How To Be A Good Powerlifting Client: Communication, Self Accountability, Ethics + The Other Side of the Coin
Well, here it is.
Truth be told, for a long time, I did not know what a model powerlifting client looked like.
In fact, I think my stance has changed a ton from when I first started thinking about this idea about a year ago and vastly different from the very beginning, viewing some of the people I followed closely to start my career.
I think the main takeaway before I get into detail, and I cannot stress enough, is this is how to be a good client, not a perfect one. In fact, I do not encourage trying to be perfect in any facet here, as mentally, it becomes difficult to keep up with all these entities amidst our own personal lives and the fact of the matter is, if you’re really devoted to training and want to get better innately, you will be more than half way their already.
Fair warning, some of these things will be a bit uncomfortable, maybe a bit close to home, but that is okay. It seems to be a running theme where I compare everything to traditional sports, but I see a lot of parallels in this avenue as well. Somewhere along the line it became evil to hold people accountable and the truth is, yes, you can and should be empathetic towards peoples turmoils, something I personally feel I do a good job of, however, if someone lays out a high level goal, us as coaches are doing the athlete no benefit by letting them fall short of their end of the bargain.
Conversely, I want to also touch upon it on the coaches side, as unfortunately there are some instances where the athlete is blamed for the coaches wrongdoing and that is an issue equally as important, in my opinion.
As laid out in the title, I believe there are 3 pillars of being a good client/athlete, with a couple subdivisions that comprise each pillar.
Let’s dig into each.
Pillar 1: Communication
If you ever played team sports, you know that communication is an absolute factor that decides performance. If there are 2 equal teams, one that communicates incredibly and efficiently and the other is silent/ignores each other, who do we think is most likely going to perform better intuitively?
Ah yes, the buzzword that has become pervasive around online coaching circles, communication.
I think there is an ethos now that communicating with your coach is a good thing, but what exactly does good communication look like on both ends?
Well, let’s break this down into a few sub-divisions:
Coachability
Proper language
Time Intervals
Coachability
I think as an athlete, the key to effective communication starts with being coachable.
Now, some of us might be thinking, “There are people who pay for coaching services and do not want to be coached?”
Yes, not often, but it does happen.
What do I mean by this? If your productive feedback as a coach is met with constant pushback, there is a distinct lack of trust with any feedback you give, and a general disinterest in trying to do things as instructed, the athlete, in my eyes is not coachable and will most often not be an effective communicator.
Let’s be real here, it sucks when we think we did something good and someone nitpicks it and takes it down a notch. As humans, we want to naturally do well and be recognized for doing well, which I think is equally as important as critiquing. That said, if you take everything personally and/or as an insult, I do not think you will ever be an effective communicator.
Example scenario:
Athlete is having a tough day and is not feeling particularly strong, nor are they executing technique very well.
As a coach, you point out a technical flaw they are showcasing and maybe an educational moment of the ebbs and flows in training and it is met with a pushback response discrediting the advice and placing further blame on others/external variables/you as the coach.
Coaches can be poor receivers of critiques too though. There are some instances where an athlete approaches the manner in a very productive way and either due to ego or general lack of understanding the athlete, they are met with defensive answers.
An easy example here is, an athlete has not been progressing a certain lift for 3-4 blocks now, and is doing everything in their power to get the most out of the program and when asking to change things up because of this, the answer is no without context and you are expected to just go back to it as if nothing happened. To me, this goes both ways. Personally, I have had athlete’s suggest something and instinctively that is not the call I thought of, but it ends up working! 9/10 regardless, I will at least meet them halfway if it is not outlandish.
Lastly, I really also am a believer in, you should not have to be chased down by your coach. Although this is stepping on accountability later in this article, I feel it is not asking much to be accountable in sending training to your coach and not waiting until they reach out to you. Much like any service, you are expected to inquire first and not the other way around. You ultimately get the most out of your investment when you take advantage of it. This is akin to getting a subscription to a streaming service and only using it when the renewal bill hits your email. This concept directly means the athlete is ready to receive feedback.
