Powerlifting Coaching: Improving Communication Through Expectations

Expectations are the foundation of good coaching communication. My weakness to communicate these expectations was once upon a time the weakest point of my coaching. If you want to help your athletes get great results and see adherence increase with them it all starts with communicating your expectations.

Step One: Defining Your Expectations

If you want to properly communicate expectations you need to define what those expectations are. Write them down.

Seriously take the time to write down both what your athletes can expect from you and what you expect from them. A mistake I made for a long time is not clearly writing down exactly what my expectations were. This would result in disjointed communication of my expectations to new clients I was intaking. Sometimes depending on time and my memory I may forget things then have to let people know about them later on when they weren't doing what I wanted at the fault of myself.

Here is an Example of What My expectations are for my athletes:

Step Two: Communicating Your Expectations

When I Identified that communicating my expectations was a weakness in my coaching I first wrote down my expectations then I went through them with every single one of my athletes at the time. 

Something funny (but very obvious happened) all of my athletes started adhering to their programs more, sending more videos, and getting better results. Crazy right?

This seems really obvious but once you have your expectations outlined go through them with every single athlete you coach. Every current athlete, every new athlete and any time an athlete is struggling with meeting the expectations gently go through and re-establish expectations.

I think this is one of the most important things we can do as coaches.

Maybe you've often heard the phrase “Coaching is a two way street and the athlete must meet you halfway”. This a great sentiment about you can put all the work you want into coaching but if the athlete doesn't put in the work they won't get the result. 

However if the athlete doesn't even know where the road is, how are they supposed to meet you halfway? You must define what that work looks like they need to be putting in and what the work you will be putting in as well is. 

Do this and you will be a better coach for it.

Thank you for reading and if you are looking for a coach that will clearly define expectations (If you have read this far you already know what they are) please feel free to reach out to me via DM on Instagram and Inquire about coaching.