Coaching Update: Summer 2025

The last year of coaching, my current plans, and reading recommendations

Last September I left my full-time role at Craftsbury to become the assistant strength and conditioning coach at Norwich University. The move has been good, and I’ll continue next year with Director of S&C Scott Caulfield and our new graduate assistant beginning in the fall.

Since it’s that time of year on academic schedules, here’s a reminder of my article about athlete transitioning/retirement from sport. We hosted a workshop for graduating athletes during the final week of school at Norwich. I covered the general transitioning information to raise awareness and frame the issue, similar to my article. Scott talked about post-grad opportunities in competitive and recreational sport, strength, and fitness, including masters sport. Our two faculty members, one a former collegiate athlete and one a former pro, discussed healthy nutrition practices and their personal experiences. We had ideas for next year before we even started the workshop. For this year, we tried to, “DO ANYTHING,” in the all-caps request of one former student-athlete interviewed for the 2023 paper, “An In-Depth Investigation into Transition from Sport Programs for College Athletes.” I encourage you to do the same if you work with athletes at any level. If we have “onboarding,” then we should have “offboarding” too. I’m happy to talk about ideas and share resources.

I have continued working with the Craftsbury Green Racing Project teams as a consultant. I was there with the senior team rowers in December to set up their winter training, again in April after Winter Speed Order, in May to start the senior Nordic ski and biathlon team off-season training, and I’ll be back next week with the U23 Row summer program. I’ll have a few more coaching visits this summer.

I’m using a couple new exercises since last spring, with posts coming soon for video demonstrations and notes. I don’t plan to return to regular writing, but I’ll see what comes up. I’ll send anything out occasionally via this list. I’m always happy to answer reader questions via individual reply or a post here. Just send an email or comment. All articles remain available on my website and “Rowing Stronger” PDF and print books are still going out.

Here are five coaching books I read in the last year that have affirmed some of my practices and changed others, with a few notes below:

• Myths of Sport Performance (2024)

• Myths of Sport Coaching (2021)

• Understanding Strength and Conditioning as Sport Coaching (2020)

• Effective Strength and Conditioning Coaching (2020)

• Coaching Athletes to Be Their Best: Motivational Interviewing in Sports (2019)

These are all shorter paperback textbooks for a nice balance of rigorous and readable. I recommend them all, but if you’re only picking one, “Myths of Sport Coaching” is a great starting place for anyone interested in general sport, strength, and/or fitness. The “Myths” editors also did free webinars going over each chapter. The S&C-specific books are great reading for anyone in the field to understand the concepts and relationships of S&C more than specific training methods, programs, or techniques. Author of “Understanding,” Dr. Brian Gearity, was my University of Denver graduate program creator, director, and professor. I enjoyed receiving his teaching again and am glad that others may as well in this book. “Effective” has the highest concentration of concise summaries and excellent phrases that I’ve ever read in an S&C book. If I could give one S&C book to college or just-grad me, this would be the one. “Motivational Interviewing” is something I’ve learned a lot about from my wife, who works in counseling. The book of applications to sport coaching has been very helpful for me as a significant change in my coaching over the last few years.