the edge

I was asked to speak to some aspiring personal trainers at NPTI yesterday - I said I'd be psyched to share some of my work with ultimate frisbee athletes and the movement evaluation protocol I've developed for ultimate. But as I prepared for the talk, something very quickly became apparent...I wanted to share my approach and talk about the pitfalls and successes of the past year, but I also needed to share with them the deeper thing, the guy behind the guy, of what this year has meant to me. It took a while to condense my mixed feelings around this tumultuous time, but I finally narrowed it down to two talking points, which I tried to emphasize throughout the talk.

1. The best systems arrive from necessity, and should be constantly reexamined and updated.
My movement evaluation, which has become a calling card of mine, is a perfect example. It's a service I can (and now do) offer to any field athlete wishing to tighten up energy leaks in their movement and minimize their injury risk. It's simple, a minimal time commitment (30 minutes), and tells me most of what I need to know to be able to set someone up on a strength program. I created it because at the beginning of last year I was asked to be the strength and conditioning coach for the Rainmakers and do my best to help 27 athletes not only make it through their first professional ultimate season unscathed, but aid most of them in going directly into their club season (which ended in October). I signed on in February, and the first game was in the beginning of March. I had one month to get them game-ready, and most of them were coming into the season deconditioned and/or nursing injuries. I knew that I needed to assess where each athlete was, and give them specific tools to help them improve that state quickly, and I saw no way to do it other than an evaluation. I spent a week doing research, trying out different movements, recording videos for the mobility and stability "fixes" I was going to employ, and running things by my husband, who's been famously injury-free most of his 14-year career on Sockeye. It was a whirlwind weekend, but I managed to get all the players in and out of the evaluation with no major snafus. I was excited about the data collection portion of the eval as well...it seemed to me that I knew of common "frisbee injuries," but I'd never had an actual sample population to test my theories. I found some new things, and confirmed other suspicions. It was a huge success in my mind because I'd managed to make a personal connection with each athlete, give them information about their body and the way they moved that most hadn't ever gotten, and give them the tools to start changing patterns that were leading (or had lead) them along the road to underperformance and getting hurt.
Since that time I've done evaluations for several individual athletes, and also worked with Seattle Riot throughout their season, starting with evaluations. It's probably single most important piece of work I've done in my career, and it was developed because it HAD to be developed. I'm currently in the process of updating it to include some power testing - that element of player evaluation was done at the combine for the Rainmakers, but that's not the case for any other teams I'm working with. Constantly reexamining any pieces of your system for flaws, asking for feedback, and being willing to let your ego go and do something else if what you had is no longer serving you...that's one thing this year has taught me.

2. We do our best work when we're at the edge of our competency.
Real talk? I was terrified when I was approached to be a S & C coach. I had the necessary certifications, the book knowledge, and a 13-year-long career in personal training and teaching classes/seminars. But I acutely felt the weight of the responsibility to a group of people, to a sport I'd been on the sidelines of since college, to guys that were good friends of mine. This was a national stage, and a new one at that. I knew I would be doing many things for the first time, and the possibility of failing them or disappointing myself was real and immediate. I almost said no. But I knew that I couldn't. It was what I'd always wanted - I just didn't think I was ready. What I've learned, though that experience and many others that have followed hot on its heels this year, is that you're never ready for things like this. Not being prepared, not feeling 100% sure of yourself, is a necessary part of any real innovation, any true steps forward, for yourself and/or in your field. You're driven to know more, grow more, and synthesize new information. You're also forced to accept help from others, through reading or talking to experts, and to listen to the people you're working with and value their feedback on your approach. You're required to be humble, and at the same time, step forward confidently, and it's ridiculously difficult to keep from freaking out.
But man...this year, while being one of my most difficult and tiring and stressful, has also been my favorite year. I've become more thirsty for knowledge, positively self-critical, and will unabashedly take anyone to coffee that I respect and think I can learn from and exchange information. I barely recognize myself. And my business, well, it's going really really well. Better than any time in the last 13 years. Because I'm ridiculously passionate about what I'm doing, and light years away from where I was in January, where I was thinking maybe I'd go to film school. I feel great about the focus of my training, and about my trajectory - things have never been so clear. And even though I'm still living at the edge of my competency (working 12-15-hour days at USAU Nationals for two frisbee teams is the most recent example), I'm not really afraid any more. It's starting to feel thrilling, living there. And I think if more of us lived there, we'd be better trainers, better people, for those who are working with us to get better, stronger.

I'm not sure how much of this got through to the people in that room yesterday, but preparing to speak to them certainly made me realize how lucky I've been this year, to have so many athletes trusting me, and so many professionals willing to share with me and make me better. I'd like to thank all of them, and let them know that none of them are off the hook in that regard...I'm thinking that 2014 is going to be even more amazing. :)