Across my high school, college, and professional baseball career I have had no less than 20 pitching coaches. Some were great and some were…not so great. A few were able to guide me in the right direction, and others (who meant well) pointed me in the wrong direction.
I came to realize that the best coach I’ve ever had was the person in my mirror. There are a list of reasons for this:
- No one knows everything
- An abundance of context
- A sense of urgency
- A gauge on risk
1- Any time you are asking someone for advice it is important to understand that no one has all of the answers. We know that experts are often right, but not always. People can only draw from their experiences, so if two expert coaches experienced similar events differently, they will explain or coach it differently. It’s important you don’t give anyone blind trust, but vet everyone’s opinion against all available data and intuition. You don’t want the one time your guru coach is wrong to be the time your career depends on them being right.
2- No one has more context about you than you do. You have the sum of your experience in your mind. You know the surgeries, the setbacks, the changes, your sleep patterns, and eating habits. It’s important to paint a context picture for the coach you work with so they can make the best decision in guiding you in the right direction (run away from the coach who doesn’t ask about context or your history), but realize that it is impossible for you to provide every ounce of information about yourself. This is why those closest to you usually give the best advice, they have a better understanding of context.
3- It is important to understand that no one should want you to succeed more than you do (if they do, you have bigger problems to worry about). Because of this, your coach will never be in as big of a rush as you are to get you better. You are the only person capable of having the highest sense of urgency required to get where you need to go. You are the only one during your downtime obsessing over the next thing that must be done, figured out, or mastered, while most of your coaches are spending their downtime thinking about any number of the other athletes they coach, or most likely themselves.
4- In every undertaking their is a level of risk involved. When it is your career on the line, whether you make it or not usually comes down to how much risk you can tolerate in your training or learning. “Should I do this technically demanding exercise or leave it out?” “Should I scrap this decent pitch and try a new one or keep working on it?” “Should I focus most of my efforts in this place, at the possible expense of gains elsewhere?” A good coach can guide you, but you have to set the pace.
If you go through the grueling trial-and-error process of improvement you will have earned the right to say you are your own best coach. Great coaches are hard to come by, but even they have biases and beliefs about how things work. Make sure you understand where you are headed, and learn all you can about the directions that get you there.
P.S. Being your own best coach is earned. If you haven’t put in the time and effort to understand what you are trying to do at a deep level, you are better off outsourcing your career guidance to people who you feel are qualified to guide you. But how would you know who is qualified if you don’t generally understand what it takes?
Braden Bristo’s - The Journeyman’s Path 