After Nationals I knew I needed to make a change in my programming. I had signed on with a well-known and very successful programming company, but the style wasn’t quite the right fit for my body’s propensity for injury. I was really torn. I had made improvements and performed really well under their approach, and ultimately won nationals at the end of the cycle. But I had worked with someone else in prior cycles whose programming had been, in my estimation, extremely successful. It challenged me and led me to new personal records in the bench and deadlift, and (perhaps most importantly) it kept me healthy. The programming was dialed into the sometimes-temperamental nature of my joints as well as my overall state of fatigue and mental stress. And the coach was extremely attentive and incredibly kind. There was one problem:

That coach was my husband.

Growing up, I had always wanted to run track but didn’t have a team until I got to college. In high school, my heroes were Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Flo-Jo. They were so strong, and I thought muscles looked beautiful on them. I wanted a body that looked like that and that did the things they did. Learning that Jackie Joyner-Kersee came from a tough neighborhood in St. Louis, and that her determination, passion, and commitment helped ensure her physical talents showed through in any opportunity she had to compete made me admire her even more. I think what drew me to her as a hero the most was my perception of both her mental strength and her grace under pressure. She had plenty of challenges to overcome, and yet she found a place in her own mind that allowed her to shine as an athlete.

When I found out that she was later being coached by her husband, I was disappointed. Why would you let some guy who came late to your life take any credit for all of the hard work you put in over the years? So often when I was growing up women athletes were ignored and disparaged in the media. In addition, the media seemed to delight in noting that Bob Kersee was her coach and husband, and it seemed to communicate that he should get a lot of credit for her success. Put differently, their message was that Jackie excelled because she had the sense to marry and follow the guidance of her lawful husband. I had also heard rumors (again through the media, which may have been wildly inaccurate) that Bob wasn’t the nicest guy and had a propensity to berate his athletes, which meant he also could have meant he was berating his wife.

For me, all of this detracted from Jackie’s shining star. I was angry at the media for not focusing only on what I saw — this incredibly strong beautiful athlete, who was never rattled by her competition, and who came across in her interviews as a kind person with a sense of joy about competing, who was gracious, and who genuinely seemed determined to make the most of the chance to compete.

I adored her, and I had a grudge against Bob Kersee for distracting from Jackie. I was also a little disappointed that Jackie had allowed some dude to benefit from her gifts.

So this was my high school brain reacting to the media’s portrayal of both Jackie and Bob, when I had never met them and knew nothing about their relationship. No doubt I was projecting a whole lot of my own stuff about the gender dynamics of my world onto them, and there’s been plenty of research that shows objectively just how differently the media portray male and female athletes (the former was a celebration of athleticism and the latter was “she’s sporty and sexy!”).

My high school brain may have accurately interpreted what the media was portraying, but here’s where things get complicated: That portrayal may have been grossly inaccurate in what it intimated about Bob and Jackie’s actual partnership. That was not something I could imagine at the time, and so my young self developed very strong feelings about husbands coaching wives. In my mind, husbands needed to stay in their place. If they chose to marry Olympic athletes, they should humbly stay out of the limelight. That was their appropriate role — as a silent, ideally unseen supporter so that their gifted female partners could get the limelight they deserved and was so often denied to them. Female athletes dealt with enough challenges and garbage media portrayals to have their grubbing hanger-on husbands trying to steal some of the glory from them. And after all, the wives of Olympic male athletes knew how to do this. They did nothing but smile and cheer and cry when their husbands won metals and would speak no words other than, “I’m so happy for him,” or, “he worked so hard for this and deserves it so much.” Just as Olympic wives knew how to behave, Olympic husbands should also keep to their place.

So there you have it: full on unadulterated high-school Joah’s brain and anger about gender discrimination in the media against female athletes.

That never quite left me as I got older. So when I discovered that I very badly wanted my . . . male partner with whom I had entered into a legal contract with . . . .

Ok, ok! so when I discovered that I wanted my HUSBAND to coach me . . . well, I was kind of screwed.

So how did I get there?

In the fall of 2017 I had to skip Nationals because I had developed a meniscus tear. By January 2018, I was trying to re-engage with training after being given the all-clear from my doctor. I had learned from a previous knee injury and arthroscopic surgery that patience and a good plan through the process of returning to training was important in not only getting back to normal function (i.e., walking without pain) but regaining the activity level I love. I thought I had learned a lot about how to manage this, and so when dropping my bar loads to nearly nothing as a way to start squatting didn’t prevent knee trouble, I headed to my favorite physical therapy shop. I learned I was missing a key dimension of coming back slowly. It wasn’t enough to start at a pathetic weight -- I needed to slowly build back into full range of motion (hitting depth) for squats. It didn’t matter that I was using 95lbs (a small fraction of my maximum), the range of motion was not something my body was ready for. My PT put me on a slow progression of weight and reps for box squats to build strength. Once I had developed strength just going to parallel, we would start over at the low end of the weights with a deeper range of motion.

