Welcome to Episode #25 of Mile High Tri podcast, I'm your host Rich Soares. Mile High Tri empowers you to reach your fitness and triathlon goals by connecting you with coaches and experts to help you in your triathlon journey.
Today's episode is Part 2 on the theme where we are asking the questions "do you need a coach?".
So do you need a coach? There are plenty of training plans online. In fact, the information resources available to the self-coached athlete are nearly infinite. I don't need to tell you that there are plenty of books, websites, forums, specialty services, physiology testing, and let's not forget podcasts!.
The good news is there is a ton of information out there. The other good news is that you have tons of time on your hands to research it, right? No? Well, assuming you do have a lot of time on your hands, and you can research everything there is to know about nutrition (eg, strength training, endurance training, speed/intensity training, recovery, race strategies, form, technique, etc.), there is more to the role of a coach than technical expertise.
The roles of a triathlon coach are numerous. The best collection I've found is from coach Brian Mac's website. The roles he lists include: Advisor, Assessor, Counselor, Demonstrator, Friend, Facilitator, Fact-finder, Fountain of knowledge, Instructor, Mentor, Motivator, Organizer, Planner, Role Model, and Supporter. You can probably come up with a few more without trying too hard. You could extend it to specifics like strength coach, swim coach, or physical therapist and on. Perhaps I'm being too fast and loose with the roles, but that's how I see it.
Last week, in episode #24, I interviewed Will Murray, Mental Skills Coach with D3 Multisport and Jim Galanes of EPOC Performance Training. As with each subject that I take on with the podcast, I'm trying to examine the question from multiple lenses.
The 2 lenses that we explored last week were aimed at the role of a coach in helping train your mind, and the role of guiding the training load and recovery balance.
On training the mind of an athlete, we spoke to Will Murray, author of the book, "The Four Pillars of Triathlon".
On the physiology loading and recovery process with 3 x Olympic Nordic skier and coach Jim Galanes. Jim described how his curiosity for sports physiology budded early in his Olympic career and developed through decades of work with researchers, coaches and athletes. I confess I got a bit ahead of myself and started down the path of July's theme how to get the most out of software training logs and analytic tools.
This week we continue the discussion with: