30 years of coaching
Apr 03, 2024In 2024, I am celebrating 30 years as a coach, and it has been an extraordinary experience. I feel very blessed for all the students I have had. Most of them have been excellent experiences, but there have also been some difficult ones. Interestingly, over the years, those difficult experiences have transformed into small pearls, and over time, I see them differently.
I remember that when I started coaching, I came with the idea that after having played professional tennis for 14 years, it would be easy to teach what I knew and to lead my most talented students, at least to the level I had reached. However, in this process, I encountered the human being. I would teach something, and my student couldn't do it or didn't want to do it; I got to know "resistance".
I understood that coaching is like a bridge, in which both have to meet in the center. The coach has to cross, but the player also has to do it. It's a mutual work, not as I thought, where I would give and my student would receive.
This fact led me to start investigating, trying to better understand the human being. At the beginning, I felt really naked and without enough tools as a coach. I didn't know very well how to do things, and this learning process has been a constant challenge. There hasn't been a week when I haven't started a course, read a book or an article, listened to a podcast, or watched a video to keep learning and thus be able to do my job better.
I remember that my first stages were about trying to put what I had learned into schemes, methods, and structures. However, nowadays, I find myself in a stage of my life where I try to break schemes, even my own, and navigate more fluidly, better understand the moment, and not try to impose, but to flow elegantly with what is presented to me.
Thanks to each of my students, each of them has given me something of value, and I am very blessed to still maintain a close relationship with many of them. The years have passed, and that connection does not disappear.
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