A Human First

Strength and Conditioning Coaches often say that coaching is not a job, but a calling. Not something we do, but something we are. And while I believe that deeply, I also believe this truth gets distorted when we confuse calling with consumption. The job is where you do it, the lifestyle is how you approach it, AND everything else life offers you.

Coaching is a lifestyle. I show up to my own personal lifts the same way I want my athletes to show up. My daily routine shows commitment, integrity, passion, gratitude, trust, love… all things that my career as a coach has built in me. But my life does not revolve solely around the weight room.

When we make coaching our entire identity, we stop paying attention to what exists outside of it. We tell ourselves to “leave our personal life at the door,” as if that door actually closes. And then one day, we realize we’ve sacrificed years of relationships, moments, and entire chapters for an industry that will keep moving whether we’re there or not. Friends pass. Family ages. Final goodbyes happen without us. Harsh, I know. But if you’re honest with yourself, you know there are moments that you won’t get back because you had a 4-star recruit on campus and they didn’t commit anyway. We work in an industry that barely protects the job security of pregnant coaches, even when transparency and planning are present from the start. At the same time, we expect 60+ hour work weeks without providing wages that allow coaches to afford time with their families, let alone the money to fly them there. If the industry has limits in how it cares for its people, then we have to be willing to draw our own boundaries.

The myth is that strength coaches are built on toughness, blind loyalty, and being there no matter what. The truth is this: athletes don’t respond to perfection, they respond to alignment. Alignment for me is simple.

1)    I emphasize quality over quantity in all aspects of life.

2)    We are human first, and vulnerability is the most basic form of humanity.

3)    My personal values will never bend for a job.

For a profession that preaches quality over quantity, we need to apply this to more than the X’s and O’s of the job. A team or staff does not need the constant quantity of contact hours, meetings, weight room open hours, or being in the office for the sake of being seen if those contact hours aren’t productive and purposeful. It is important to me that the quality outweighs the quantity, and the quality is found in things like learning how to set up and break down their own lifts with my help, rather than my reliance. It’s found in training them to identify their own corrections in common mistakes and looking to me when it needs refinement or advancement. It’s found in understanding their own training and not just jumping when I say jump. When I choose quality of my time with them, it teaches them how to use what I’m saying instead of collecting weightless sayings that they wouldn’t know what to do with in a weight room outside of their environment with me. That’s why my sessions aren’t robotic. There’s no movement for the sake of noise, no cadenced push-ups just to look busy. I make eye contact. I pull them aside when they act out of character. I ask how they’re really doing and I don’t accept the automatic “I’m good.” When they ask me, I answer honestly.

Vulnerability is my superpower, whether I can call it that or not. When they bring me the heavy things, I don’t flinch. I ask them what we can do to alleviate some of the pressure. I’ll ask if they’re the praying type, the affirmations type, or the laugh it off with humor type. I tell them to call if they need me and if my phone’s on Do Not Disturb, some of them may have permission to call twice. Because the small things add up. And sometimes it’s one honest conversation or one answered call that keeps their life outside the weight room from becoming something people only talk about in an obituary. Life happens. Sometimes we overemphasize the need to talk about how much a person had an impact on us after they left us too early, but don’t take the time to talk about the need for that impact while they’re still around to hear it. There has never been a time where I’ve regretted sharing something vulnerable with someone who thought I had my shit together. The reality for a college athlete is that they need to see others who have made it out with stories to tell so that they can normalize it for others, too, instead of waiting for the pressure cooker lid to blow.

When my 94-year-old grandfather needed intensive care at home, my parents needed my help. When my dad had a stroke while being the one to administer that at-home care, I knew that help required more presence. It was the first time my hard-headed, don’t-ask-for-help mother said “yes, I need you here” instead of “well, what time does practice end?”. Ignoring that reality to chase a job 1,000 miles away wasn’t an option I was willing to entertain, but leaving coaching didn’t seem like it should be an option either. As strong as my calling to coach has always been, another calling answered louder. Some termed it caretaking or babysitting, I called it being a daughter and a granddaughter. And those titles will always come before “coach.” That meant having honest conversations with my athletes and colleagues. Not a “look at my struggle,” but a clear expectation: there will be absences, and this is why. Over the past four years, that has looked like five hospital rooms, two ambulance rides, and countless doctors’ offices between my now 99-year-old grandfather and both of my senior age parents. It’s affected my mental health and put me down and out on several occasions as well. This is not a detour from my life. This is my life. And jobs are meant to support life, not the other way around.

I don’t abandon my values to prove loyalty the same way I wouldn’t expect them to run through a brick wall for me, knowing damn well most of them would if I asked them to. I don’t ask them to do anything I’m unwilling to model: effort and accountability, and humanity and empathy. Any time I have had to leave to care for my family, they had their lift sessions covered, laid out for them with notes and videos, and usually a check in text sent from me to the group chat when I can. They know my alignment and that they’re on it, just not first in the grand scheme of things.

We are never the center of our athletes’ lives. They are the center of our professional lives. My personal life encompasses far more of my existence than my job ever will and at the end of the day, that makes me a better coach, not a weaker one. I show up 110% to everything I do and everything I say that I am, and when that 110% is at home taking care of family, then they know they get all of me when I’m coaching. I stopped feeling guilty when I step away for my family, because I’ve shown my athletes what presence, boundaries, and integrity look like. Stop glorifying being back at work a week after giving birth. Stop talking about missed funerals and family milestones like badges of honor. That mindset erodes the integrity of this industry.

The grind mentality tells us that missing work for real life means we’re failing. That being present at home somehow makes us less committed professionals. But what we’re really teaching athletes when we give praise to 12-hour days and martyrdom is that work should matter more than life. And that’s false. I don’t want to work next to someone who abandons their family at home for the appearance of commitment. I will not be hiring them either. The glorification of chaos and sacrifice-for-clout disguised as “work ethic” doesn’t build culture. If the “brotherhood” you work for doesn’t see when you need to take care of the cards life is dealing to you, then what are you loyal to? Are you working for 12 hours because you can’t say no to a coach, or that your productivity is inefficient? Advocate for yourself and others and start building boundaries around your work environment that make people want to stay instead of sacrifice. Nothing will ever be perfect and we don’t have to act that way, so call out your colleagues the same way you’d call out your athlete for not having their priorities in line.

I didn’t sign up to guard a desk, or prove my worth by proximity. I signed up to build culture when it matters and to teach athletes how to bring discipline, intensity, and intentionality into all areas of their lives, including the ones that exist far beyond the weight room.

I’ll never not be a coach. But this profession has outgrown the sidelines, requiring more than passion and hard work alone. It’s time for coaches to sit at the executive table and create the sustainability we’ve been waiting on instead of complaining about it. Set your boundaries and stop feeling sorry about them.

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