They say you don’t have to do, to teach. I’ve never bought that.
Why? Because coaching isn’t just theory. It’s texture, it’s nuance. It’s being willing to ask questions your mind has to answer when there is sweat in your eyes and your legs screaming.
You can read about effort all day—but until you’ve stared down an LT2 interval seven-plus hours into a ride, you don’t know effort. You don’t know what happens to your body and your mind. You just know about it.
Until you know what it is like to work overtime, or tend to a sick kid or deal with the stresses of life and then try to do a workout, you just don’t know. Until you try to train for a spring Ironman through a winter of indoor training, you just don’t know.
The best coaches aren’t always the most decorated as athletes or coaches… But they are relentlessly curious. They test. They tweak. They fail. They try again. They chase understanding the same way athletes chase finish lines. That’s the difference. Not ego. Not titles. Experience earned the hard way.
At AP Racing we always believed performance is discovered, not declared. I believe the same about mastery. The learning is in the curiosity. The knowing is in the doing. And the edge—the real edge—belongs to the ones willing to explore their limits just to see what’s on the other side.
So if you want to teach greatness, live in the work. If you want to lead athletes, chase your own better first.
Align yourself with someone that has been through it- that has made the mistakes and figured out what works and what doesn’t. Someone that has been in the trenches and knows what it feels like both physically and mentally.
I will not step off my soap box and get back to ‘the doing’…. you should too.
