Life of a Coach

Life of a Coach

Everyday someone says to me via email, phone call, or in person that they want to coach athletes like I do.  Now I am the first to say that I love what I do, and I love my athletes. I mean I have to love them or I would quit.  Today I want to give you the real skinny on coaching athletes.  Today I am talking about coaching great athletes, or at least athletes that want to be the best that they can be.

Right before I sat down to write this, I read a Facebook post from Greg Nuckols talking about the amount of reading that he does to stay up to date on the latest scientific literature.  The reading amounted to about two hours per day, which is a massive amount of reading.  He added that to be great at anything takes an amount of work that most people aren’t willing to do, and I believe that statement hits the nail on the head.

Let me give you a taste of working with elite athletes.  Right now, here are the situations that I am dealing with:

·      One athlete is dealing with major shoulder pain.

·      One athlete competes this weekend and is totally prepared everywhere but mentally.

·      One athlete is dealing with a major glute strain and back issues.

·      One athlete is dealing with a neck strain.

·      Three are preparing for their first International trip, and I have to make sure that they are mentally prepared.

·      Three others compete at Senior Nationals this weekend.

·      I have a new elite football and basketball high school athlete that is coming off of two ACL repairs.

·      I have three rising freshmen in high school that I have to prepare for combines because they are good enough to get recruited already by D1 schools.

·      One of my elite senior weightlifters is dealing with major back pain.

·      One of my elite junior weightlifters is coming off of a knee strain and is having trouble getting back on the horse.

·      One of my Junior weightlifters came to me with a 265kg total, and we are trying to get him to a 315kg+ total by July.  (We are already at 300kg).

These are just a few of the bigger issues to give you an idea of what it takes.  Now this is definitely more than normal, but this is the situation that I am staring at right now.  If my job were simply showing up and coaching from 2p to 6p everyday, my life would be perfect.  That’s unfortunately not the case.  I have to find time to help each of them deal with their concerns.  For some of them I am required to find an expert outside of our team to help.  For some it is necessary that I perform some research to make sure that I am doing the right thing to address their needs. 

Remember this is not really how I feed my family.  I still have to run my companies, write articles, work on new books and projects, film videos, podcast, travel to competitions/events, and keep up with social media.  It’s a lot y’all.  Let’s not forget my family is always going to be the most important thing on earth to me, so I am going to give them several hours per day.  Not to mention, I am always going to make time for God, which is the most important thing of all.

As you can see, my time is quickly erased.  This article is not to make you feel sorry for me.  I love my life.  I have chosen this life because I love coaching athletes, and I love to teach all of you through writing, podcasts, and video.  This article is to warn all of you people that want to be coached.  I don’t want to scare you away from doing what you love.  I just want you to have correct expectations.

Yeah you can coach some classes, and you can forget about each of your athletes/clients the minute they walk out of your doors.  However, you will never be great if you do that.  It’s a simple as that.  You might build a good business, but no one will remember you as a great coach.  I’m not even sure that you will build a great business like that because people in general are going to hang around coaches that care about them. 

I believe that people deserve that best of me.  When they invest on me as a coach, they deserve a coach that will forever keep learning.  I will never be satisfied with my level of knowledge, and neither should you.  If you really want to be a coach, here are a few questions that you should ask yourself:

·      Do you really love people?

·      Is it easy for you to empathize with others?

·      Are you willing to live out what you are teaching?

·      Are you willing to spend a lifetime of continued education?

·      Are you willing to put the concerns of others above your own?

These are the real questions that great coaches will easily answer ‘yes’ to all of them.  Coaching is spending a lifetime of servitude to others.  It’s not about becoming the most popular coach.  Your goal is to develop the most incredible athlete.  Once again, if your goal is to become rich and famous, you are in the wrong business.  I am not saying that can’t create a thriving business, and I am not saying that coaches can’t form varying degrees of popularity.  These things come from coaches being most concerned about their athletes.  Basically popularity and success are byproducts of becoming a skilled coach that cares more about their athletes than themselves.

