It’s impossible.
So why do we set these standards for ourselves to be perfect all the time? It’s crazy how much pressure we put on ourselves to act like we know everything and have all the answers. I mean, to get through life and be a competent employee, we should probably have some or most of the answers. But we’ll learn along the way and we have to let ourselves do that. If you refuse, then you’re just getting in your own way.
Me: I’m starting to work as a strength and conditioning coach alongside my original job I went to school for. I’m not gonna lie, I joked about a job like this with my friends in grad school a little bit before we started looking for jobs. I said that it would be so cool to work as a strength and conditioning coach for a high school — alongside their athletic trainer for ultimate communication. Or, imagine working as an athletic trainer and teaching a gym class based around weights. Oh, man, the possibilities were endless. And even through all my sadness of leaving Utah and good people I came to love, I have to remember that exactly what I dreamed about is HAPPENING. Whenever I think about this I’m mind blown and as hard as it is to “start over” in a new city, it’s what I wanted, needed, and ultimately got.
Quite frankly, a lot of my big dreams have showed up for me because I joked about them before they happened…hopefully I don’t learn to rely on this method because I can’t imagine it’s super reliable, but it’s funny to think about sometimes. But let’s circle back, what does this have to do with “knowing everything” and “being perfect”? A lot. I came into athletic training hoping that I’d just know everything and be fine, and that everything I learned would supplement me, not entirely overhaul my clinical philosophies. I hoped I’d be an expert right away and I think seeing all the confidence of my preceptors confused me. I didn’t realize all they had gone through to become the clinicians they were. I’m not bashing them, but it took a little bit before I met mentors who were already insanely talented but let me know that they were not perfect either. I could breathe again. They told me that they were learning everyday, and that they were going to make mistakes.
I think the biggest thing as a mentor is not to wait until your mentee has made a mistake to discuss this. I think it’s so important to let them know how you are before situations like this happen. I don’t mean you need to lay out your clinical philosophies immediately on the first day you meet them — but be encouraging and open, and just be real with them. That always weighs on my mind because I don’t know how to be anything but exactly the way I am — which may be why it’s a struggle for me to make friends with people sometimes. I don’t want anyone to ever think that I don’t make mistakes — a real role model doesn’t pretend to be perfect, but they show people that they are putting in the work day in and day out to get better. Anyone can be talented, but not everyone has the desire — or the grit — to be better.
And that’s where I am now. I’m approaching this brand new job with a good bit of trepidation, but I’m just putting the work in. Coaches have mentioned they are glad to see my initiative and passion, when to me — I was just doing my job and trying to show people that I’m trying, even if I’m not incredibly experienced. That’s the hardest part for me because I know that so much of what we do in sports medicine AND performance comes from experience. It comes from having mentors and people to ask questions — and I don’t really have a strength coach-specific mentor.
So what it comes down to is this — I’m planning to collect a lot of information in my head, to be honest. I aim to learn a lot about basketball and tennis first off (since I will be working more closely with these sports and I have a decent handle on running — and by “decent” I mean I’ve probably scraped about 1/16th of the surface of running, but that’s alright) and understand the basis of the sport in regards to conditioning and strength needs. Basketball reminds me quite a bit of water polo because you’re playing both offense and defense — the mental gymnastics with that is mind-blowing, so I have a special place in my heart for that kind of stuff. But I’m listening to podcasts, taking notes, and using Twitter/IG to collect info and look at the bigger picture (ex. I know my philosophy will involve single leg work, a comprehensive core program, and mastering the simple things — I learn little bits here and there that show me who I want to be in this world).
So while I’m collecting all this info, I’m also learning a LOT about how coaching isn’t just knowing the science…it’s knowing the athletes, and intertwining the science with athlete-specific needs, wants, goals, personality types. Every podcast about being a strength coach I listen to mentions that. The science and the people skills must come together, and this is a lesson I learned during grad school — we are treating (or in this case, training), a human, not the injury (or in this case, not just an athlete). But this is really, really hard to do when you’re programming things for athletes remotely AND you’ve never met them before (or your “meeting” consists of an awkward Zoom call because you’ve forgotten how to talk with people, thanks COVID). The most nervewracking part is that they way I’ve learned to relate to people in person has to change. I have to adapt and improvise…and eventually overcome the nonsense.
So I’m putting even more pressure on myself to do this perfectly, which is odd because…shouldn’t I be less hard on myself? I mean, it’s my first experience with S&C coaching. And there’s a pandemic so I can’t meet with athletes in person, and this is a new job so I haven’t met any athletes in person. I mean, I don’t intend to go easy on myself. I’m still going to expect a lot from myself, but I think that’s where being realistic comes in handy. It’s really hard to connect with people who don’t know you and those who don’t necessarily have a reason to know you yet. And it’s ok if I’m not perfect at this. I’m still going to do the best with what I have and just be grateful that I get to do what I love. Like I said, anyone can have talent — I know that my brain is decent for this kind of stuff — but you also have to do something with that talent.
So maybe my “doing something” is doing my best and reminding everyone it’s ok to be where you are…if you’re constantly setting the goal to get better. Right now, a lot of what athletes need is the basics. They need to be doing something rather than nothing, and while I’ll do my best to make everything AWESOME, I may have to learn to be patient with myself and others. My small, sneaky joyful moment is that no one has ever been through anything like this before so we’re all trying to figure it out. So while it’s impossible to know everything, because the field of sports performance continues to grow; and while it’s impossible to be perfect, because life happens — it’s possible to just do the best with what we have, and sometimes that actually is good enough.
