How to pick a great running coach: Adelaide Running Coach

Coaching is, at its core, about people, trust, and context.

It’s art meets science, experience meets data, empathy meets results. What makes the great coaches, regardless of their field, so great? Here are collection of my thoughts that attempt to answer this question and will hopefully allow you to ensure you’re picking the best running coach for you.

Specialised

With so many different event disciplines and training demands within the running space, finding a coach who specialises in your specific race type is key. Yes, there are baseline principles that apply to all endurance sports however, wanting to navigate your first mountainous 100 miler is completely different to running a 5k PR, so finding a coach who is well versed and focussed on either one, or just a few closely related disciplines, ensures your needs are best met.

Unique

Every athlete is different and the whole point of having a coach is to stack the training and racing deck in your favour as much as possible. Through regular conversation, questioning, and session analysis, a great coach will take the time to recognize and address your unique strengths and weaknesses and tailor your training so that the time you have is spent as effectively as possible.

Researched

This may sound obvious but having a coach who takes the time to find out as much about your chosen race, its specifics, and the subsequent training demands it requires is key to quality preparation. What’s the weather like, how much vertical, what’s the terrain type, are there stairs, what’s the architecture ie. layout of all those things in the race? A great coach will read race reports, visit forums, search course videos on YouTube, and ask race organisers for extra details in order to give you the confidence that your training is designed to equip you as best as possible.

Personalised

Athletes are still people. A great coach will get to know you on personal, more human level, away from the running track or trails in order to better understand what motivates you, what your preferences are, how busy your life is, what time of day is best for training, how much you travel, what your family and work commitments are like etc. A great coach will put all of these variables into the training pot and plan accordingly as well as provide flexibility when life inevitably creates change.

Contextualized

We don’t train in a vacuum. In order to create truly sustainable and effective training that has the highest chance of adherence, a good coach MUST consider how training fits into your life and energy demands on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. If a coach is still hammering you to run big sessions in spite of a hectic work week or illness with the kids, then they’re not getting the best out of you and potentially are only going to make things worse. Having a coach who knows when to push and can give you the confidence to take days off or back off in a session because you feel crap after a late night goes a long way to performance longevity.

Experienced 

Nothing beats personal experience and being able to talk directly through plans, strategies, tips and tricks with a coach who has also spent time in the trenches is invaluable not only on race day, but in ensuring you’re only focussing on the real needle movers in training and not wasting unnecessary mental energy worrying about this or that. In the event a coach doesn’t have extensive personal history with a particular race type, then they need to demonstrate to you that they have successfully coached athletes who have. 

Qualified

More and more qualifications are appearing online and this is a great step in the right direction to ensure a better general level of coaching support for athletes. However, great coaching is so much more than a piece of paper, and for the longest time, there have been world class coaches without official qualifications getting incredible results out of their athletes. Being truly qualified is the sum of many parts and whilst having accreditations that prove a basic understanding of human physiology or biomechanics are needed, having years of experience with lots of athletes provide great coaches with a space to apply time tested principles to the specifics demands of races across wide athlete variances and work towards best-in-class results.

Frequently injured? Stuck on a training plateau? Unmotivated or unsure where to put your training time? Let us get to know you and take the guess work out of your running via a 100% free online coaching call today.