Coaching Different Personalities

How does an athlete’s personality affect how you write their training plans and give feedback? It can be far more varied than you might realize.

Video Transcript

5 Different Athlete Personalities

Joe Friel  

Dave, I know you’ve got different ways of seeing the athletes you’re working with. You’ve talked to me before about how they’re unique in some ways, and you’ve actually got a system. You kind of categorize, if you will, the athletes. Could you explain that to me?

Dave Schell  

Yeah, I’ve just found over time, both in the discussions I have with the athletes before we start working together and the questionnaire I have them fill out, then, just over time and working with them, I find that most athletes tend to fall into one of five buckets or categories.

These categories tend to be: The Workhorse, the Accountant (or Data-Driven), the Pleaser, the Daydreamer, and the Know-it-All. Just to expand on that a little bit:

The Workhorse

It’s somebody that just gets it done, no matter what it is, no matter what you tell them, they just find a way to make it happen. You just put the workout in there, they do it to a T, those [athletes] are great.

The Daydreamer

This is somebody who maybe isn’t as motivated by data or by the numbers, and so they’re really just out for a bike ride. With them, I’m trying to find some ways to keep them engaged, and so maybe giving them a task like focusing on the pressure on the pedals, or focusing on the breathing for a little bit. I think cadence is a good one.

The Pleaser

They really just want a pat on the back. There’s a lot of times I feel like that’s almost their motivation for even getting a coach is that they just want somebody to talk to you about their training. So each time they upload, they’re waiting for you to comment, they’re waiting for that notification that you’ve commented on it. So, with somebody like that, I almost need to be a little bit more careful, because they’re going to do whatever I tell them to a fault.

An example I have of this: I had an athlete where I wanted her to do hill repeats, and I neglected to say to drive to the hill. So she ran 10 miles to the hill, and then ran 10 miles home. She got the pat on the back, she got the gold star. But I just learned from that, I have to be very careful with how I write workouts with these types of athletes just because they’re going to do it.

The Accountant

They’re the ones that are the data-driven athletes. They might be somebody who’s very well read, and so they they read all the blogs, they’ve listened to all the podcasts, and so that they know, all the TLAs (three-letter acronyms). They’re very well versed, and so with them, I need to kind of make a point to speak to that, because I know that every time they do a workout, they’re going to be looking at all, you know, the Intensity Factor and the Variability, and all these things. So, I need to speak to that.

The Know-It-All

Even though it sounds a little bit derogatory, there have just been some athletes where there might be something there where they’re a little bit afraid to be vulnerable. So, each time I leave a comment, or each time we discuss something, they almost need to show that they know it, so that they’re not in a place of vulnerability. So, that just takes a little bit longer to build trust with them.

What I found with the different athlete types, it doesn’t necessarily change the training we’re doing, and it doesn’t speak to how competitive that athlete is. But what it really does for me, is it changes the way that I write workouts, and the way that I analyze workouts. So I’m just careful with the language that I use so that I can find something that resonates with them.