Proper Language
This one I think is criminally underrated as a communication sub-pillar. How we speak to our coach vs. how we speak as coaches to our athletes is very much a game-changer in how what we want to get across is perceived. Again, we have to stay accountable but let’s be honest again here, being belligerent with how we choose to word things, does not have the effect we intend.
This is where knowing your athlete matters too.
You have to understand that some people respond better to certain styles of wording then others and hopefully you did your homework in your initial intake on how that person is in terms of demeanor and disposition.
If a lifter is already self-conscious, does it make total sense to blast them on your insta story or in the comments on something they are trying to work towards? Probably not, I hope.
If a lifter responds well to direct and to-the-point feedback, beating around the bush and being ambiguous with direction is going to lead to negative outcomes.
Along with this, I believe that everyone who invests in coaching, should be treated as an adult. This is not to say, everyone should be treated the exact same, but treating a teenager like a baby with your wording, at least from personal experience on the receiving end, does not lead to us feeling comforted, but rather disrespected.
Now, this is my own personal opinion here.
I see the way how some people communicate with their clients in terms of verbiage and some of it is appalling to me.
I understand that, there is equal merit to the athlete on knowing what and who you are investing in, before you get into it, and if this person has a report of this behavior and you willingly signed up for it, then partial blame goes on you.
That being said, I also think it is flat-out not necessary to tell an athlete they suck or demean them in order to get your point across.
I want to reiterate, personality matters, however, there is a select demographic that responds well to:
“This was awful.”
“You need to stop being a bitch.”
This is not 1997 anymore, we can be constructive and stern without that talk.
For almost all feedback, I subscribe to the feedback sandwich approach.
Generally speaking, people tend to respond best to the approach of something they did well, something they can improve upon, then summarizing on a positive value.
Now, this goes for athlete’s too though.
If you are blatantly calling a coach out on your story, replying with one word answers, and/or being belligerent with your language consistently, you are not being a good client.
This also stems to the fact that you should not try to communicate when you are frustrated. Meaning, if you know and can acknowledge you’re being emotional, you should not let that dictate how you speak to a coach, as, speaking from personal experience when I was early on in my coaching career, when you are putting in a high effort and are being berated for a misstep, flat out, that hurts.
More on this in the accountability piece.
Time Intervals
This concept has been a hot topic recently and for good reason.
When should you expect a reply from your coach, do you know what your coach advertises in terms of response, have you ever asked? Should your coach be there with undivided attention during your workout?
Let’s break this down.
I have seen two models of communication with one kind of a hybrid approach that I do not think qualifies as a third.
The first is daily communication. This is exactly what it sounds like, coach is available from X to Y, you can contact them and expect a reply with Z time domain.
The second is a weekly check-in system. You are to meet with coach over a call or video at the end of the week, go over the week at hand, and that is usually on the same day, or same time, each week.
The hybrid is using both of those approaches. Optional communication during the week, mandatory communication for the end of the week, or block, check in.
Proper communication time intervals are relative in this regard.
I think as athletes, maybe we don’t realize all the time that you are one of many, sometimes one of 50+ and I think we see via social media, people train at drastically different times.
Using my own roster for example, if I made myself 100% available for all my athletes on a given day, my day would start around 4:00am and not end until 11:00pm.
Again, this is some coaches full time job, but within a full time job, you have breaks and down time and dare I say it, days off.
I will be the first to admit, this was the biggest learning curve and boundary I needed to develop as I was getting to the point where I was staying up to make sure people did not think I was ignoring them.
Your powerlifting coach is a person too. They need to take a break here and there during the day, they need to prepare and eat a meal without working, they should be able to watch a sports game from their niece or nephew without interruption. They also use social media for entertainment/leisure beyond their work endeavors.
Now, this comes down to effective planning and laying out expectations well ahead of time, though.
