My Coaching Philosophy

Any coach worth their salt knows what they’re about and can explain it. Here’s what I’m about

Matt Fitzgerald and Endurance Mastery by MG

Mar 16, 2026

When I started coaching endurance athletes in 2001, I couldn’t have said much about my style or approach. Only after I’d flown by the seat of my pants for a while and accumulated evidence of an implicit coaching philosophy was I able to characterize it. Having acquired this self-knowledge, I’m able to do my job more effectively by correcting misalignments between my stated philosophy and my actions. At the same time, communicating my philosophy to athletes affords prospective clients the opportunity to decide whether I’m a good match for them before they commit to hiring me, and it helps my existing clients understand the intent of my actions.

If you’re a coach, take some time to do what I’m doing here—putting precise words to your coaching philosophy. And if you’re an athlete, ask your coach to spell out their philosophy. The four words and phrases that best describe my approach are “relational,” “pragmatic,” “holistic,” and “mastery oriented.” Here’s what these words mean to me:

Relational

Most adult endurance athletes who hire a coach assume the coach’s job is to know things and tell them what to do. Certainly these are parts of the job, but research suggests that the most effective coaches aren’t omniscient dictators; rather, they’re mentors with great relationship skills. As touchy-feely as it sounds, the single most effective thing a coach can do to improve an athlete’s performance is develop a strong, healthy, positive bond with that person.

“To be a technically good coach is one thing,” wrote Loughborough University psychologist Sophia Jowett in a 2016 paper on relational coaching in sport, “but what gives the coach the ‘edge’ (i.e., the extra effectiveness) in this unforgiving and relentless competitive

sport environment is the connection developed between the coach and athlete. It is this connection that makes a difference to technical coaching because it supplies coaches with the key to opening the door to their athletes’ capabilities, capacities, and potential.”

Every coach-athlete interaction is an opportunity to develop and strengthen the relationship. What’s required in any given interaction can range from jokey banter to talking the athlete down from the proverbial ledge. The mistake I see a lot of coaches make is relying too much on the single tactic of validation, which is grounded not in true kindness but in a weak-minded fear of friction that results in a superficial relationship lacking the dialectical potency of real bonds.

Pragmatic

The most successful athletes are ruthlessly pragmatic. They just want to know what works and do it. They’re the first to abandon a method that clearly isn’t working and the last to jump on the latest biohack that everyone around them is jabbering about. The most successful coaches have the same orientation. Lesser coaches care about being “right” and staying consistent, and by prioritizing these things they end up doing a lot of things that don’t work and eschewing others that might.

I think of myself as a creative problem solver, and of the training and developmental processes as a series of experiments. In taking this approach, I try to minimize my preconceptions, solving each problem on its own terms and learning from each experiment. Very often it’s the second or third thing I try with an athlete that works, whereas many coaches never get beyond the first.

Holistic

An athlete cannot fulfill their potential without growing as a person. Whatever baggage holds them back in their relationships and career and other facets of life will limit their athletic development also. Coaches aren’t shrinks, but they must be willing and able to help athletes mature humanly in order to guide them effectively toward mastery.

It’s not as hard as it might sound. For example, I have one athlete who’s terrible at pacing, and we’re working on that. In the course of discussing his tendency to ignore pacing instructions and push himself to the limit, it emerged that he has a deep-seated need to feel pain, and to be in control of his pain, when he runs, a tendency rooted in family trauma he experienced growing up. Having gotten this out in the open, we’re able to use pacing practice as a vehicle for processing his trauma, though I stay focused on the running part so I don’t get locked up for practicing psychotherapy without a license.

Mastery Oriented

For me, running is first and foremost a sport, and the point of pursuing a sport is to keep improving until no further improvement is possible—i.e., to master the sport. Mastering a sport doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the best in the world at it. It simply means you’ve reached your full potential by gaining complete control of the controllable parts.

Mastery is a long, hard journey, and it requires a big commitment from the athlete. As a coach, I tend not to succeed with athletes who aren’t willing to make big sacrifices in other parts of their lives for the sake of chasing mastery. If you’re the type of athlete who signs up and trains for a World Major Marathon and then blows the race because you wasted energy on all the stupid prerace activities offered at these overhyped spectacles, I’m not the coach for you. Which is fine. No coach succeeds with every type of athlete, so again, you’re doing both yourself and the athletes you wish to serve a favor by clearly spelling out what you are and aren’t about as a coach.

Now you try. If you’re a coach, what is your philosophy, and if you’re an athlete, what sort of philosophy are you looking for in a coach?