The Value of a Good Coach

When I was 15, a freshman in high school, our P.E. teacher timed our class as we ran 50 yards down the school track as fast as we could. It was late September and still hot where I lived. At least 25 other teenage girls passed me before I exhaustedly dragged myself across the line where Miss Bee, our teacher, stood clicking her stopwatch and offering advice on how to run faster.

This was not track practice or cross country training, by the way. It was 1965, nearly a decade before Title IX would require schools to create sports teams for girls, but Miss Bee was coaching us, nonetheless.

I did not like it. In my mind, I had no need for a coach of any kind — and I had no interest in being told how to run, breathe, pace myself or really anything. I mostly just wanted the school day to end so I could eat French fries with my friends and gossip about our various crushes.

This afternoon, almost 60 years after that dry, hot day on my high school track, I am eagerly preparing for my twice-weekly training session with my fitness coach. Eager might be a slight exaggeration, given how hard I know it will be to stand on one foot while bending my stationary knee and holding a 15-pound weight in each hand, but the intense workouts always leave me feeling confident, fit and resilient.

I've been going to my coach for more than a year now, after decades of starts and stops at the gym, where I never knew what I was doing. I would find a workout online, print it out and try to replicate it there with dumbbells or on weight machines. If the weights were too heavy, I'd stop or choose something lighter or easier.

Despite having no idea what I was doing, or why I was performing this combination of exercises, I did them anyway because I didn't know enough to come up with something on my own. As it turned out, what I needed was a coach. Unlike my 15-year-old self, 73-year-old me wants someone who knows what they're doing to give me explicit instructions and then hold my feet to the fire as I follow them.

Not surprisingly, given that I'm in the hands of an expert, I have lost some weight, changed my diet and noticed that my old body is beginning to show some muscle definition I haven't seen in at least 30 years.

I know I've done the actual work, but I honestly hold my coach fully responsible for the transformation — not just in my body, but in my attitude. It is like I handed all the worry and second-guessing over to her, and in return she gave me a plan to follow and regular sessions to practice and track my progress.

One of my favorite aspects of our relationship is that she is more than 30 years younger than me. I love talking to her about her view of politics and social issues — even while I'm doing planks — and I think she benefits from engaging with someone almost old enough to be her grandmother. I swear the endorphins from our human connection help me get through three sets of shoulder presses.

I feel the same way about my writing coach. I've been a writer for decades, but I've only authored articles and essays. My dream is to publish a book, and my writing coach is helping me get there. Since neither of us has control over the world of publishing, this adds an element that isn't present with my fitness coach, but I'm still consistently learning how I need to focus the content of my book and sharpen my wording.

In the same way that my fitness coach can pinpoint work I need to do on my quadriceps or my balance, my writing coach can see where I need more detail in my sample chapter or a more compelling way to organize my table of contents.

It's certainly possible that I could discover at least some of my coaches' insights and techniques on my own, but having them come from experts — a trained kinesiologist and a published author — gives me confidence that what they suggest is going to help. They are people who have focused their lives on the very things I want to know more about. What better source could there be for me? But expertise isn't everything.

One of the most important parts of being coached is the willingness to try something that someone else suggests and then evaluate the results. A close friend and I regularly coach each other on navigating retirement.

I retired a couple of years before she did, but I quickly grew uncomfortable with the lack of structure, which gives me the impetus to return to my old workplace for temporary jobs when they need someone. When the temp job ends, I'm back to having lots of unstructured time on my hands.

My friend, on the other hand, moved to a different city after retirement, and she struggles with creating a social group and finding meaning in a new environment. She and I often talk about what we're experiencing, and we're committed to trying each other's suggestions.

This might sound more like friends connecting than coaching, but being coached in other areas has helped me to take seriously the advice of people who've succeeded at things I struggle with. When she reminds me that I'll feel better if I just sit with the discomfort of so much open time rather than desperately try to fill it, I believe her enough to try it, and of course she's right.

At 73 and more committed than ever to being retired, I'm excited about my bucket list. Many items on it — learning French, becoming a better golfer, and taking up rowing — feel like a slog to do on my own. So, instead of having to take a class or read how-to books, I know now that hiring a one-on-one coach is a perfect way for me to learn.

With their expertise aimed specifically at the things I need to work on, I take it in more readily and get real-time opportunities to practice. The process has definitely made me feel more hopeful — mostly that I can learn new things at my age.

I also feel much less alone in my pursuits. If I tell my writing coach that I'm struggling with something like finding the right way to share an anecdote, she always suggests a strategy to explore what I'm trying to say. And she'll demonstrate her point right while we're sitting there together.

When I remember Miss Bee and my huge resistance to being coached to run a fast 50-yard dash, it makes me laugh. These days, when I think of coaching, I'm only grateful — for the opportunity to keep moving forward in my life, for the wisdom of other people's experience and for knowing that having a coach really does create a faster route to the finish line.