Shane Farmer is a rowing specialist, a coach, an entrepreneur, a 4-time CrossFit Games athlete, and the founder of Dark Horse Rowing and Dark Horse Academy.
Farmer is known in the CrossFit community as a rowing specialist who has worked with elite CrossFit Games athletes, including 2017 CrossFit Games champion Clair Toomey, Kari Pearce, Lauren Fisher, Garrett Fisher, Sam Dancer, and others.
In this episode, we dive into how to develop your coaching experience and philosophy, how to allow yourself to grow as a coach, shifting your paradigm, and more. Enjoy!
Fun Fact: Shane Farmer worked with our friend Drew Canole (episode 294) on FitLife.TV back in 2011. Here is a taste:
The Art of Coaching
Shane Farmer fell in love with rowing in college and has been surrounding himself with top notch coaches ever since. He always wanted to learn more and make a big impact. That’s how he became a rowing specialist and master coach.
Farmer went from giving people rowing advice at the gym, to coaching one-on-one, to coaching small groups, to recording and sharing YouTube videos, to running seminars, to now running Dark Horse Academy, which is an online seminar for coaches on how to train their clients with Farmer’s rowing methodologies.
Farmer became a great coach because he has been open-minded and attuned to his clients over the years. He became an effective coach by looking for physical cues, feeling the energy, and assessing how his clients feel. He learned to adapt to situations and translate the messages in his head to appeal to a wide audience. Today, he teaches other teachers his coaching philosophies.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- What to do when your athletes don’t care about rowing — Working with the crossfit community, in the beginning, so Farmer found ways to relate rowing to other crossfit movement such as kettlebell swings, snatches, and deadlifts.
- How to develop your coaching experience and philosophy — Coaches need to try it on their self, then one client, then five. Coaching your 10 year old kid or wife counts as well. You have to own the content and figure out what you’ve learned.
- Allowing yourself to grow as a coach — It’s not just being a coach. Becoming a coach becomes this emotional exploration with your clients that turns into more than movement expression. they wanna be around you for other purposes. as you are making this space to grow, you need to allow yourself to be able to grow, to listen to verbal cues, feel the energy in the space in the gym, and talk to your clients.
- How to grow from an instructor to a coach — Understanding why you’re what you’re doing takes knowledge and experience. It probably around 10 years to really understand what you’re doing. You need to be able to internalize things, learn from them, and change as you grow.
- You need to have humility to learn — The best athletes don’t see themselves as good enough and have the desire to learn and grow.
- Shifting your paradigm — changing from pulling movement to a pushing one, it’s not about speeding up or systemic speed, you need to be able to connect to the machine, not just move faster yourself, you need to apply the right force to the handle, which measures force, acceleration and distance.
- How to learning rowing basics — Start with good static positions, then slow down the movement and do some reps very slowly hitting good positions.
Connect with Shane Farmer
Connect on social: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook
Resources: Shane Farmer, Dark Horse Rowing, Dark Horse Rowing YouTube
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