We’re always taught in life to believe in ourselves and be confident.  It usually starts with our parents at an early age, and as we grow up and take on new challenges in life we’re told to be confident.  They’re teaching us to put in the effort, trust our potential, and eventually we’ll succeed.  If you’ve had really good teachers or coaches throughout your life, chances are that they tried to send you the same message.

Having confidence in ourselves make us achieve things we would have never been able to achieve if we would have never believed in ourselves in the first place.  Perhaps it might have helped you become a great athlete, a great student or a great professional in whatever field you are working in.

Confidence is essential to build new relationships, make new contacts and get people to buy into whatever you’re saying.  It is a big part of human interaction.

As a strength and conditioning professional, personal trainer, or just as someone who trains yourself, confidence plays an important part of the training programs your write or follow.  Believing in your training programs, believing in your system is important to get results and achieve success.

But is it possible to be too confident?

When you think that what you’re doing, the methods you’re using are the end all be all, you probably never question yourself.

Do your system really work that great?  Are your athletes and clients achieving optimal results?  If you always follow your own system and the same methods, how do you know your athletes couldn’t achieve better results faster?  Do you ever try new things?  Do you question your methods?  Do you reach out to other people and ask them questions?

I can easily see how over-confidence can become your own worst enemy.  I guess you could also call that having an “ego”.

Either way, having insecurities and questioning yourself from time to time is not a bad thing.  Putting things in perspective, being open to try new methods and accepting that other coaches somewhere in the world might achieve better results than you, will only open the door for potential improvements.

And all due respect to all the coaches who’ve become famous on the internet, there is probably a lot more coaches out there who are just as smart or even smarter who just aren’t interested in promoting themselves on the web.  If you can find these people, more power to you.  Chat with these guys, listen and compare how their system and methods differ from yours.

I have met my fair share of over-confident coaches in my life.  One thing I have noticed about most of them is that this over-confidence also comes with a distorted vision of reality; they have a tendency to perceive things in a way that ultimately makes them feel better about themselves.  Why did your athletes not improve as much as expected?  “They didn’t work had enough…They don’t get it…etc…etc”.  Sometimes those reasons are legitimate, but sometimes it might be good to question yourself.

Earning a college degree builds confidence.  Gaining experience builds confidence.  And most importantly, getting results builds confidence.

But never be too confident to the point of never questioning your methods.  There is always a better way to do things, a way to improve.

Be open minded.  Question your methods.  Always re-evaluate your system.  And even doubt yourself from time to time, it’ll only help you become better at what you do.

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