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Great coach or great athlete?

Does a great athlete make a good coach great? Or does the great coach make a good athlete great? Or do they make each other great? One of my little hidden obsessions is GSP. If you don't follow MMA that name may mean nothing to you, but google image search him and you too will fall in love (or lust). Better yet, pick up my second favorite hobby of YouTubing him, most specifically his Under Armour commercial. First of all, UA commercials make even the mildly motivated want to jump up and get some UA gear to be that person on the commercial. For me, they push me to be great and expect great things from myself. Yes I can be easily swayed by advertising but back to the original thought that crossed my mind as I watched the commercial. There is no doubt GSP is a good athlete. There is no doubt Firas Zahabi, GSPs cutie of coach, is a good coach. Side note: what I wouldn't do to just hang out in training camp and watch all the hoties, bonus they would be fighting! But who made who great? Would GSP have had as much success without Firas? There is no doubt he's a gifted athlete but does it take a great coach to get there or can one do it all by themselves? This came up with the whole Evans/ Jones conflict in Jacksons camp. I read a lot of articles that credited Evans for going to Jackson initially and that's when big name guys started going to him. The articles never out right said it but implied that Jackson was only good because he had super stars. I tend to disagree that given a bunch of talent, you can create a bunch of gods. I'm not a Yankees fan (literally the opposite as a huge BoSox fan) but it's no secret they have the largest payroll in the MLB. One could assume that with that much talent on the books they could win the World Series every year. But they don't. Which is one of the reasons that makes me believe that its not just having a ton of talent.  Its the perfect harmony between a coach and an athlete.  Together they become unstoppable.  Knowing when to balance days of hard training, active rest and days off.  Recognizing the strengths and building those.  Finding things to make training new and interesting, even in the depths of frustration and hard training.  But with a bad coach things can go very wrong.  There are probably many cases of talented players that never even made to the news because they were ruined by a bad coach.  Most notably what comes to mind is Stephen Strausberg.  A young pitcher who threw amazing and hard.  And then his first season in the majors he was out requiring Tommy John surgery.  A young pitcher that throws hard must be managed and controlled, or it will be a short career.  His coach has to know his limits and not chase the title.  But when that synergy ins't there between coach and athlete, it falls apart.  Leaving me to believe that when a good coach and a good athlete match up, the results are spectacular, without each other they are just human like the rest of us.

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