There is a gym in a neighboring city that started offering 1 on 1 50 min coaching sessions. I have never been coached before, but i’m very curious about getting feedback on my strengths and weaknesses. I want to be a bit prepared for the session so that our time together is more productive and worth the money.
- What should i deliver to the coach as facts and what he can derive from our session without my help? I guess its important to describe my goal as good as possible. What else? Maybe some metrics from my self assesments? Maybe what kind of programs i tried before? And i guess my strengths an weaknesses the coach need to see and analyse for herself and decide how to asses those, whether its on or off the wall.
- Are there some red flags i should watch out for that would tell me that the coach is not really engaged, not trying to solve my problems and is just punching the clock
One of the best pieces of advice I can give is to answer any questions as honestly as possible rather than trying to give the “right” answers.
If you don’t 100% understand something they say, ask them to rephrase it. All coaches use different terminologies, and it’s easy to forget that other people won’t have the same associations to specific words and phrases as you do.
As a coach, I tend to wait until the end of a session to ask what someone’s perceived weaknesses are so that I don’t become biased looking for those things.
Communicating what has and hasn’t worked well for you in the past is super helpful.
Good luck with the session!
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I like Nates approach.
I also think its very wise to clarify, what people expect from the coaching (at least thats what I do). So the coach could also take a step back and rethink if he can deliver what you expect. If it’s about to find your technical issues in general (e.g. you dont know what your weaknesses are), I think the coach has to be super experienced in this field. Especially on a higher level I feel its pretty hard to see obvious weaknesses. In this cases open and honest communication with the athlete is very valuable.
If you already know your weaknesses, you could show him boulders / angles / moves you have weaknesses with and he might get a glance of what you are missing in this area.
If it’s more about physical training, a strength assessment could “just do”. Altough, we all know it probably never does at all. 
No matter what I think that one 1:1 coaching session can only do so much. Working together with a coaching for a longer time will give you way more insights in your climbing/attitude etc. So does it help the coach to get to know you better over time and give you adequate advice.
Idk if this helps lol.
best
Max
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