Independent of a stack of softer skills, I have had this guiding belief over my teaching career that trainers and practitioners need to know why they do what they do, and be very proficient in understanding and implementing the following:

Understand: Optimising change in your athlete/player is affected by your physiological and/or biomechanical understanding of the fitness qualities you are training or coaching.

Assess: Optimising change in your athlete/player depends on collecting meaningful information and requires you to understand the assessment process and those factors that both improve diagnostic information and confound results.

Programme: Optimising change in your athlete/player most importantly depends on the information you provide them in their training programs.

All three key components are inter-related. The better your assessment, the better your understanding of the physiological and/or biomechanical determinants you are trying to change, and the better diagnostic information to guide your program design and training. Integrating these three pillars into education to drive better practice has been a focus of mine for many years, and forms the foundation of my learning content.