Being a coach must be the easiest job in the world?
I mean really, you get to work out whenever you want, every client is always in such a good mood and you get to wear fun clothes and live casual.
But what about….
Twenty years of crazy clients expecting you to change a decade of self-abuse into a ripped work of art in about four days.
Twelve years running your own gym…. broke for 10 years and on fire for the last two, which gives you hope for another 10.
Sixty hours or more a week changing the world,,,, just three Saturdays off all last year, vacations are beach, eat, sleep, drink, sleep, beach, sleep, food, sleep and beach.
On any given Saturday night you would consider trading the entire gym for three pints and a bottle of good wine.
Or just the pints if it was one of those weeks that can make a grown coach cry like a baby.
Hundreds of meals out of plastic bowls eaten standing up in a storeroom. Who knew you could drive, text, eat, talk to the kids in their seats in the back and plan workouts all at the same time.
Coffee, hallowed be thy name.
Coffee, there would be no gym business
without your magic power.
Coffee, if there was one shrine that needs to be built that signifies your 20 years as a coach in this crazy business it would be to you coffee and your ability to turn the darkest morning into sunshine.
There would never, anywhere in the world, be a 5:00 a.m. workout without the strength of a large coffee to go.
You know your day is long when you have to hope Mrs. Johnson is late at 10:00 by about five minutes or you won’t get to poop until 4:00 this afternoon.
Early morning workout before dawn or no workout at all.
Fighting hard for your two kids who are growing up normal, despite the hours and a professional coach as a parent.
Both kids spent their first three years sleeping under your desk in the gym office and they turned out fine, except for that one incident with the kettlebell that you never mentioned to the spouse.
Your favorite uncle died and you had to borrow a tie, and a coat, and buy dress pants, and have someone show you how to tie your new tie and borrow shoes from your brother the accountant.
Still in love with the person of your dreams after so many years fighting for your dream.
If there was a Saint of the Gym,
your person would be the first nominated.
You always wonder why he or she never ran away with a person who had a real job, real hours and weekends off?
Defied all odds and stayed in a business where so many others failed in just a few years.
You wonder why you made it and not them, but then you realize you simply out worked every other human being in the gym business, and that was enough.
You could love and respect a person like this who has never quit chasing a hard and challenging life.
The world needs more people like this who are dedicated to doing the right thing and willing to pay the long dues of life it takes to be so good at something so difficult.
Really, being a coach has to be
the easiest job in the world, right?
Just ask anyone who has never done coaching for a living and will tell you how easy it is.
- Thomas Plummer