Squats were programmed for me, and I had a feeling that most coaches would be uncomfortable trying to program around that.

Sam had done programming for me before. He mapped out a Smolov Junior bench program before we started powerlifting because we decided it would be fun to see what I could get to. He had also programmed, at my request, what we termed a “conjugate-ish” program for upper body to keep me challenged and entertained while I was sidelined with the meniscus tear. So I asked him to do my programming around what my PT had given me for squatting, and he created a really nice program that I excelled under. The plan kept me healthy and uninjured, and I hit new PRs in a June 2018 meet even though I had a knee flare up because of the day I decided to squat without knee sleeves (because I’m a stubborn jackass).

But Sam wasn’t a powerlifting coach, and I was going to have my first shot at Nationals. Sam had done his own training for years, and this was going to be his second time at Nationals, and he had his own questions about whether there was something he was missing in his training. After the June meet, we both decided to sign on with a programming company.

I continued to make progress in my deadlift and my squat came back to my previous PR by the time I got to Nationals. But I was really concerned about continuing with the approach. More than one physical therapist has teased me over the years that my “little stinky muscles” (all the ones that help with stabilization) are very lazy. They like to kick back and let their big neighbors do all the work, which leads to instability and joint mischief. Also, with my track and field background, I was a firm believer in traditional block programming — in the off season you build up your weak points (in my case, those little stinky muscles by doing single limb exercises and dumbbells) and as you get close to the big competition you practice the way you are going to compete (i.e., you peak by running close to your max in practice or, in the case of powerlifting, lifting close to your maximum to prepare your body for that performance).

I parted ways with the programming company after Nationals and needed a new coach.

And I badly wanted Sam to do my training. Frankly, he had from an objective perspective done really good programming for me. I improved and stayed healthy. And when I needed help deciding whether to push myself or ease off, he helped me to work through that from a kind and rational perspective. (He did this both when he was doing the programming and when I was trying to make good decisions in the gym with the online program.) I also knew he was constantly doing research on lifting and exploring new approaches. He is a consummate student with an exceptional educational foundation for evaluating evidence-based science training.

But there was another element that mattered to me. He made me feel cared for as an athlete. There weren’t any weird power dynamics like the kind I projected onto Jackie and Bob. Sam genuinely cared about helping me to succeed and was already invested in my success. He cared about how I was doing physically and mentally. He paid attention. And it made him very effective at helping me to not injure myself.

Sam had talent in this area, and he was really in tune with me. We had talked a little before Nationals about him taking over doing programming for me. After Nationals, when thought I’d earned a spot on the national team, he almost declined from doing my training. He wanted to make sure I’d have my best chance for success and wasn’t sure if he had enough experience. I had to let him think it over. I knew I felt best with him. I liked his training approach, and there was no one who would be as in tune with me as him, not because he was my husband but because he cared so deeply about me and was always at the gym watching me. So I reminded him of my rationale — the success I had under his recommendations previously produced great results. I also explained how much it mattered to me that he had been so thoughtful about helping me to manage my temperamental joints. I won him over, and my training has been going really well.

It’s possible that some other coach with a longer resume would have a magical training program that would be extract more strength from me than what Sam is putting together. But the positive feelings I get from having the experience of Sam developing my training are pretty amazing, and I’m really glad we get to share this. He is probably having less fun — he’s probably worrying more and I’m a pain in the ass sometimes. For my part, having my favorite person check in with me during my workout, notice if I’m doing well or struggling, and being thoughtful about how to help me achieve my goals is an incredibly positive experience that makes me feel deeply cared for. I’m grateful for the care and support he gives me, unasked for, at the gym. After reading this he will know how much this means to me, but as I write this, Sam is doing this without me explicitly and publicly acknowledging his skills and generosity. He is seeing to my best performance because it benefits me and for no other reason other than he takes joy in my happiness.

There is truly no greater gift that I can think of than having a partner that helps you to achieve your life goals. I say that with a specific meaning: Sam supports me through his love and his belief in my abilities. When I doubt myself and come home and share some concern or disappointment with him, Sam often offers a different perspective -- not a myopic one, but a rational one that shows where I may be too hard on myself and where I may have an opportunity to think about something differently. Sam is able to offer insight into my life because he cares about me as a person and because he is intelligent and a critical thinker. He is brave enough to say when I may be misperceiving the world or generally being a jackass (and he’s very gentle with me when I am being a jackass), and so often helps me to see a kinder way of interpreting myself and how I can be a more effective partner to all of the people in my life, be they friends, family, or colleagues.

Friends, it doesn’t matter what your goals are. You need a Sam in your life. You need someone who sees your talents and who can help you make the most of them. You need someone who takes joy in your success and who can help you to weigh difficult decisions. You need someone who genuinely understands your motivation, goals, and drive, and who can help you to gain perspective on decisions.

I’m very lucky to have a partner who can do this for me, and it’s a special experience to have my better half apply those skills to my training.