Coaching in an Imperfect World

Most online coaching programs are built for a perfect world. A world where you don't get a cold, or you don't have to travel, or little pains don't turn into big injuries. When I first began my career in triathlon I was the methodical planner, and my methodical planning was always done sitting on my couch planning in a perfect world never considering that the world is neither perfect in the sense of everything going just right, nor is it predictable. After a lot of my training did not go according to my methodical planning, leaving me frustrated and unsure what, or even how to adjust to the circumstances the "imperfect" world handed me I learned to plan for the unplanned. Given the arc of my career I'd guess you could say by planning for the imperfect I'd say things turned out pretty well.

When I started coaching in the digital world I realized pretty quickly that applications, spreadsheets and training plans are perfectly designed for a perfect world. Sign up and you get x number of workouts a week for x weeks and if all goes according to plan you reach your goal. Sounds perfect, until the emails started pouring in. Mostly you could put them in a folder called "Something Went Wrong." After a very short while I realized that there had to be a more effective way to coach people online than providing a spreadsheet and then spending my days in the "Something Went Wrong" folder.

A quick note here for those of you embarking on either your first triathlon, or your first time stepping up to a new distance. Everyone (including me) loses site of the goal (whether it's finishing, or winning) sometimes when things aren't going right. If things went right, all you would need is a spreadsheet. Everyone of my programs is designed to get you to your goal, especially when things don't go perfectly in training.

After years of attempting to deal with software development that would suit my vision of what online coaching could be, along came Final Surge. The first time I saw the platform I knew it could be everything I'd ever envisioned with modifications that the team at Final Surge reveled in creating.