Buy-in

The buy-in, the hard work, the commitment.

The quality of your program does not matter if your athlete does not buy into it.

As a coach, the most important words that have come out of my daughter’s mouth were:

“Daddy, you know what you are doing and I am proud of you.”

She had just broken three Ontario records and hit competition personal bests. That night she called me and spoke those wonderful words.

She tasted the reward of all her pain, commitment, and long hours in the gym. And that is huge for her coach!

What if she didn’t have a good competition? What would her conversation have been like that night? What would her training process look like now if she did not completely buy into my program?

Now, she is locked in a focused, making my job implementing her training program much easier.

Easier, not easy.

Athletes either buy into your program or they don’t.

As a coach, you have to find a way to tap into them and get their commitment. Once they perform well at their respective disciplines, you’ve pretty much got them… unless you start doing something really stupid in their programs.

My point is this: just because you have an athlete training under your methodology does not mean you are getting 110% out of them. Maybe they are just giving you 98%. Is that enough?

I don’t think so.

In the world of sports performance, 2% is the difference between winning and losing.