Kinda Episode 1: Kill Your Coach, Depression and Athletics, Competitive Stress, Westside

Kill You Coach 1: You Probably Don’t Need a Coach | Q&As

This is going to sound weird, but you probably don’t need a coach for powerlifting. Especially if you’re new to the sport. I did a little thought experiment on social media a while back where I asked a few questions in several powerlifting and strength sport oriented groups. My questions were directed specifically towards coaches, but I got some great feedback from some clients of online coaches as well. My questions were the following:

1. How many competitions on average does a lifter do with your programming before they retire or go off on their own?

1. What is your best guess on how many meets a lifter competes in total throughout their entire career?

Summing up the average answers to question 1: 1. I got a multitude of reasons for this, but the main justification was that powerlifting has such a low barrier of entry, that most people experience powerlifting at their gym in one way or another, or see it on youtube, or has seen the multitude of influencers that are now out there and a competition basically became a bucket list item. A “do-it-just-to-say-I-did-it” thing. Which is cool. I get that. 

The answers to number 2 were all over the place. If I had to put an average to it, I’d say the general consensus is 2-4 meets. 

Now, I am a fucking weirdo. According to open powerlifting (and it’s missing a few), I’ve competed in over 40 meets. I have also never had a coach (except for a short period of time when working with Mike Zourdos just out of sheer curiosity how he set up his DUP programs which was an equal parts thought provoking, learning, and brutal experience). This led me down a rabbit hole of question and answer seeking. My overarching question at this point: 

Does having a coach do more harm than good for a beginner lifter?

My vote is a very certain yes. First of all the quality of online coaching is all over the place. You’ve got the world class exceptionalism of businesses like Reactive Training Systems all the way down to some 17 year old kid that deadlifts kinda a lot and is really good at making tik toks. If your coach has never bought his own toilet paper for himself, then you’re making a mistake. 

Second, failure is absolutely what breeds success. Trial and error. You can only be good at something after you sucked at it tremendously and had to work tooth and nail to improve at it. We see it all the time. It seems like every year at this point there is a new flash in the pan phenom that smashes some ridiculous weight somewhere and then just fizzles out after a few months, maybe a few years. This sport is a long haul. The longer you can stay in it, the more consistent your training is, the better you will be. Some research has been directed towards consistency and competing and found that athletes that compete in 4 meets a year have the most consistent progress and total improvements. That’s about four 12 week programs a year. That’s a lot of opportunities to throw some shit to the wall and see what sticks. Having a coach places this responsibility to figure shit out on them, not you. This leads me to my third point.

Coaches kill your accountability. I know this is counter intuitive to the reason why most people get a coach, but hear me out. Like I mentioned above, the vast majority of lifters use a coach for one meet and ditch them. I think this shows an inherent problem. The problem is a deflection of accountability. Say a lifter does their meet, does a great job, and ditches their coach for some reason to go off on their own. 99% of the  time (80% of statistics are made up on the spot) the lifter is going to hop back on the exact same program and either get hurt for a