Meeting your coach's expectations

With only four weeks left until we kick-off our 2019 triathlon season, I have been thinking a lot about the athlete-coach relationship. With nearly five solo, music-free hours of swimbikerun training spread over Saturday for me, let's just say that I had a lot of time with my own thoughts.

Coaching is a mutual commitment. The athlete expects the coach to be professional, experienced, encouraging and communicative. But coaches have expectations of their athlete in order to optimize performance, maintain optimal health, to get the most out of the athletic journey and to get the most out of the coaching relationship.

When I think about the expectations that my coach has for me, I believe she wants me to be honest, responsive and engaged. I also believe she wants me to stay in good health - never restricting food or compromising sleep, or jeopardizing my ability to perform well in training and recover quickly from training sessions. Instead of trying to impress your coach with your ability to handle a high training load (and have data that shows that you are improving), training only works if you are able to positively adapt to training sessions - without compromising your health. Therefore, coaching is much more than checking off workouts.

Thankfully, my training has been strategically and systematically designed for gradual progress, without compromising my mental and physical health. With my personal feedback from each training session reported immediately into Training Peaks, she is able to keep me on the right track.

Trust in the coach-athlete relationship takes time to achieve. If you don't completely trust your coach, you may find yourself constantly training with a sense of doubt, always questioning workouts. This doesn't mean that you can't ask questions, express your concerns or make suggestions. If a coach is invested in you as the athlete, she/he will keep an open mind and adjust training as needed/appropriate to foster growth in the sport.

When it comes to coaching, I feel that many athletes and coaches see training as an entity unto itself - simply check off workouts and fitness/race readiness will improve. The attitude is "get it done" - often while in a chronic state of being physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted.

As an athlete, I want to stress that training is a piece of your life. Therefore, if you want to perform well in sport, you need to make decisions that contribute to sport enjoyment and improvement. In other words, when you aren't training, your eating, sleeping and lifestyle decisions play an important role in your response to training stress. Training is so much more than just checking off workouts.

As a coach, I want to stress that you (and your coach) need to have reasonable expectations for sport-related decisions that also work well for the rest of your life. Communication is key. For driven individuals, it's easy to set very high expectations for yourself as an athlete, often feeling a tremendous amount of pressure to perform to achieve a certain result. Be realistic with the time you can devote to training. By focusing on quality over quantity, you'll achieve much more than trying to function with an overworked mind and body.

Remind yourself that expectations influence thoughts and thoughts influence behaviors. This relates to training, racing, body composition. Being overly ambitious with your expectations can easily cause you to make extreme or unhealthy choices that negatively affect your fitness and health. More so, if your expectations are too extreme, you'll quickly lose your passion for the sport, destroy your athletic experience and negatively affect your self-confidence.

Do the training/racing expectations that you have for yourself align with the expectations that your coach has for you?