Top 5 Things I've Learned Coaching · 4 min read

The first time I coached wrestling I was in 7th grade. Our team hosted a week-long commuter camp for unexperienced grade school kids. Around this time was when I first began thinking about teaching in new ways. I learned the importance of sharing my understanding of the techniques and having to explain them in ways beginners could understand. Through high school and college, I sharpened my teaching skills at other camps. Working with teammates and learning with them helped too. After I graduated from Purdue, I stuck around for another year as a graduate assistant. I was mainly an attack dog for the head and assistant coaches, but I learned about teaching techniques and the workings of running a team.

Once I arrived at AKA at the beginning of my fight career, the team was mainly self-coached. Most of us came from a college wrestling program so we were used to doing things as a team. We liked order, so we would take turns leading practice. I did as much coaching in that gym as I did training in the early years. With all the experience I've picked up over the years, I have five things I've learned to share with you.

1. Consistency will take you far.

People can learn things fast with steady practice but so many people give up before they try. Doing something a few times or for a couple of months isn't going to get you anywhere. People will tell themselves a story about how or why they can't do something and just quit. Guess what? Your story sucks, and it is holding you back. If you force yourself to put in genuine effort and keep trying, you will be surprised at how fast you can learn. It might take a load of reps, though, and many of ya’ll don't have the discipline to finish them. Many people will focus on sparring or live grappling, an integral part of fight training, but you don't upgrade your skill level without drilling.

2. Lifting weights improves your game.

 Lifting weights give you a significant advantage. I've been lifting weights for as long as I can remember. I started the summer before 8th grade. I always felt that being a little stronger was always a good thing. I stopped for several years and then started getting injured more frequently. When I finally got back to pumping iron, I stopped getting hurt almost completely. I've seen other athletes begin to lift weights and improve their game all around. Stronger joints and more bone density will help you power through training without being slowed down by stiffness or discomfort.

3. Intense Drilling>Live Sparring

Remember when Bruce Lee said "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”  Lee was right. In a five-minute drill round, you will do and repeat the technique tens to hundreds of times. That is an order of magnitude over the number of times you will try a technique while sparring or grappling hard. You're focused on doing one thing for 5 minutes and increasing the pace as you do it. That's going to get you better at what you are doing and it will push your cardio way harder too. Just be sure you aren't sloppy. Being tired is no excuse for sloppy technique.

4. Serious students always make time for training.

People that are serious always find a way to train. A lot of people think about starting to train. Some people talk about starting to train, and few actually begin. It's always the same excuse with some people. The truth is they don't want it. Plenty of guys have made tremendous sacrifices to make it to the gym. Guys were sleeping in gyms or living out of their cars to make it to training because success meant more than being comfortable. I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag for the first couple of months when I first moved to Cali to learn how to fight. If you want something, you will find a way. Don't get bent out of shape when others don't share your drive. Focus on the work, and other driven people will find you.

5. Your best requires rest.

 Let your body rebuild. You need rest to be at your best. It was common to overtrain my body with all the training sessions I was doing in a day. If you don't recognize the signs of overtraining, you will keep trying to push through workouts. Pushing through more workouts only digs you further in the hole, and you waste the training too. Whenever another fighter or myself felt some signs, lack of sleep even though you feel exhausted or get drained of energy in the first minute of medium-paced work, we knew to take a half-day or sometimes a whole day off. When I was training hard for fights, I always got more out of my sessions when I was able to get full nights of sleep and my afternoon nap in. Especially as I got older, I had to have all my rest to recover for the next day of training.  

I've learned so much about people and how to better coach them over the years. I hope you can take something from my experiences and use it to your advantage. I picked up this knowledge mostly from coaching and training in the fight game but I think the lessons cross over to other aspects. All of the things I listed can be related to business or school easily. Even the lifting weights part will improve you in whatever you're doing.

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