You don't have a job - you have a lifestyle!
Take home message
IT’S A LUCKY LIFESTYLE - MAKE SURE IT IS A BALANCED ONE.
For Coaches
Commit to a hobby, have something that cannot be easily linked to work.
For Athletes
You cannot be focused on your performance 24/7, 365. Having a balance actually improves your performance.
I’m having a coffee with a mate. It’s 9:30am on a Friday. I’m enjoying the week of leave after exiting hotel quarantine and catching up with friends I have not seen in a while. After all the years of working his butt off, I am thrilled to see his business is starting to really go well so he can have the late start. We are talking about my recent tour, the long days and tour complications, when he laughs out, “You know you don’t have a job, you have a lifestyle!”.
We both laugh because it’s funny and pretty accurate too. We’ve all heard, “Find your passion and you will never work a day in your life”, well that’s true. I am really lucky. But for a long time, I could not get this thought out of my head and saw both sides of the coin.
There is a wider, insidious element of wisdom in his observation. Because it’s a lifestyle, I don’t switch off either.
We cannot talk sport, any sport - professional sport or our kids sport - before my brain is starting to analyse S&C components of it. Whether that be performance applications or injury prevention and movement competency work for the kids. We can’t talk business for long before I am thinking about schedules, logistics, or managing people, coaches or culture.
I think many coaches don’t switch off. Most coaches like watching sport, any sport. And even when watching that other sport, there is a part of us analysing it, not entirely enjoying the sport for pleasure. We are thinking about the tactics, or physicality. When I walk past a community sporting team, I am observing their training and thinking how they do this and that.
My reading time is devoted to my lifestyle, how to be better in sport and coaching. My podcasts are about high performance. My weekend time taken up with family sport! I can’t really sit still and need to be doing something all the time. If I am not careful, it is related to my lifestyle!
I think the trap for coaches (and athletes) is that our 9-5 (if it can be called that), quickly becomes our 24/7 and we run the risk of burnout. The monotony of vacuuming or gardening fast becoming a craved activity to switch off. I look at many young coaches, and I was one once, who are starting their careers and just bursting with enthusiasm and taking every opportunity. I can’t say “don’t”, because that was me. As a young coach with no family (or social life) I worked long hours all week and loved it. Looking back, I can offer a word of caution to say be mindful of balance and try to incorporate something in your lifestyle that allows a break. For years I did not have a hobby, but am starting to be more committed to it now. Sad how early I had to force myself to do my hobby, because I could easily replace it with work. Luckily it is now a habit - a part of my lifestyle - and ingrained and not so easy to dismiss.
And the lifestyle issue is not just directed at coaches either. I have seen countless athletes where their high level sport is the only thing in their lives. Train, eat, sleep, repeat. It is good for a while, a short-term period, where their focus can be high. However, it does lead to an inevitable decline in performance. When did performance improve? Interestingly, when these athletes found other activities away from their sport that engaged them. It could have been volunteer work, study or part-time employment. The new balance dramatically influenced their on-field performance with a positive distraction. It sounds contradictory, but athletes need a balance. Having something away from sport does not actually reduce concentration on sport. It actually helps heighten focus to the time it is needed, rather than be thinking about sport, training or performance 24/7.
I am very lucky to have the lifestyle that involves sport. But it must be a balanced lifestyle. Time away actually helps improve performance. Counterintuitive, but (at least in my experience), true.
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Thanks again. BA.