Programming turns into what you NEED as opposed to what you want or are good at.

I will take full responsibility for this prior to me hiring my coach.  I would subconsciously make workouts every week that tended to lean towards the things I was good at or wanted to do rather than the things I knew I was bad at and needed to better develop.  This all changed when I made the commitment and hired a coach.  Everyone likes to have fun when they workout.  It is human nature to want to do more of the things we excel at.  However, if you want to improve, you need to be able to understand what areas we are lacking and develop and execute a plan to address those areas.  Nobody ever became a champion by only doing the things they wanted to do.  That leads us nicely into the next reason everyone should have a coach.

Accountability

We have all been there.  We wrote out what we would be doing for the day, and everything was going great until you get to the conditioning, or that AMRAP set of squats.  You know that if you don’t do it, you can come up with some reason in your head as to why you didn’t.   “My back was tight.” “I didn’t eat enough and my energy was too low.” It is something that we have all done at one point or another.  We have cut out of a workout early for this reason or that.  The truth of the matter is we realized that at the end of the day we are the only ones that are going to know we didn’t finish the reps or sets.  This ultimately affects our future performance and we are the only ones who suffer when it is all said and done. Now I am not going to say that having a coach, especially an online coach, will make that feeling go away.  Hell, we are human after all.  What I am saying is that if you do decide to hire a coach and skip a workout, you will need to FULLY explain yourself, what you are feeling, and what you are thinking.  It is a whole hell of a lot more work to have to try and explain to your coach why you didn’t finish the squat workout or the conditioning from hell then it is to do it.  We know our tendencies and we know what we would let ourselves get away with. Therefore with the inclusion of a third party we need to report to at the end of every week, we tend to stick to the script more than we might if we did not have them.  This is because, if they are a good coach, they have an unbiased opinion of how we are doing and what we need to do to improve.  Yes, we are paying them for their expertise.  Yes, they want us to do well. But at the end of the day, the job of a Strongman coach is to make you a better athlete, not hold your hand and make sure you have rainbows flying up your butt.  Good coaches do not stroke your ego or let you stroke your own.  They assess the situation and give you objective instructions on how to improve.  It is up to us to do what needs to be done to get better.  Our ultimate success or failure is based on our actions and decisions.  There is not a coach on the planet that will be able to help people who are not willing to put in the work.   







New Perspective/Knowledge/Background/Fresh Eyes

If you have been training for a couple years you may find yourself in a plateau.  It may be a physical plateau in the sense that no matter what you do, you cannot increase a lift or an event.  Or it could be a mental plateau, where you just do not have the same drive or direction in the gym.  This is a great situation to bring on a coach and get a new perspective on your training.

 

Such a fun weekend at Nationals. Extremely grateful to be a part of this sport and to be able to help others succeed in it. #Repost @filthy_fithen ??? Big giant thanks to this guy on my right, Coach @letkallelift @startingstrongman for all his help today – takes a special person to put up with my dramatics (I like to think of myself as “eccentric”) ? Here he’s in his natural habitat, watching videos and giving feedback, always willing to help anyone with anything. After one particular major fuckup on Event 4, he spent 10 minutes talking me off the ledge to get my mind back in the right place for the last event. Interested in coaching? Pretty sure he’s got spots open ? #startingstrongman #strongman #hishairthough #nasnationals

A post shared by Kalle Beck (@letkallelift) on

Coaches come in all different shapes and sizes and you will never find two coaches who are the same.  Each coach has a different style, different education, different experiences, and different ways of educating and training their clients.  It is these differences that can help provide you with a fresh set of eyes or a new perspective on your training that you may have been craving or missing.  Coaches help us to see things about our training or our form that we may have been too close to see.  Hell, you might even have a coach that teaches you something about new lifting modalities or theories that you find fascinating or have never heard of before.  You not only get better in the gym, but your lifting IQ gets a nice boost as well.  This leads to my final reason why everyone needs a coach…

 

A post shared by Kalle Beck (@letkallelift) on

 

Money Talks

Not to make this uncomfortable for anyone in the room, but in order to hire a coach you need to pay money.  Usually a relatively large amount of money (based on the coach) for a certain duration of time.  It is that same amount of money that will drive home the level of commitment that the coach has for you as well as you have for the coach.  They, being the recipient of your hard-earned money, are put in the position to make you stronger and more proficient in your strongman training, and get you ready for your next competition.  They will be analyzing your footage, your numbers, your RPEs, your diet, and your responses to their questions week in and week out.  They will then take all the information, utilize their educational and experiential background to construct you a weekly plan or regimen for you to accomplish.  Sounds like a lot, right?  Well it is.  It is a lot of work to properly program somebody’s nutrition and workouts correctly so rest assured, they are working hard for your money.   You on the other hand have just forked over a few hundred bucks.  If you are like me, who is notoriously cheap, you will want to squeeze every single bit of knowledge and expertise out of that coach to make sure you get my money’s worth.  In my case, I will be asking them about diet, form, how I should be feeling during certain events, and what their thoughts are on how things are going.  I will be emailing or calling or texting my coach to make sure he knows the exact page I am on during each and every workout.  I know that if I want to feel not only satisfied with my purchase, but also satisfied that I am progressing in my sport, I will put in the effort needed to get as much out of my coach, and my money, that I possibly can.  

EXTRA POINTS TO ADD:

MAKE SURE YOU ARE CHOOSING A QUALIFIED COACH!

Make sure you do some research and pick the coach that is right for you.  If you compete in strongman, then choose a coach that has experience in the sport of strongman.  Kalle Beck has teamed with Professional Strong(wo)men to get you the best coaching possible.

IF YOU CANNOT AFFORD COACHING FIND A PROGRAM (AND STICK TO IT)

https://store.startingstrongman.com/product/cube-method-for-strongman-3/ Yes, coaching can be expensive, so if you are in a position where you truly cannot afford it then you need to pick up a program and STICK TO IT.  There are awesome programs out there that will get your stronger and are priced to sell.  Though I must say this again, if you are going to go this route you need to FOLLOW THE PROGRAMS AS THEY ARE WRITTEN.  Do not bastardize the program to fit your wants and desires.  Run the program how it is written, for the prescribed allotment of time, and then analyze the results you got as compared to what you have been doing. If that seems like a lot of work to you, then you should just hire that coach. https://store.startingstrongman.com/product/online-coaching/   Sam Brown is a national level Strongman competitor.  He blends his background in Mental Health Counseling with his personal training accreditations to help his clients understand how a strong and healthy mind can unlock their true physical potential.  He owns SamBrownStrength.com where he writes about Strongman, his training, and anything fitness and health related.  If you are interested in working with Sam or following him on social media, clink the links below! Facebook   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=552693059   Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sambrownstrength/?hl=en   Website    https://www.sambrownstrength.com/   YouTube    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_h3ldd7v5tcxBIUWzZ3hMg Sign up For Strongman Coaching or our Training Templates at just $15 per month Visit our Shop for all your Strongman needs Download a Free 12 Week Strongman Program Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube & Pinterest

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