08/25/2026
I’ve been in the game of teaching and coaching long enough to know that methods come and go and no model is the perfect model.
These are principles born from over two decades of trying to get a little better as a teacher and coach every day.
They are not all I think about coaching, performance training, athlete development, sport pedagogy, and movement education. But I think them useful for me and you.
They function as an orientation when the clean solution gets messy in contact with a human being.
1. Train for something beyond the training itself.
2. Measure what matters when measurement improves the decision.
3. Do not confuse the metric with the human being.
4. Build general capacities that preserve options.
5. Develop attunement: teach people to sense effort, position, rhythm, fatigue, and readiness.
6. Let play and sport reveal qualities the gym cannot fully reproduce.
7. Use the minimum complexity required to solve the actual problem.
8. Remember that everyone has everything going on all the time.
I expect some of these to change as I keep coaching, teaching, reading, listening, paying attention, and inevitably getting things wrong.
For now, they help me decide what deserves my attention.
What is the person actually being prepared for?
What information would meaningfully change the decision? What are they learning to sense for themselves?
What does the environment allow for, or prevent, from emerging?
What might sport or play reveal that I have not been able to manufacture in training?
How much complexity does this particular problem actually deserve?
And, most importantly, what else might be going on in the life of the person standing in front of me?
If you coach, teach movement, or work in human performance, I’m curious where you agree, where you might push back, or what you think is missing.
I’d genuinely like to hear it in the comments.
And if you’re trying to think through a coaching problem, I offer coaching consultations through the link in my bio.
