I’m Not A Coach, I’m in Expectation Management

Hi, I’m Ashley! I tell everyone I’m a coach, but I’m really in expectation management. 

My job isn’t just about teaching tricks, it’s about balancing ambition with reality to help reduce disappointment, achieve sustainable movement (free from injury, plateau and burnout) and promote incremental growth towards those high-ticket goals. 

I regularly help silence those little voices in my athlete’s heads that annoyingly poke at them with false narratives about their bodies and movement journeys. These voices:

– create random and often unrealistic timelines

– encourage comparison

– treat practice and trying as a non-essential step 

– support the idea of one and done rather than mastery

– fail to treat practice as an art that requires consistency

– puts more emphasis on our weaknesses than our strengths

– fails to celebrate the little wins 

– and are never ever satisfied 

Why does silencing those pesky voices matter? If I can’t help my athlete manage them, then nothing else I say or do as a coach matters as it will be blocked out by those voices. 

So how exactly do I help extinguish those voices and manage expectations? 

I’m honest. Whether it’s gonna hurt, suck, be hard or extra hard, I tell my athletes that. I don’t say things are easy or pretend that they are. 

If they mention my seemingly effortless movement when demoing that makes it “look easy”, I remind them that I’ve been doing this for years. 16 to be exact. And it wasn’t always easy. 

We focus on what the body can do. We celebrate that, lean into that and build from there.

I don’t give them drills that I can’t do, won’t do and haven’t done? Why? The best way to know is by doing and I should be willing and able to do anything I ask them to do.  Instructors, test what you teach and make sure it’s a realistic ask.

There are levels of difficulty to what we do. I help them understand and progress through those levels. I break things down so that they can understand just how difficult and demanding moves can be. EX: If you struggle to lift your legs sitting on the floor or in a chair, it’s going to be that much more difficult in the air, fighting even more gravity while also holding your body up with your arms. 

I focus on gradual progression and injury prevention rather than quick fixes and I don’t make promises that someone else’s body can’t keep. 

I remind them that tricks discriminate. Why? Because every move we do or aspire to do was created in someone else’s movement likeness? What do I mean by that? Those tricks we covet so much, their creator found themselves in a pose that they found aesthetically pleasing that was made possible by their body structure, ability and creativity at the time of creation. Their strength, mobility, flexibility, stability, balance, coordination, confidence, creativity and sometimes insanity lol, is what made that move possible. So how they did it is a guide not a rule and not every move is ideal for every person. 

I use the floor as my training assistant. I always use grounded skills to teach and help athletes understand engagement, techniques and series of movements without the added challenge of holding yourself in the air fighting gravity. This helps them not only understand the movement mechanics but also the effort involved in each phase or overlapping firing of the movement. 

I tell them the truth about what the billions of videos on social “soul-snatching” media claim…There’s no such thing as get your [insert move/trick] in 5 minutes or less when your body still needs to build the strength, mobility, stability, balance, coordination, flexibility and confidence. These viral tutorials that we save endlessly are misleading and aren’t realistic for the vast majority. Gains (especially those you want to retain) require consistent practice over weeks, months or years, not minutes.

I regularly remind my students and competitors that if it was easy we wouldn’t be doing it and if it was easy then everyone would be doing it. 

I’m often heard saying: “It takes as long as it takes” and I’ll follow that up by saying: it’ll take even longer without consistency and proper programming. 

I remind them that just because they haven’t “done the thing” or “got the trick” doesn’t mean that they aren’t making progress. There are so many other signs of progress along the way towards that high-ticket goal. I help them recognize and celebrate those mini-milestones. 

So yea my job is to manage expectations, help them avoid comparison, keep them focused on what they can do, and create customized programming that supports their goals and abilities.