“I wanted to teach people how to better themselves,” Joe DeGain says of his passion for coaching.
The elementary-school teacher is also the owner of 810 CrossFit in Grand Blanc, Mich., and part of the HQ Seminar Staff. In this video, he talks about his coaching style and cues that have worked for him and his athletes.
DeGain says his coaching style comes from teaching elementary-school students.
“You have to be very direct with where you want students to go. You have to be extremely specific not only with like kinesthetically how they’re moving but also how you’re going to organize a group of people,” he says.
He breaks down movements into easy-to-remember visual cues. For example, inspired by HQ’s Miranda Oldroyd, DeGain came up with his own version of muscle-up cues, and yes, Hulk Hogan is in “the muscle-up prayer.”
DeGain says coaching is constantly a learning process.
“You have to be able to think on the fly. One of the biggest keys I think is just preserving the stimulus and (thinking) outside of the box,” he says.
9min 49sec
Additional video: Coaches Prep Course: Using Dependent Cues by Austin Begiebing, published June 15, 2010.