The world of strength and conditioning is like trying to find your way along the shores in waste deep water while heavy waves crash into you.  You may find some sturdy ground for your current values, then the sand washes away under your feet while you get crushed by a giant wave, and you are back trying to stabilize.  The industry turns into white wash with the world of “fitness” colliding with “sport performance”, I see it all the time in the private sector.  Good coaches ask good questions, and good coaches should have adaptive and changing values; for this I believe this wave crashing process to be a positive cycle.  New theories, methods, questions, and collaborations build a path to strong values and growth for the coach.  There may be times of self doubt, but if the right questions are answered back, and open mind to change is present you will come out with stronger opinions of your value.

What are your values as a coach?  If someone asked me this question a couple months ago, I could have given a long explanation that probably rambled back and forth sharing everything about my philosophy of coaching.  Through the HPCTL program at UBC we were asked to come up with a short presentation of our philosophy on coaching.  This turned out to be more difficult than I originally thought but proved to be more beneficial than I every imagined.  Spending some time to actually sit down and narrow down what my actual values are, then further turning those into a coaching philosophy allowed me see what I really valued in myself and the athletes I coach.  It helped guide my programming, and most importantly the program and culture I want to see in my training facility.

We are currently in the process of building a new 14,000sq ft training facility integrated with a sports injury rehabilitation clinic along with re-branding from our previous franchise.  The re-branding allows me to get away from previous corporate values and create our own.  I am lucky to have a great team of quality coaches who have all stuck with us during the move as they see the importance in the common values we all share; this is rare for a training center.  Although our core values are not fully set yet, it is an exciting time to put our own value into something new on a large scale.  I can guarantee each one of our coaches is on stable ground with their own values at the moment.