The REST DAY: Coach-2-Coach Relationships

Triathlon coaching is a small world. Spend enough time in it, and you start to realize how interconnected it is. Coaches know of each other, follow similar athletes, operate in overlapping communities. And yet, despite that proximity, the way coaches engage with one another varies dramatically.

Some are open. They collaborate, exchange ideas, and actively look for opportunities to learn from their peers. Others take the opposite approach—closed off, protective, guarded, and reluctant to engage. Same industry, same goals, completely different business attitude.

I think that difference has a scary implication.

At a high level, it’s easy to frame coaching as a competitive business. You have athletes. I have athletes. We’re operating in the same market, offering similar services. From that perspective, withholding information or avoiding collaboration can feel like a way to protect your position.

But that logic assumes a kind of scarcity that doesn’t really hold up in practice.

There are a lot of athletes out there. More importantly, there are a lot of different types of athletes—each with unique needs, personalities, and responses to training. No single coach is the right fit for all of them. What determines long-term success isn’t how tightly you guard your methods—it’s whether you combine high-level coaching ability with a strong, open professional attitude.

And that second piece is where collaboration comes in.

When you actually sit down and talk with other coaches—compare approaches, challenge assumptions, discuss what’s working and what isn’t—you start to see how much of coaching exists in the gray area. Very few things are purely “right” or “wrong.” Instead, you’re constantly navigating the boundary between best practice and stylistic choice.

Take something like rest week implementation. For years, it’s been treated as near-gospel: build for three weeks, recover for one. But when you start having real conversations with other coaches—especially those working with different populations—you realize there’s more variability than the textbooks suggest.

Some coaches are moving toward adaptive recovery models, aligning rest with background life stress. Others are experimenting with longer training blocks. Some are integrating physiological factors like menstrual cycles into their planning. None of these approaches are inherently wrong—but you don’t arrive at them by staying in your own silo.

You arrive there through dialogue.

That’s the value of collaboration. It’s not about copying someone else’s system. It’s about expanding your body of knowledge and exposure to different approaches and models.

Because here’s the uncomfortable part: if you’re unwilling to have those conversations, it’s worth asking why.

If you’re confident in your coaching—your ability to assess athletes, adjust training, and deliver results—then exposure to other perspectives should be an advantage. It either reinforces what you’re doing or gives you an opportunity to improve it.

If, on the other hand, your instinct is to avoid comparison, to reject outreach, or to treat every other coach as a threat, that can start to look less like strategy and more like defensiveness. Maybe it hints at a lack of confidence in your own coaching talent. Ie: you feel like you have to “defend your turf”, rather than welcoming collaborators into it.

The coaches who tend to stand out over time are the ones who are both technically strong and intellectually open with good business attitude. They’re willing to share ideas, ask questions, and engage in conversations that might challenge their current thinking. Not because they have to—but because they understand that coaching is an evolving practice. They accept olive branches rather than reject them.

This doesn’t mean abandoning competition. It means reframing it.

You’re not competing based on who has the most secretive methodology. You’re competing on how well you can apply knowledge, adapt to individual athletes, and deliver consistent results. Collaboration accelerates that process. It raises the baseline for everyone, which ultimately pushes the entire industry forward.

And in a niche field like triathlon coaching, that’s a good thing.

Because at the end of the day, this isn’t about protecting your turf. It’s about improving your craft.

And the fastest way to do that is to stop treating other coaches like threats—and start treating them like resources.