How Losing My Job Helped Me To Find It Again

Ever wondered what you would do if you weren’t doing the job you currently do? 

I’ve wondered this frequently since beginning my career in health and fitness.  Something about the long hours, the culture of being underpaid, the lack of job security (gyms tend to love closing) and the havoc that coaching 30+ hours per week did to my knees led me to ponder greener pastures.  If I didn’t have coaching in health and fitness, what would I do? 

This pondering led me to obtain my real estate license in 2017, where I actually had the audacity to sell a house before returning back to my world of strength and conditioning, signing on with the Oakland Athletics to be a strength and conditioning coach in their system.  I still had my real estate license and I still did the annual continuing education but I was sticking with strength and conditioning, at least for the time-being.  

Every offseason, after six months of endless coaching, long days standing on my feet and overnight bus rides that challenged my back to stay straight, I pondered that real estate idea.  I had my license, I’m a solid salesperson.  Why not? 

This past year, I was furloughed from my position coaching in baseball.  In June of 2020, I was left without a job and more importantly, without athletes that I was expected to coach.  I was free of coaching!  Finally, it was time to make the career change.  Find something new and rid myself of early mornings, late nights and long days on my poor aching feet.  

Instead, I signed on at Concept Move as a personal trainer.  Over the next 8 months, I trained with people every morning, missing 3 days due to a COVID scare.  Otherwise, there were no breaks.  Every morning, I showed up.  

I think back to my first year out of college.  I coached at a local high school along with training at a local gym. My days started early with a 6am adult fitness class and ended late with a 7:30pm group training with a bunch of high school kids.  I lived alone in an apartment that I never unpacked, getting home just in time to go to sleep to do it all again the next day.  I wasn’t making much money and I didn’t have time to do anything, but I loved it.  It felt good to work hard and be challenged every day in a way that I wasn’t comfortable with.  I didn’t think of selling real estate because I didn’t have the time or the interest.  It’s that simple.  Was it sustainable? No, but the passion that I had for my daily work was something I wish that everyone had the opportunity to feel.

I lost that passion.  Somewhere along the way I started caring more about what my job would give me or how I could find a better role in a different industry or place.  I watched gyms going bust and good coaches leaving the industry and related to them.  My thoughts and goals were centered around finding sustainability.  It didn’t matter to me whether or not coaching was a part of that plan.     

Every bus ride that I rode on, or every time I coached at Concept Move during the baseball offseason, I wasn’t bought in.  I had one foot in the door everywhere that I went, ready to jump out and find something else the moment things got tough.  The constant search for something better was exhausting.  I couldn’t be satisfied.  

When I got furloughed by the A’s, I pivoted into the personal training industry, by necessity really.  I needed to make money and the opportunity was there for me to have people to train with.  I still liked coaching, don’t get me wrong, but if a better opportunity was out there doing something other than training, I was going to take it.  

I’ve been coaching five days a week since that June day where I almost lost my coaching career.  My bedside is currently filled with books relating to anatomy and physiology, training principles and coaching reflections.  It reminds me of my days when I was just getting started, coaching first thing in the morning to last thing at night, living and breathing training.  My passion is back.  The challenges, the long days, the endless struggles and the pursuit of improvement.  

Showing up every day is tough when that passion isn’t there.  At some point this past year, that passion was reignited.  I’d imagine it was a flame lit by the dozens of people that I got to train with every day.  The people who challenged me to show up, to be present and to solve problems through health and fitness.  Those people reminded me what it felt like to be a coach.  

Somewhere along my journey, I stopped looking at coaching as something I should love and started looking at it as something that should love me. I stopped seeing the impact that good coaching can have on people and I stopped realizing that challenges are meant to be met head on, not avoided or ignored.  

The last year of being furloughed, pivoting into personal training and having to struggle a bit reminded me why I got into the health and fitness industry in the first place. Seeing the progress someone can have with a coach who is bought in shocked me back to why I wanted to coach in the first place.  It reminded me the power of being a part of someone’s success.  It reminded me what it felt like to solve a problem using new skills, of having to grow to meet ongoing challenges.  

I’m thankful to have found my way back to coaching. I hope that I never lose it again.