I’ll end by sharing the reason why I coach.  I spent the first thirty-five years of my life totally focused on myself.  I was able to accomplish some pretty cool athletic feats, but this life of selfishness left me pretty lonely and feeling unaccomplished.  Even though I was coaching during some of that time, I wasn’t a very good coach because I was more concerned about my own performance.  God has given me an avenue to use that time of selfishness to help others, and I can say that I am 100% more fulfilled. 

Let me give you one example.  At the 2017 Youth Nationals, my then 13-year-old Godson, Morgan McCullough was put in a situation to make the Youth Pan American Team, but he had to hit an all-time PR of 140kg/308lb on his third and final attempt in the Clean & Jerk.  He had tried this lift several times in training, and simply wasn’t confident enough to stick the jerk.  You have to remember he was 13-years-old, so I can totally understand being intimidated about hoisting that incredible weight overhead. 

After his second attempt of 135kg, he wanted to go to 137kg because 135kg had felt heavy.  I shook my head no, and explained that we needed 140kg for him to have a chance at Youth Pan Ams.  I gave him a pep talk like I have never given anyone before.  At that moment that young boy took major strides in becoming a man.  He looked at me with the confidence of Michael Jordan, and shook his head ‘yes’ in agreement. 

He walked out on that stage, and he stuck that weight like a champion.  I almost ripped the steps away from the stage in celebration.  I have never felt that much joy after any of my lifts or accomplishments, not even close.  That’s the love a great coach has to have for his athletes.  This is the way you have to feel if you want to coach great athletes.  Heck I would say this is the way you have to feel if you want to coach anyone.

I hope that this is an encouragement for some of you.  I equally hope that this is a warning for the rest of you.  If you want to be the rock star, go do something in life that is focused on you.  If you want to create rock stars, then coaching is perfect. This industry means the world to me.  It’s my mission.  If you want to be a part of this great field, I suggest that you heed these words carefully.

If you want to be a part of our gym, come check us out or visit our website at www.leanfitnesssystems.com.  You can email us at leanfitnesssystems@gmail.com to receive a Free two weeks if you mention this article.  Mash Elite Performance is located within LEAN Fitness, but coaches that feel the same way as me coach our adult classes.  No matter what you do, coaches that love their athletes/members will be coaching you.  You can also check out our seminars, classes, and Free Articles.

Results or Research?

Results or Research?

I have discussed this topic with several colleagues, and I am still on the fence with my conclusion.  Here’s the full debate.  Which is better, a coach that continually produces champions or a coach loaded down with a PhD?  Here are my thoughts on the subject.

If a coach is continually helping athletes improve, then it’s hard to say that they are not equipped.  When you think about it, no one does more research than a day in and day out coach.  How many people has Louie Simmons coached?  Are you telling me that someone that has performed a couple of research studies is more of an expert?  Think how much data Louie has to prove his arguments. 

That’s why I was pumped to be a part of the new “Stronger Experts” platform.  “Stronger Experts” worked hard to bring together the top 20 strength and conditioning experts from around the world.  Now you have guys like Greg Nuckols and Zach Long that are on the cutting edge with research, and coaches like Sean Waxman and me that are constantly turning out athletes for International Competition.  (FYI go to www.mashelite.com/strongerexperts/ and use code “EARLYBIRD” to save $100)

In a perfect world, coaches are going to guys like Dr. Andy Galpin and learning about the latest discoveries in Exercise Science, and then we can go back and apply those discoveries to our athletes.  This is the way that advancements are made in our industry, and this is the way that America can compete against countries that continue to dope.  We simply have to do things better.