If we as coaches cannot fulfill what we laid out in our intro/intake debrief, we should communicate that ASAP.
Things happen, emergencies exist, but if you are just going to take a day off without announcing it, to me, that is irresponsible.
So, on the coaches end, pretty simple here, stick to what you advertise. I know for me, I tend to get overwhelmed when I am finishing my workout and have 18 DMs and 5 texts, so I do not advertise replies are instant, on this here website you will see under services for full coaching clients, communication is unlimited and replies are to be expected the same day they are sent, unless after 9pm.
Now, on the athlete’s side, yes, you invested in coaching, yes, you should expect thorough communication, and yes, you should be receiving replies (amazing we have to say this), however, if you are expecting something that is not promised on initial onset, that is not appropriate.
It is important to create autonomy within the system as well. In traditional sports, does practice not happen if the head coach cannot be there? Maybe if it is a dire circumstance, but usually the assistant coach will take over, or the captains will have a captains practice.
Same deal, your workout should not be compromised if your coach cannot reply within a 5 minute buffer. Again, it comes down to the fact that you are one of many, and if a coach houses 40+ clients and you figure most of them work traditional hours that have them getting off around 5pm and training arounf 5:30pm-6pm, they are probably pretty busy tending to everyone equally.
I think another thing to note here, is time interval for reply to your coach on your end as the athlete. If you are going through something important that is somewhat time-sensitive, and the coach asks an important question, I think it is equally destructive to leave them hanging for multiple days.
We all live busy lives, however, as a fairly observant individual myself, rarely do I see someone go through a one hour period not checking their phone. If you get a second and are not driving, go ahead and fire a reply back to keep the system going.
As you can see, this is a two way street and you as the athlete need to maintain your end of the bargain as well. Team sport example again here, could you imagine your football coach asking you the status of your injury leading into the game and you kinda brushed them off until minutes before kickoff and said you couldn’t go? Probably would not go over well, good coaches are good planners and beyond things that are hypothetical, being preemptive is usually key.
Pillar 2: Self-Accountability
Johnny Manziel, a very highly touted quarterback and former Heisman winner, displayed poor accountability for his life off the field. Although Manziel played well for a 2 year period in college, his off the field ineptitude cost him an NFL career.
Memphis Grizzlies guard, Ja Morant, was levied a suspension to start the 2023-2024 season after exercising poor judgement off the court. Although Morant took vocal accountability, this speaks to a greater issue in that teams/coaches can only control so much and as individual athletes we need to maintain some form of accountability towards the “everything else” portion of our training.
This is unfortunately where I think some things I am about to say could be taken the wrong way.
I want to be clear in that this is a general overview on accountability and what you can do on your end to get the most out of your training.
Full disclaimer, and back to the communication piece, if you DO NOT care about performance to a dire degree and you are accountable in your actions effecting that, that is not an issue. Not everyone has to sacrifice their entire personal life for the sake of more weight on the bar. The issue I have is when athlete’s lay out a high level goal and do not reflect that with high level accountability on their end.
Self-accountability to me, is making sure you are taking care of everything a powerlifting coach cannot, or should not, be tasked with.
That everything else portion could range from: mental health, nutrition, recovery, personal decision making, following program, etc…
I want to break this down into a few categories, the ones above, that athletes have at least 75% control over, that other 25% being their own lifestyle directly inhibiting some portion of it.
Nutrition and Recovery.
Simply put, this is the absolute lowest hanging fruit an athlete can partake in that drastically effects performance.
As coaches, we cannot monitor everything you eat (I suppose we can if they offer nutrition, but even then, how easy is it to just straight up lie here) and what time you go to sleep. We can however, monitor your fatigue in terms of performance. We can monitor how you visually appear. Basically, we can monitor everything that is a direct consequence of poor accountability towards either variable.
If you know one or the other, or both, are compromised, it is very difficult to place lack of progress on the coach in my opinion.
