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<\/p>\nWhen I first started as a strength coach, I felt that I always had to create my own athletic performance program independently, instead of reaching out to other strength coaches and learning from them. I made many mistakes when I first started running my own program, and many of those errors could be attributed to trying to do everything myself, instead of contacting great coaches and learning from them.<\/p>\n
When I began reaching out and collaborating with other coaches, I became a 100% better coach. Bill Foran, Gary Schofield, Tobias Jacobi, Jeremy Boone, Jeremy Holsopple, Jesse Wright and Tim DiFrancesco are leaders in the athletic performance world and I have found that they, along with many other great coaches, are willing to share what they know.<\/p>\n
Over the past few years, I have reached out to legendary coaches who I did not know personally and said, \u201cI\u2019m in town, I\u2019d love to come meet you and learn what you do.\u201d More often than not, they have been willing to meet and share their wealth of experience with me.<\/p>\n
An example of this is when I met legendary Miami Heat Strength Coach Bill Foran.\u00a0 Three years ago, I contacted Coach Foran before visiting my family in South Florida.\u00a0 I did not have a connection with Coach Foran and I did not expect to hear back from him, but he replied to my message and said, \u201cYes, come this day and time, park in the player\u2019s lot and tell the security guard you\u2019re here to see me.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 When the day of the meeting came, I parked my beat up Chevy Impala next to all these Ferraris and Bugattis and told the security guard I was there to see Coach Foran.\u00a0 The security guard showed me to the weight room and said go right in.\u00a0 When I entered the weight room, there was LeBron James, five feet away from me.\u00a0 Coach Foran led me to his office, sat down with me, and talked about everything he had done with his athletes for the past 25 years; including what has worked and what has not.<\/p>\n
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I wish I had started reaching out to great coaches and learning from them earlier in my career. Learning from highly successful coaches and finding a way to implement their knowledge into my programs has taken my program and my athletes\u2019 performance to the next level. I believe part of my success as a strength coach and a portion of the success of my athletes has come from my willingness and desire to reach out to other coaches.\u00a0 When I started networking and learning from the experience of other coaches and stopped trying to do everything on my own, I greatly improved as a coach.<\/p>\n
No matter what point of your life you are in, never under estimate the importance of networking and reaching out to people you can learn from.\u00a0 More often than not, they are willing to share their knowledge with you.<\/p>\n