Hard Work, Long Hours, Low Pay

Maybe you, too, should consider becoming a coach.

Being a climbing coach seems like a cool job. One can imagine you’d go climbing all the time, take a few meetings on rest days, and get to tell everyone you are a coach. By default, that means that you know more than they do, and your ego gets a nice pat on the head. I know a few “coffee shop” coaches who talk to a few climbers a week, but the real coaches don’t seem to have the time or money for that kind of work.

Coaching is hard work, full of questions, and a huge responsibility. Coaching can be messy, and some new coaches see that right away. More than one budding new coach has told me they wanted to coach, but only elite-level athletes. It just doesn’t seem cool to help someone with a first pull-up, getting back to V3, or dealing with a fear of leading.

Naturally.

But elite athletes seem to have all the problems the rest of us do, with much less room for error on the performance front.

The reality of coaching, like any other job, it it’s got both upsides and downsides. Seems cool when you’re on the outside.

In one of the Climb Strong leadership team meetings last year, we were talking about coach pay and hours and education, and someone mentioned that coaches needed to be willing to trade pay (which is low in our sport) with flexibility and benefits. Seems fair, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it’s not even that good.

First, pay. Climbing coaches are by and large paid by individuals or by gyms that are barely making it themselves. The gyms that seem like they are not just barely making it are usually owned, in part, by large corporations that can push some more cash into the machine, at least for now. I know a couple of school-associated coaches and some national team coaches that can pay the mortgage, but that’s about it. I know only one person that coaches individual athletes that is maxing his IRA every year, but he’s the busiest in the business, and every day is a grind.

I’ve been involved in pushing the pay for coaches industry-wide (alongside the routesetters), and we’re simply hoping to get the coaches to a pay level comparable with a host job at Chilis, or a mid-level life coach, or an entry-level esthetician. In more established sports, such as skiing, swimming, or running, coaches that do the same type of work we do can make twice as much. It’s probably just part of the age of the sport and the type of people who do it. I guess if we cater to dirtbags, we must live like dirtbags, too.

And then we get to flexibility. It seems good at first. And then you realize your athletes want to check in regularly. And that Wednesday doesn’t work next week so could you do Thursday instead? And then when you finally get enough athletes to make a living, you’re on the gym floor or in Zoom meetings seven hours a day...and that doesn’t even include programming.

The programming is a pain, because try as you might, you just can’t (ethically) run any two athletes on the same program. If you have a dozen athletes on your roster, you’re going to be doing a dozen program changes a week. You’re going to be getting questions from your athletes during their sessions (unless you work for one of those coaching companies that doesn’t really do communication...), and you’re going to be reviewing video and training logs many hours a week.

And the benefits. Well...our coaches at Climb Strong get some tee shirts and a jacket and a pro deal. Which you wouldn’t even need if you worked at Chili’s because you’d get paid more.

Oh and the elite-level athletes...you’re going to need to be very good before this is something you really want to do. Imagine someone who is a professional hiring you and then getting worse at the sport, or getting injured, or even just not sending. It’s your fault.

The window of opportunity is very small for elite-level climbers. You’ll be a lot happier coaching people from V0 to V3, and you’ve got room for error. Which means a lot when you’re working very hard for less-than-minimum wage.

The good news is this: if you hire a climbing coach today, you’re probably going to get a good one. They’re coaching for the love of it. They’re coaching because they can’t imagine doing anything else. That’s not always the case when you’re being seated at Chili’s.