Rehabilitation Is For Quitters

Quitting. Most occasions the word has a negative connotation. Unless the thing we're quitting is destructive or wasteful. Quitting a job leaves a gap for someone to fill; quitting a race (if injured) replaces time training or racing with recovery and rehabilitation.

If you're a big-shot in an organization the announcement is usually tied up in a neat little package with the classic and often overused "...want to spend more time with my family..." alibi.

I'm not a big shot, so I don't have any good alibis. I'm not very good at neat, clean, well-structured goodbyes - the promises of the goodby-er always seemed hollow on the receiving end. Therefore, I've always tried to turn a "hurry out the door" into something which sounded more like a "hiatus"; you never know when you might need that old job, or to communicate with that person again.

When I no longer needed to do a collateral duty after four years, it seemed a good time to take stock of other activities which fill my schedule. Was it necessary? Was it of benefit to others around me? Most importantly, did I derive any sort of satisfaction from it?

There weren't many groups available for runners when I was appointed to coach a run training group. Some six-and-a-half years later, there is a social run or training activity most every day of the week, save for Friday.

I've handed out the occasional business card to runners who expressed interest in training and answered the occasional phone call or e-mail question. Sometimes the inquirer comes out, sometimes not. My wife told her girlfriend once, "...he used to get very excited about the prospect of someone new coming out, but when they didn't show it disappointed him. Now he has a 'wait and see' attitude, which keeps him on a more even keel." If coaching were my only way of making a living, or to get people to bring their money through the door of my running emporium, I might be more aggressive. For me, though, it's three-to-five hours a week.

I am not quitting the act of coaching. I'm not going to be the guy pushing workouts two nights a week to runners who may or may not buy in to what I'm (not) selling. Pushing workouts out that way is like shooting blindfolded at a moving target hoping to hit dead center. I would rather sit down over a cup of coffee, review a training log and take thirty minutes to ask the right questions (the answers won't matter if I ask the wrong ones); that form of coaching is more satisfying. Good coaches blend collaboration and domination. I'd rather be a good coach than a mediocre one. So, I think the focus (ideally) will be toward a one-on-one coach/athlete relationship in the future.

Besides, I need to continue my own rehabilitation. And we all know that rehab is for quitters.

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

In my professional (defined in this venue as for which I am paid a regular salary) line of work, we are regularly under the gun to prove our worth to our customer. In most cases, the question is fairly well rhetorical; it would cost our customer far beyond our pay & benefits to contract for an equally-qualified (foolish?) worker, or hire a replacement should we be made redundant. However, we are under the thinly-veiled threat of contract replacement, as well as a pay-for-performance system...which has the unintended consequences of scaring off the highly-qualified potential employees.

It doesn't mean the process of knowing how your customer feels about your work is coals to Newcastle...or what I like to call (when describing some days) a complete waste of make-up. However, the greatest challenge is making certain the customer has the ability to be honest about their opinion...with the hope they will continue to use your service in the future should you make what changes you feel are necessary. It doesn't take a doctoral degree in rocket science or sociology to tell a coach when their athletes are happy or unhappy with the program. If they're happy with the end-results of your training they'll stick around...if not, they'll go off to someone else. When (or if) a coach resorts to survey instruments, especially to ask the opinion of former athletes, it's much the same as if they were invited to drop an atomic weapon at the coach's front door. Merry freaking Christmas, 'Coach.' Once again, I borrow from my wife, who now is a member of the Professional Organization of English Majors (POEM, for those of you into acronyms), and her dictum: '...care, but try not to care too much.'

I swear, one of these days I'm going to retire and let her coach runners like me. :)A report on NPR's Morning Edition this morning mentioned research which proves non-primate animals have a sense of fairness, and react when things don't seem fair. When trained dogs responded to a command, saw another dog receive a treat, and received none of their own they initially questioned (hard look) the trainer's response. After a while they tried another behavior to get the attention (and the treat) of the trainer. As they realized there was no chance for treats to be had, they had to fight their instinct and look away to not gain hope of a treat. Eventually, the dogs refused to listen to the trainer's command.

My strange sense of schadenfreude comes every so often when I participate at a local race or encounter a former athlete from my training group. I like to see former athletes do well, regardless of whether I coach them or they resort to a book. I hate to see former athletes sustain overuse injuries, though...it's as though I could have done something to keep them on the right path and not on the injured list. The hardest encounter comes when I see them frustrated at their lack of progress. How do you say, 'well, I could help you with that issue if you wish,' without sounding like an arrogant jerk?
Again, I have to listen and repeat my wife's dictum: 'care, but not too much.'

At least not for the ones who have gone down the road.