One of the hardest things for me to understand as an athlete was that what I needed in that moment wasn’t always what I needed before.
What worked for me in my early 20s didn’t just automatically carry over as I got older.
And that was a tough adjustment.
Because when you’re used to training a certain way—pushing a certain way, chasing certain numbers—it’s hard to accept that the path forward might look different.
As I moved into my 30s and started training as a master’s athlete, I had to find a different balance.
I still wanted to push. I still wanted to get better. That part didn’t change.
But what had to change was how I defined success.
It couldn’t always be based on the heaviest lift of the day.
Some days, success became moving better.
Some days, it was finding the right volume.
Some days, it was just getting through quality work and knowing it set me up for the next session.
And honestly, working with a coach—working with Sean—helped me understand that better than anything.
It wasn’t about doing more work.
It was about doing better work.
That shift changed how I look at programming completely.
Now when I design programs, I’m not just asking what can this athlete do today.
I’m asking what actually adds value to what they’re doing over time.
And a lot of that starts with something that gets overlooked, especially by newer coaches—general preparedness.
We skip it because it doesn’t look exciting.
It doesn’t feel “sport-specific” enough.
But it’s the exact thing that allows everything else to work.
If I want an athlete to handle a serious squat cycle, they need to be able to take volume first.
So maybe we spend eight weeks building that foundation.
Single-leg work.
Goblet squats.
Plyometrics.
Things that build capacity without beating them up.
It doesn’t look like the final product yet.
But that’s the point.
We’re preparing them for it.
Because once that foundation is there, now we can run something more specific. Now we can push a little harder. Now they actually have the ability to handle what we’re asking.
The mistake I see a lot is starting too far ahead.
We jump right into the intensive work.
And what happens?
The athlete comes back and says, “That was too much. I couldn’t handle it.”
Now we’re backtracking.
Instead of progressing forward, we’re trying to fix something that shouldn’t have been there yet.
That’s where we lose time.
And time matters more than anything.
An athlete who can train consistently for a full year is always going to beat the athlete who trains hard for three months, gets hurt, takes time off, comes back, and repeats that cycle.
We don’t lose progress because athletes aren’t working hard enough.
We lose it because they can’t stay in it long enough.
That’s why everything comes back to finding the right dose.
Not the most work.
Not the hardest work.
The right amount of work for that athlete.
Because if they can recover from it, they can build from it.
If they can build from it, they can stay consistent.
And if they stay consistent, that’s where real progress happens.
There’s also something that doesn’t get talked about enough, and that’s the environment.
It’s hard to train alone. It’s hard to stay consistent when there’s no standard around you.
But when you’re in a space where people are staying after, doing their accessory work, putting in the extra time—it changes things.
You start doing it too.
Not because you have to, but because it becomes the expectation.
That culture matters more than most people realize.
Because over time, that’s what keeps athletes in the process.
So when we talk about building athletes who can train for years, not months, it’s not just about programming.
It’s about:
- Understanding where they are
- Building the right foundation
- Progressing at the right pace
- Creating an environment they want to be part of
All of those things matter.
And I’ll leave you with this:
If you set a five-year goal for your athlete…
what should they be doing right now to actually get there?
Because that answer usually tells you everything you need to know.