My biggest frustration is when people say that results doesn’t really mean that a coach is proficient.  I can’t agree with that.  They say that coaches can be good at recruiting and good at forming awesome atmospheres versus having concrete knowledge.  Here’s the thing.  If you are a coach with all the knowledge in the world with a terrible atmosphere and no good athletes to coach, then you my friend are a not so good coach.  It probably means that aren’t a really nice person to be around, and that’s a huge part of coaching.  People are drawn to positive people that can motivate others to excel. 

If someone is growing their pool of athletes, motivating those athletes to succeed, and helping the athletes reach their goals, then that’s a good coach in my book.  You should probably look at injury rate as well.  If you are hurting 20% of your athletes, then that is a problem.  Ivan Abadjiev (may he rest in peace) comes to mind.  He developed the infamous Bulgarian Training System, which was basically maxing out three times per day in the Snatch, Clean & Jerk, and Front Squat.  He produced a lot of champions.  He had some crazy unorthodox ways of motivating his athletes like sic’ing mean dogs on his athletes.  Several athletes couldn’t survive the grueling method, so only the strongest and most durable athletes in Bulgaria survived. 

So was Ivan a great coach?  Personally I don’t think so.  He had an endless supply of athletes because it was a state sponsored program leaving athletes with very few choices.  It was a survival of the fittest program.  Anyone could develop something similar, but in America we would probably get sued.  I always wonder if he hurt his best athlete, so the world might never know what could have been. 

So what’s the answer:  results or research?  The answer is both.  A good coach is normally someone who is well read, delivers a great training atmosphere, and is able to recruit athletes to his or her training facility.  Somewhere in the middle is where the sweet spot lies. 

For all of you young folks trying to come up in the industry, here are a few suggestions:

• ·      Never stop learning
• ·      Find a mentor
•      Work on your ability to motivate others
• ·      Learn to create an environment that is competitive, inspiring, encouraging, and fun.

I am surrounded with friends like Mike Israetel, Dr. Andy Galpin, Greg Nuckols, Coach Joe Kenn, and Louie Simmons, so I am always learning through my own research and conversations with my friends.  This is the best way to get in on the cutting edge as you will hear things before they are even published. 

I will say this in conclusion.  Don’t tell my athletes or me how amazing you are, if you haven’t even coached an athlete to Youth Nationals.  You need to get some skin in the game before you go around beating your own drum.  All you have is a theory that might or might not work.  Until you have coached over twenty athletes onto Team USA in Weightlifting, over 10 to the NFL, 5 to the NBA, and hundreds to Division I Collegiate Programs throughout America, keep your theoretical information to yourself.  Well unless I ask that is.  I have my go to experts that are proven in their fields.

If you are trying to improve your own tool box, check out Stronger Experts at www.mashelite.com/strongerexperts/ and use code ‘EARLYBIRD’ for $100 off yearly or $10 per month for a monthly membership.  You will get content from 20 of the world’s best strength and conditioning and nutrition experts.  I am pumped to be a part.

Note to my Athletes

Note to my Athletes

A Facebook Post from four years ago popped up on my Facebook feed this weekend.  It was a pic of Lisa G. and my wife that we took working out on a cruise just a few months before Lisa passed away.  Lisa started out as a client of mine.  She was a nurse that wanted to get in shape.  It was so funny watching her in the beginning.  She literally couldn’t stand up from an air squat.  However fast-forward a year, and not only was she still training, but she was competing in powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting.  She could deadlift over 300 pounds and she was Clean & Jerking 176 pounds.  It was a real transformation.  It was one that I am most proud of.

She was so much more than a client or athlete.  She was a friend.  She was a part of my family.  Wherever Drew and I would go, you would find Lisa G.  At that point in my life, I loved my gym with all my heart.  My athletes consumed my thoughts.  I loved each and every one of them, and we had a community that most gyms could only dream about.  My athletes were my family as much as my family was. 

