I am currently accepting a limited number of athletes for personal coaching. If you are interested in my coaching please read below and contact me via email:
I am coaching athletes again beginning in 2015. I've coached in the past both on personal and group levels. My coaching will be focused on developing athletes on an individual and personalized basis. As an athlete, my focus and expertise has been at the half and full-Ironman distances. As a coach, I understand the demands, training, and racing needs for all distances, from sprint races to Ironmans.
Coaching Goals:
My goal as a coach is to build and nurture my athlete-coach relationships to give my athletes the guidance and direction to help them develop to the maximum of each of their potentials. I don't provide template training plans, I am dedicated to personalizing each athlete's training based up his or her individual athletic strengths, needs, areas for development, athletic goals, personal life goals, family schedule, work schedule, and available hours to dedicate to triathlon. For this reason, I will only work with a small number of athletes. I value quality of coach-athlete relationships rather than quantity.
What do I bring to the table as coach?
I bring a unique skill set as a coach in that I took myself as a self-coached athlete from an entry-level agegroup athlete, to amateur half-Ironman national champion, to Kona Top-5 in my agegroup, to winning an Ironman as a professional. I've learned from the good things I've done, but also made many mistakes along the way and learned from each one. With nearly 30 full-Ironmans and 50 Ironman 70.3's of experience, I've personally experienced and learned from all of the highs and lows of training and racing. I've trained and learned from some the best triathletes in the world. I've trained and learned from some of the best triathlon coaches in the world. Since my first day in the sport, I've become a student of the sport, learning as much as I can through book learning as well as real world experience. I am not someone who read coaching and exercise physiology in a book alone, but I've done it myself.
Coaching Philosophy:
I believe in a balanced approach to training and racing. The way I see it, training and racing has three components; the science, the art, and the spirit of racing. I build training so that it fits with all of these focus areas.
1. The Science - This is the exercise physiology. This is how the body functions, the balance between overload and recovery. This is understanding how areas such as phasing, VO2 max, and lactate threshold paly a role in a training plan. This is understanding the importance of recovery and how to build it into a plan. It's knowing how to toggle how we create an overload in the athlete through volume and intensity. The science is a critical piece of the training and racing puzzle. I see one of the biggest problems in the sport today is that too many coaches rely solely on the science. Just because you know what FTP means and can plug is wattage values into an equation doesn't mean that you know how to help an athlete realize his or her full potential. It's important, but it's not everything. Some of the coaching software in existence today leans too heavily on the numbers as the only important aspect of coaching. A coach should know and understand the importance and role of numbers in the total scheme of an athletes plan, but also know its one piece of the overall coaching approach.
2. The Art - The art of training and racing is where the experience of the coach comes into play. The science can be read in a book by anyone. The art of training and racing is understanding how to tweak things to the individual, to understand how different environmental influences can change training and racing. Every athlete is different, the science gives the equations, but the art helps you mold the athlete. The art of racing also encompasses understanding the different racing conditions athletes will encounter. The science tells you the numbers and paces to hold, but the art helps apply that to the real world.
3. The Spirit - In simplest terms, the spirit of racing is the sports psychology. It doesn't matter how well prepared your body is for a race, if your mind isn't ready you will never realize your potential. It doesn't matter the wattage you can hold in training if you can't dig when the going gets tough in a race. This is naturally inherent in some athletes but can be learned for others through direction and practice. I'm a firm believer in mental preparation. In order for an athlete to perform at his or her highest level it cannot be overlooked by the coach.
Through these areas, my goal is to build my athletes up to reach their athletic and personal goals.
Flexibility:
I realize most athletes cannot train full-time like professional triathletes. I work with athletes' work and life parameters to build training that fits their goals. I don't require athletes to train with a power meter or HR monitor. I can work with an athlete to maximize their performance based upon how they want to train. If I force an athlete to train with a power meter on the bike, for instance, and that style doesn't suit that athlete, then they may be worse off because that type of training is less enjoyable for them. I've seen athletes perform well at the highest professional levels with all types of approaches. I am happy to work with athletes, toys, and technology as it fits them.
Structure:
Currently I don't work with different levels or packages for coaching. I have one level. The coaching fee is $300 per month. For that fee, you get a weekly customized training plan, unlimited email communication, and a monthly hour call (phone or Skype depending on coach/athlete's location). I will always do my best to return emails as quickly as I can, but am committed to return emails within 24 hours of receiving them.
Contact:
If you are interested in my coaching, please contact me via email at:
If I'm accepting athletes at that time, I will send you a basic questionnaire to give me some background on you as an athlete. We will schedule a call where I can learn about you, you can learn about me, and ask questions. From there we can both decide if we will be a good athlete-coach fit.
