5 Things I Tell Every Former Athlete in Their First Week of Coaching
Most former athletes think they know what they need to work on.
Usually, they don’t.
After coaching dozens of men and women through the same drift – the belly, the stiffness, the quiet acceptance that they’re just getting older – the same 5 principles come up in every single first week.
None of them are complicated. But the combination is what most former athletes are missing.
1. Soreness Isn’t Proof
Soreness isn’t proof that the training is working. It’s interest on a loan your body can’t afford to keep paying.
If you’re walking out of every session feeling destroyed, that’s not your training working. That’s your training breaking you down faster than your body can repair itself.
Good training builds capacity. Bad training just creates soreness and convinces you that you’re doing something useful. Those are not the same thing.
When someone starts coaching with me, one of the first things they notice in week 2 or 3 is that they don’t feel wrecked after every session. Their first instinct is to think something is wrong. It’s the opposite. It’s that the training is finally structured enough that they can actually recover between sessions.
Less punishment. More progression.
2. Structure Beats Intensity Every Single Time
Most former athletes don’t have an effort problem. They have a system problem.
You’re going hard. Just not in any direction.
I’ve seen lads deadlift the same weight every week for six months and wonder why they’re not getting stronger. I’ve seen people who are wrecked after every session wonder why their body isn’t changing.
The answer is always the same. Effort without structure isn’t training. It’s just organised damage.
The people who actually rebuild in 12 weeks don’t train harder than you. They train inside a system that knows when to push and when to pull back.
3. Warm-Ups Aren’t Optional After 35
At 22 you could walk in, pick up a heavy bar and go. At 38, that’s how injuries happen.
That’s how my back went. January 2016. No warm-up. Heavy rows. Three bulging discs. I was 28 and the physio told me I’d probably never lift heavy again.
Every client I coach now does a structured warm-up before every session. Five minutes of hip openers, glute activation and thoracic mobility. The difference is enormous. People who’ve been carrying niggles for years come back after 4 weeks saying, “I don’t know what happened but my back hasn’t bothered me in a month.”
That’s not magic. That’s a properly warmed-up body being loaded in positions it can actually handle.
4. You’re Almost Certainly Under-Eating Protein
Most former athletes I work with come in thinking their nutrition is pretty good. Then we track it and they’re eating half the protein they need.
The target is 1.6 to 2 grams of protein per kilo of bodyweight. For most former athletes that’s somewhere between 110 and 180 grams a day depending on your size. A 65 kilo woman needs different numbers to a 90 kilo man. But most people, men and women, start at about half what they need.
That gap is massive. Protein is repair material. It’s what your body uses to rebuild itself between sessions. If you’re not eating enough, the repair never catches up. The soreness compounds. The niggles stick around. You can’t build muscle because the materials aren’t there.
If you fix nothing else, fix this first.
5. The Best Session Is the One You Can Come Back From
Not the one that leaves you crawling out of the gym. The one you can recover from and repeat.
This is the one most former athletes struggle with. Culturally, we were taught that a good session is a brutal session. That worked at 22 with no job and no kids. It does not work at 38.
Three to four structured sessions you can actually come back from will beat two brutal sessions that wreck you every time. The session is only useful if you can do the next one.
🎧 Episode 31 Live NOW! Listen here:
Where to Start
None of these are complicated. But the combination is what most former athletes are missing.
If you’re stuck, the answer usually isn’t to train harder. It’s to fix the 5 things most people never think about.
If you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and want the full rebuild – structured programming, nutrition, weekly check-ins – DM me the word REBUILD on Instagram.
I’ll send you the application.
8 questions.
If it’s a fit, we’ll talk 🤝🏻
Paul Hughes
– Templetown Strength & Conditioning, Carlingford