My favorite coaching rule

Recently I read a quote that said "Did you invest as much in your career as you did in your car this past year?" I loved that and wanted to repeat that here, I couldn't agree more.

Those who have been around me a few years will notice that no two season are the same, I think we have had a different warm up every year. I try to analyze the previous season remove the things I didn't think helped and keep the things I did think helped. Then I look for new things to try out, some work some don't. There is alot of trial and error. You would be bummed if you ran the same speed in middle school as you did in your senior year of college. I am the same way, in ten years from now I hope I will be a better coach. Anyways, I never planned on being a coach, if I did I would have asked alot more questions when I was an athlete, I was more of the "blindly follow whatever your coach says" type of athlete. Anyways my first year was basically me just assigning the athletes the exact same workouts I had to do. MOnday was tough, Tuesday was technique, Wednesday was speed, Thursday Technique, Friday was tempo, Saturday was meet. The problem was when I wanted to adjust things I couldn't because I didn't know why did them just what we did.

Anyways after my first season, I got my paycheck and it wasn't much and I had bills I needed to pay, but I also felt like I should reward myself for my first season being done. It felt like if i used it for bills, I was coaching for the wrong reasons or if i used it to buy a video game that would be no good to. It just seemed right to use it to make me a better coach. So I went on to amazon and bought 4 or 5 books on track and field. The next year after coaching I used my money to take some classes at Foothill in exercise physiology. Those classes got me interested in exercise physiology and I ended up going to SJSU and getting my Masters in the subject. (there is no way this would have happened if I didn't go to foothill) now I am teaching classes at SJSU. Every year I try to challenge myself to spend as much of my coaching paycheck on making me a better coach. Again following with the theme of lifelong learning. One year I went to chicago for a week long coaching education program sponsored by USATF . It was made to certify me to coach the jumps at the NCAA level. It cost 400 dollars more than my paycheck that year, I still felt it was worth it. Over the years I have used it to buy over 80 books 15 DVDs, our team website (plus the web design class I took at foothill). A couple weeks I got my football paycheck and I used it to buy a high speed camera, I probably wouldn't have been able to justify that purchase to myself with out this rule. The rest of the paycheck I used to buy over 30 hours of video from top coaches in distance, jumps and sprints and throws.

The point of this post isn't to brag about all the stuff I bought but it is just to say no matter what field you go into, never stop trying to imporve, don't be sataisfied. If you don't like your job invest in things taht will help you get a new job.

Merry Christmas!