Sleeping for 4hrs a night and partaking in a diet with very little protein, low calories, consistently, unfortunately is not a recipe for success. Just because you know someone who also does this and gets away with it, is not good enough reason to ignore this variable.
Needless to say, if you are not informing coach about any of this, you are spinning your wheels and wasting both parties time.
Personal decision making and following the program.
Now, this is kind of hard to quantify, what good personal decision making looks like, if this is unclear, I will label what BAD decision making looks like at the end of this pillar.
To make things easily digestible, good personal decision making usually involves exercising solid judgement on things that could directly effect performance.
Does it make sense to go out and have a massive fast food meal with a friend that you see daily, 30 minutes before your biggest workout of the block? In the same light, does it make sense to send it on week 1 of a deload cycle because your boy was in town? I don’t know, maybe it is worth it to you.
The easiest thing that you as the athlete have control of, is following program. To me, powerlifting is super weird in that, you pay hundreds of dollars per month for a service, only to not follow said plan for whatever reason. Now, there are caveats here. Maybe we are progressing faster than anticipated and want to go a little heavier at the end of a cycle, that is cool to me. Maxing out on week 2 of a cycle is not cool. Skipping work that is conducive to success for no reason is not cool to me. Doing extra work is not cool to me.
I think when people see what may look like conservative programming on their spreadsheet, oddly enough, it sometime signals the coach is trying to artificially hold them back from making progress in general in their mind. The fact of the matter here is: if you do well, it looks good for both parties. As far as I am aware, any sane and spry coach is not trying to make their athletes wallow in regression and/or take them down a notch for their own personal gain. Chances are, if something is on your program, it is there for a reason.
To me, an athlete who constantly jumps off program to do their own thing, overshooting aside, is displaying a distinct lack in trust of what their coach provides.
Mental health.
Now, I want to be sympathetic hear as mental and emotional trauma is not a matter to brush to the side and I am very empathetic towards those, my athletes especially, that deal with these issues.
However, realize at the end of the day, your powerlifting coach, is a powerlifting coach. They typically are highly trained in strength programming and athlete psychology, not personal life therapy.
This is a tough concept to tread in my opinion, as you never want to be dismissive of an athlete that is going through a tough time, however, if you are not equipped to handle the issue, it is not your obligation to address it personally, but rather encourage to seek professional help. Kind of like if an athlete is experiencing health issues, you would send them to a medical doctor. Stick to scope of practice.
As an athlete, it is also important to be mindful of things such as this that you dump on your coach. Thankfully, my athlete’s are really good about this, but in the past, I had athletes confide in me about relationship advice and things that I, as a 21 year old at the time, was not remotely equipped to handle. You want to have a strong peer to peer relationship, however, a professional boundary should be there in terms of scope of practice.
So I would be remiss if I did not highlight a few things that are flat-out destructive, that athlete's are under complete control over to an extent.
Drug and Alcohol Use/Abuse
Simply put, there is not many substances that are more destructive for what we are trying to do, than drugs and alcohol.
Now, a night out in a vacuum is fine, and in fact, have at it, moderation exists and you can and should take advantage of the time you have to do said things.
However, I think research now is pretty conclusive that on a physiological scale, alcohol directly inhibits muscle protein synthesis, particularly in men, and beyond that, it is not the drinking that we are worried about per se, it is everything that overdoing it does on the back end. Sure, maybe having 4-5 beers is fine, but if that is outside your tolerance and paired with staying out until 4am for a workout the next day at 10am, the chances are that workout is going to suck, then that further recovery debt eats into the next session and so on and so forth. Simply put, and from what I have seen from the people who blend it well, cut all that out 8 weeks out from a meet, go out the night immediately following your meet, life is good.
I feel this is rather self-explanatory, but hard drug use is destructive for many other reasons beyond lifting performance, but unfortunately it is still pervasive, per observation.
Marijuana is one thing, and could have merits, however, unfortunately in most drug-tested federations in meet use is banned and it’s usually best to cut this out pretty close to meet time.
