Reposted from November 6, 2015 

The aim of Elite FTS has always been and always will be Live, Learn, and Pass On. It's always going to mean something different to everybody. That's why it resonates so well.

LIVING

Live to define it in the simplest form, from a performance and a coaching standpoint. When it comes to performance and sports training and the reason why I do not present on "strength coaching", is I don't coach athletes. I never have. We have experts on the site, elitefts.com, real coaches who work with real athletes. I like  tosurrounding myself with people who coach athletes, people who know what they're doing, not because I aspire to want to be able to do that, but I want to have the go-to people to go to that can help me and other with that. I know very well what I don't know when it comes to strength and conditioning for athletes. As coach, I think that's a very simple concept that gets lost that you always need to keep in mind.

Know what you don't know. In turn with that, know what you do know.

Trust in that and execute it.

It doesn't matter what you do know, if you don't execute it, because then it's just worthless data in your head.

If you are a coach and you're working with athletes, if all you know is how to do body weight squats and push ups, you better know how to do them really good. Know the technique and all the progressions. Know them so well you can use them as your own movement screens to determine strong and weak points. Do those to the best of your ability with every athlete, making sure they're doing it exactly right every single time. Those two things will take you further than a concurrent program or block program that's 52 weeks long, laid out with all these different exercises,  if you don't know how to use or do it. Living as a coach and living in this environment and landscape that we all work in, those are the two biggest components.

Know what you don't know, and actually teach and execute what you do know.

LEARNING

Learning, that's the only way you are ever going to get better. It never stops. It actually should expedite as you get older and your base becomes bigger. Just because you graduate with a degree in exercise science or whatever it is, that does not mean you're done. That means you've got a basic baseline that means you hopefully will not hurt people. Buddy Morris  will be the first person to tell you he strives to learn more every single day. If I'm not mistaken, I believe he was the second strength coach EVER hired. He very well could be the longest working strength coach in the field today.

Why?

He never stops learning.

It amazes me when I see the work and effort he puts into this in contrast to so many others who already have the perfect program and have all the answers. Makes me wonder if they even learned enough to ask the right questions to begin with.

PASSING ON

Passing on. When it comes to passing on, you plant seeds. Today there are so many people who are trying to plant a garden, they get their education and/or experience, throw the seeds down, and stand there dreaming, thinking and then screaming...

Grow!

Grow! Nothing's growing.

This is crap.

Grow!

Nothing's growing.

Grow! Mother Fucker! Grow!

This is bull shit.

Here I am, doing all this, and nothing's coming about from it!

I paid my dues and gettin' nothing!

An illustration of this is a trainer who will see somebody doing something wrong in the gym, but they're not going to help them because they're not getting to. How many times do you read this crap online where people are complaining?

"I can't believe this girl asked me this question! This is what I do for a living! If she wants to ask a question, maybe she needs to make an appointment!"

How many coaches won't step up when they see something wrong to help a kid or to help somebody else?

Here's what they forget. The very first strength coaches didn't make shit. The very first personal trainers didn't make ANYTHING. These professions really didn't even exist. The personal training and strength coach profession didn't exist when I was in college. There were some strength coaches and a handful of celebrity trainers but that was it. Everybody else who was doing the training; the guy who owned the gym, the biggest dude in the gym, the track coach, the football coach, those who competed in strength sports, they helped others because they loved it so much.

These industries were not built on money - they were built on the passion of helping others based on their own love of the Iron. 

SEEDS WILL GROW

Remember somebody yesterday, last week, last year, a decade ago or 50 years ago planted their seeds. Those coaches and trainers today are climbing trees and hanging from limbs but not from the seeds they planted but the seeds that were planted  30, 40, 50 years ago. Those seeds (harvest) are being reaped today... because of those who came before you,  giving back, living, learning and passing on.

Keeping that in mind when it comes to passing on, what are you doing to ensure the profession, or even new professions, are going to be there for people 20, 30 years from now?

Don't forget the sacrifices that have been made, because there are people that are 60, 70 years old. Never made a dime in this industry, but laid the foundation and the growth for what we are calling today personal trainers or performance coaches and strength coaches. It is our responsibility to keep planting seeds, not just for us, but for those who will follow.

QUESTIONS       

Think of all of this the next time you get asked a question.

There is no such thing as a stupid question. I know there are people who disagree, hell may times I disagree. We've had a Q and A on elitefts.com since it first came on line in 2000. Many do not know this but it was a QA before the store even existed. There are many of us still on the site today that there would be no way to count how many times we were asked,  "What can I  do if you don't have a reverse hyper and a glute ham raise machine?" I would guess and say it's in the thousands. So many times it got frustrating. We have close to 1m answered questions on the archived QA.

I am sure you've all been asked in your profession many of the same questions over and over again. You roll your eyes and think you know what, just Google that shit. Go look it up, whatever it is. I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else. Then I stop and remind myself...

This is a reminder to me and to all of you.

FIRST:  When somebody asks you a question, there is no stupid question.

SECOND:  It may be the 9,000th time you've had that question asked to you, but it's the FIRST time that person asked you.

****PAY ATTENTION HERE****

The reason they didn't look it up, Google it, or anything else, is because they want to know what YOU think about it. That's why they're asking you.

That's not an inconvenience, that's a fucking honor.

Given ALL the options they have to learn from; books, magazines, journals, friends, people in the gym, social media, training web sites, google, etc ... They asked YOU because they value your answer more than those other options. Think about that for a minute and let it sink in.