When Lisa G. passed, something inside me died.  It wasn’t just me.  The heart of our gym was broken.  We were all crushed.  I spoke at her funeral, and when I walked away from that church, the love for my gym was buried with Lisa G.  That was the same time that MuscleDriver USA offered me a full-time position.  I quickly took it because my gym was the last place on earth that I wanted to be.  We could all hear Lisa G.’s laugh echo through the halls of Mash Elite.

I tried to keep the gym going by hiring a manager, but the gym was built with me as the head coach.  People were there to be coached by me.  The gym quickly faded.  At first I was upset that people were leaving, but my wife reminded me that I was the one that left first.

When MDUSA started failing, I returned to my gym.  By the time that I returned, I only had my weightlifters and few OGs.  My heart was walled up to protect it from ever being crushed again.  The problem with me is that when I let someone in my heart, I let them all the way in.  I’d say that’s a good thing unless one of them dies.

It has taken me until now to finally let those walls down.  This weekend I was at Salem Lake with some of my athletes.  I was at the playground with my boys, and my athletes were off in the distance sitting at a picnic table.  I caught myself staring out at them, and I realized in that moment that I loved those boys and girls as if they were family.  They are my family.  I don’t know how my heart opened up again, but it did. 

When I walk in my gym, I look around at our members, and I feel that same feeling again.  A lot of our members are from that original gym.  Heck two of Lisa G’s training partners, Molly and Lisa S. are members of my gym again.  They are so very precious to me, and I am so thankful that God has given me back that love.  I have learned so much in the past years, and I can promise that I will never take that love for granted again.  I will appreciate and love each and every one of my athletes and members every day that God grants me the opportunity.

There is a moral to all of this especially for all of you coaches and gym owners that I would like to discuss.  I hear the word ‘community’ thrown around all the time nowadays.  It’s a catch phrase that supposed ‘experts’ use like some kind of  business tool.  People are not a marketing tool.  You can’t use some fancy technique to form a real community.  If that is really what you think, you are in the wrong business.  I baffles me that people like that want to be in the gym business.  If money is the priority, there are a lot of other easier ways to make money.

Do you want to know how to form a magical community, one like others can only dream?  You do this by loving your members, and I mean really loving them.  When I look at Hunter Elam, I see a young woman that dreams of the Olympics.  She wants it so badly that she moved from Oklahoma away from her family to reach that goal.  I want her to reach that goal as much or more than she does, but there is so much more that I want to teach her.  I want here to leave the sport of Olympic weightlifting a better person than when she began her journey. 

I want our general fitness members to fall in love with fitness.  I want to watch their lives transform.  I want to see Derek make it on Team USA.  I want Tate to surpass the accomplishments of his amazing brother.  I want Morgan to become the greatest strength athlete of all-time.  Once again I find my thoughts consumed with the hopes and dreams of my athletes and members.

Am I vulnerable again?  Yeah but I am so thankful for this vulnerability.  I wrote this to my athletes.  I want them to know that they cracked the ice away from my frozen heart, and I am thankful for each of them.  I am thankful for the laughter that December brings to the gym. I am so pumped that Hannah trusts me enough to move with her entire family to train with me.  I am thankful for the loyalty that Nathan has shown me over the past three years.

There is not one athlete at my gym that I am not 100% loyal to.  You guys might not have the greatest coach in the world, but you have a coach that won’t stop trying to become the best coach simply because he loves you with all of his heart.  You guys and gals have made the gym a place that I want to be once again.  I will do everything in my power to help each and every one of you reach your dreams.  I am so excited for the next few years.

Gun Control v Gun Rights

Gun Control v Gun Rights

I am going to be honest with all of you right now on my thoughts of this matter.  Truth is that I don’t care one bit.  I am over it!  Here’s what I know.  Every week it seems there is some kind of mass shooting.  Everyone’s reaction is the exact same.  Democrats scream gun control, and Republicans scream gun rights.  The problem is that No One is doing Anything about it.  Nobody!

