This is a Hot Take
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.