Regardless of all this, if you feel you actually have an issue, and that is impeding upon other facets of life, you should seek help.
I am more talking about the situations where athletes place this lack of restraint on the coaches hands for a program related issue. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but on the drug-tested side of the sport, there isn’t a high level lifter who engages in such activity regularly, meaning weekly or daily, and still performs at a high level.
Lying to Your Coach
Well this one is a no brainer, it is very easy to just not lie to your coach and to me, this is really in your control as an athlete. We are speaking on the macro here, but if you are either: sick, injured, having an issue, or made a mistake, there is merit to telling your coach right away. Remember, being preemptive is usually key, and if you are either withholding important info, or lying about things, you are just wasting both parties time and effort.
Pillar 3: Ethics
For years, Lance Armstrong deceived the public and the greater cycling community with PED use and lying and dodging tests. Although that is not the point here, the main issue is what he did directly effected everyone involved and his ethical decision of deciding to do so, was a reflection on those around him and undeservingly so.
In professional sports, poor ethics outside the field of play is not tolerated. Although unfortunately this process takes a while for some high level athletes, ultimately you will end up released from your contract, much like Antonio Brown from the Raiders, Patriots, and Buccaneers.
Ethics are something that I think is seldom talked about in terms of being a good client and something that I think is very important.
An an athlete, if you tag your coach in your bio, you are wearing their apparel, and are registering for meets under their team, you are a direct representation of them and everything you do, for better or worse, is under their umbrella.
Now, individual freedom exists. Free speech exists. I also do not think you should have to walk around on egg shells due to this.
However, as highlighted with the 2 examples, brand identity and alignment matters.
We see all the time in team sports, athletes make a poor decision ethically and they are dropped from sponsors and in some cases, their actual team.
My lifters and I have the understanding that what they do is a direct reflection of me, and if they are constantly berating other lifters, being abhorrent at meets with behavior, and in general, treating others with blatant disrespect on social media or in person, that is not something I take lightly.
Call me shallow here, but perception matters. If you want your team to be known as the wild west where you as the coach take no responsibility for your lifters actions, so be it. I do not take this stance.
As an athlete, beyond just acting like a decent human in the gym and at meets, it also is a bad look when you are constantly asking other people for advice and/or seeking out external help from either another coach, or someone in your gym. Sure, if you are a weekly check in athlete and your coach truly does not feature any same day communication, if you suffer an injury in the gym it might be worth listening to someone experienced on how to manage. You may also attend a seminar where a concept is explained different that really resonates with you. All of that is fair game.
However, if you consistently are reaching out to others for form advice, allowing others to dictate your training thoughts, and/or crediting anyone but your coach for your success, my question is why are you actually paying said person for their expertise?
Do you need to praise them like a deity? No. Should you use them as your primary resource, in my opinion, yes.
Us as coaches however, need to also be real in the sense of aligning ourselves with like-minded individuals. We screen these athletes and if we have a hunch we do not align, regardless of talent, then that needs to be considered heavily before taking someone on. A lifter who is talented but does not align with my vision, is not someone I would like to work with for more reasons beyond lifting performance.
Conclusion
In essence, if you care about your craft, at least enough to get the most out of your investment, you will be a good client every day of the week.
I think it is important to note, explicitly stating your goals is important here as well. The accountability on both ends for a goal of becoming national champion is a bit more stringent than wanting to get stronger for personal gain without sacrificing time spent out on the weekends.
If there is nothing else you took away from this, have it be as an athlete: take advantage of the resource you are provided and be receptive to feedback.
As a coach: do not be afraid to keep people accountable within your means but do not be afraid to refer elsewhere if out of practice.
At Team Hogan, I have 40+ good clients and I am very proud to be associated with all of them, this does not mean I have had to dismiss a few people here and there, however, at the end of the day, business is business and I think coaches should be respected as well as their wishes. Same goes to athletes. It is a two-way street after all!
To Utopia,
Erik