If you are a coach, or know someone who is a coach, you are probably already aware of the
enormous amount of time and energy that goes into being a coach. In fact, it has become very common to hear about pro and college coaches suffering from exhaustion, burnout, and countless health issues commonly associated with simply going too hard for too long. Recently
Andy Staples discussed this growing problem in a Sports Illustrated on college football coaches and the related dangers of the job (January 20, 2010).What may be even more concerning — and surprising to many people — is that these same issues previously only identified with college and professional coaches are now becoming commonplace at the scholastic and youth sport level as well. In my experience I have seen a similar, growing trend develop whereby increasingly more amateur coaches are feeling pressured to win, and as a result put in extraordinary amounts of time and energy, often leading to staleness, fatigue, and sometimes full-blown burnout that taxes their leadership style and strength.In some of these instances community expectations have become so high that coaches feel they have to put into an enormous amount of time developing team cohesion in order to build a “winning” program. In other cases, coaches bring this overload schedule on themselves because of a number of different reasons, including:a) their own high expectations of what they would like for their team,b) they see what the college and pro coaches do, and simply follow suit,c) they see what their colleagues are doing in amateur sports, and feel the need to keep up!Making things even more complicated is the fact that more and more people today expect youth/interscholastic coaches to log in ridiculous amounts of hours while in the role of a coach, quickly forgetting the obvious dangers of the coach living this type of lifestyle (while also overlooking that youth coaches work for free, while interscholastic coaches work for very little money!).Coaches who devote disproportionate amounts of time toward coaching can be more at-risk for a variety of health problems (as the Staples article identifies), and are also more likely to experince substance abuse, marital problems, and employment issues/concerns. In short, amateur coach burnout is no laughing matter.For these reasons it is important that we pay attention to the lifestyle of coaches today — even at the amateur level.
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