The five weights every coach carries
A coach carries far more than the sessions and the games. The series named five — and naming them is the first step, because you can't manage a load you won't admit you're holding:
- The physical weight — the time, the sessions, the travel.
- The political weight — associations, parents, administrators, committees.
- The family weight — the time away from the people who matter most.
- The identity weight — "if I'm not coaching, who am I?" The most dangerous of the five, because it fuses the person to the role: a loss in coaching becomes a loss of self-worth.
- The imposter weight — "am I actually good enough to be doing this?"
The plus-four rule
Gerard Hillier's practical tool: on a day you're feeling okay, message four other coaches and check in — "how are you going?" Not because they're struggling, but because normalising the check-in means it doesn't feel exceptional when someone genuinely needs it. Coaching is lonely; the person in the chair owns the result in a way no one else in the building does. A one-minute message costs you almost nothing and is received as a gift by a coach carrying more than they're showing.
"Coaching is a lonely job. The person sitting in the coach's chair owns the result in a way that nobody else in the building does. That weight is real." — Gerard Hillier, Talking Split (Season 5)
Leave it at the gym
Dean Vickerman's approach to a loss: don't debrief the team — or yourself — in the heat of it. Drive home in silence, or to something that has nothing to do with basketball. Write three bullet points when you get home, put your phone down, and go to sleep. The analysis you do at midnight is worse than the one you'll do in the morning. Protect the line between coaching and the rest of your life; it's the line that lets you do this for twenty years instead of two.
Practical habits
A few small, repeatable things from across the series:
- Keep a coaching emotion log — date, emotion, situation. Patterns surface fast once you write them down.
- After a loss, write three sentences — what went wrong, what you'll fix, and one thing you were proud of. The last one matters most.
- Plan game-night nutrition like you plan a session — you coach better when you're not running on empty.
- Do Mental Health First Aid training — for your athletes, and for you.
The one idea above all
The load coaches carry is real, and the culture around the game rarely acknowledges it — it quietly expects coaches to be endlessly robust. The ones who last aren't superhuman; they're as deliberate about their own wellbeing as they are about a session plan. You can't pour into your players from an empty cup. Looking after yourself isn't taking something away from the team — it's what keeps you showing up for them.
From the book · Chapter 8
Part of the Talking Split Unofficial Book
This guide distils Chapter 8 of The Unofficial Book — "The Coach's Wellbeing." The full book covers it alongside ten other chapters on developing the athlete, the craft of coaching, and the game.
Read the book →Unofficial fan-created resource. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Basketball Victoria. All content based on the Talking Split Podcast. Full credit to Rob Calder, Mike Zeppel, Justin Shuler, Ash Arnott, Zoe Carr, Darren Best, Nathan Cooper-Brown, and all guests.