The Good Teacher
Advice is easy to come by. Stop any stranger and they will offer an opinion and likely, directions. Guidance is harder to find. Guidance implies a guide, a person and a relationship built by investing in an outcome, not just an income. This ratio — advice to ability — was skewed before social platforms. But now, the perception of coaching is confused by the vast amount of unsolicited counsel that floats around the internet, fishing for relevance and revenue.
The appearance of ability—much like the appearance of success—is easy to fake. People establish a line of credit in the form of content and go into a deep debt of pretending. A bankrupt accountant's analogy is unnecessary; coaches who can't move, have never moved, and are unlikely to improve their movement have no business "teaching" others.
It's important to be cognizant of the difference because people who claim authority in a given subject, who hustle their supposed expertise but never show their growth in that subject, prove that they are bad learners — and there has never been a good teacher who was a bad learner.
Fitness is an easy pitch: "Do X and Y, and you'll get Z." It's the "program," the "six weeks to better such and such". It seems concrete and logical, like a math equation, input, and output. But fitness is not rational. Its development is an arc that only the very experienced can project and manipulate because—most of the time—fitness is not purely physical. It's emotional, hormonal, metaphysical, and impossible to predict precisely. It is state changes, environment, and being in the same room, sharing energy, adjusting on the fly. Good teachers understand this. They are honest about the stochastic nature. A good teacher knows that teaching someone is about learning from them. What they do, how they behave, and how they receive and process will influence the result. It doesn't take much experience to realize one fundamental fact: no one can know about someone they don't know.
These relationships are guided by a process of give and take. It TAKES years to properly GIVE someone the coaching they need. Do you think that relationship will be fostered by being part of someone's story on Instagram? Pitching free advice on a "free" platform sounds like we have entered a fitness utopia, a humanitarian effort undertaken by the world's most philanthropic coaches. What would you pay for co-opted photos, unedited ramblings of unproven authority figures? What is the advice worth when dispensed by a person who leverages their clients' progress to get more clients?
Small fish, medium fish, big fish—pond. More like a swamp.
Good advice is not free. Good students aren't easy to come by. The person who has what it takes to guide you doesn't have time for you. They are busy doing, and busy teaching because they are immersed in learning. Go ahead and "DM" them, and ask them to help you. If they reply without asking questions, without wanting to learn from you first before they commit to your process ... run.