When can we all just be Americans?  There is a problem, and I am sick of hearing about a political party’s agenda.  I want to see some politicians that are more concerned about the lives of the American people than reelection.  What has happened to us?  Do you all remember what happened after 9/11?  We all came together. 

I have news for all of you, and that news is we all live in the same place.  I am 100% certain that Republicans and Democrats want to protect their own families.  It’s time that we all came together to protect each other’s families.  Let’s face it.  Most of us have political ideologies based on our parents, friends, and wherever we grew up.  If you had been born somewhere else with different parents, you would probably think something totally different.  So you grow up Democrat or Republican, and you grow up hearing exactly what that specific party believes.  You come to accept that as the gospel.  Guess what?  Neither side is perfect, and most of it is simply BS anyways.  It’s just something for us to cling to, complain about, and spend useless time on.

Meanwhile our children are getting murdered on a weekly basis.  Dang it, I am sick of hearing about the Middle East.  We have a problem right here.  Dang it we have war right here in America and it’s high time we call it what it is.  Here’s what a quick search on Wikipedia found: “A comprehensive report by USA Today tracked all mass killings from 2006 through 2017 in which the perpetrator willfully killed 4 or more people. For mass killings by firearm for instance, it found 271 incidents with a total of 1,358 victims.”

February 15^th 2018 the “New York Times” published the following:

“When a gunman killed 20 first graders and six adults with an assault rifle at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, it rattled Newtown, Conn., and reverberated across the world. Since then, there have been at least 239 school shootings nationwide. In those episodes, 438 people were shot, 138 of whom were killed.

The data used here is from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that began tracking school shootings in 2014, about a year after Sandy Hook.”

I don’t know about you, but I have three children.  I don’t want any of them to have to worry about this, and I want to protect them.  That’s my job, but I can’t get any help from my government.  If our government’s job isn’t to protect our children, what is their job?  That’s the dang question right now.

Here’s what I know.  Americans aren’t going to turn their guns over to the government.  Plus there are over 300 million guns in America that we know about.  Lord only knows how many guns that are hear illegally.  So, you are not going to be able to collect all of those anytime soon. 

Here’s a couple of things that seems to be common sense:

1.  Let’s reinforce the laws we have.  Before we talk new legislation regarding guns, let’s handle what we have.  Otherwise we can pass some more laws that no one will adhere to.

2.  Then we can talk about new laws that might help.

3.  Parents or anyone else that supplies someone with a weapon that is used for a shooting should be held just as liable.  I am mainly talking about the parent of the Waffle House shooter, but this goes for anyone that does this. 

4.  If someone is deemed mentally unfit, they simply can’t have a weapon.  There is no time for political correctness on this one. 

Other than this, I have no idea.  I want to see the Democrats and Republicans sit down together and figure this out.  I don’t want to hear about immigration, Russia, or anything else until this is figured out.  Look men and women of Congress and the Senate, it’s time to put your differences aside.  I just want you to start making some progress.  I don’t want to hear any statements or empty promises.  I want to see results. 

I am not just talking about guns because look what happened in Toronto today.  I have several friends up there, and I was scared to death when I heard the news.  Look who cares what religion, race, or belief someone has.  The beautiful thing is that if I don’t like what someone else believes, I don’t have to believe it.  I can believe whatever I want, and I don’t have to hate the person who believes opposite. 

Thanks to my career, I have friends from all over the world.  I have Muslim friends.  I have friends from Iran, Russia, and Egypt to name a few.  I’m a Christian, and I love Christ with all my heart.  No one has to believe like me for me to respect and love them. 

I get it.  I know the world is flawed and filled with sin.  I know that the world will never be perfect not even close, but we can all try to make it a little better.  We can listen and learn from each other.  If we really try to put our heads together, we can create change. 

This is my plea to all of you.  Can we stop identifying with some political ideology and simply start identifying as a human being on planet earth?  Our children depend on us to protect them.  Let’s come together to do just that.

End rant,

Coach Travis Mash