Why your approach matters, why your coach’s approach matters, and what really happens when the right athlete meets the right philosophy.
Every coach has their lane. Some are drill sergeants. Some are spreadsheets. Some are vibes. Some are “just trust the process.” Some are secretly training people to become ultrarunners whether they asked for that or not.
My approach evolved differently. Part running form. Part Indigenous perspective. Part surgical menopause at 38. Part watching the industry fail everyday athletes. Part outlier philosophy. Part “please for the love of your knees, you need to strength train.” (It's a lot of parts, I know!)
I didn’t land here on accident. I built this style because nothing else actually worked for the people I kept showing up for.
Let’s break down how I coach, how athletes can tell whether a coach is a good fit, and a few of the stories where my approach made the difference.
What Makes My Coaching Approach Unique
(Spoiler: it’s not one thing—it’s the intersection.)
Form First, Always
Most plans treat running form like it’s optional. I treat it like it’s the foundation. You can build mileage on poor form if you enjoy instability, compensation patterns, and a revolving door of injuries. But if you actually want longevity? We start with how you move. My Chi Running background, my own form overhaul, and the fact that I’ve seen runners shave minutes off their race times simply by running more efficiently—that’s what sets my programming apart.
One of my favorite examples: the athlete who sent me videos from four different angles, convinced something was “wrong” because her pace was stagnating. We didn’t change the plan at all. We changed her posture, her lean, her foot strike. She PRed without adding a single extra mile.
Micro-Form Mastery
I don’t just coach form. I coach micro-form. Those tiny adjustments you make mid-run that keep you out of the danger zone. The “scan your systems and reset” approach. Athletes joke that I live in their heads telling them to “level up the crown of your head” or “relax your shoulders” or “stop sprinting into your warm-up like you’re fleeing a crime scene.”
But the quiet changes build the durable runner. Not the heroic efforts.
Strength is Non-Negotiable
This isn’t a suggestion. This is a core philosophy. I’ve watched too many runners rely on mileage to do the job strength training is supposed to handle. My menopausal athletes especially need muscle, power, and tendon resilience—not another 20-mile week stacked on shaky hips.
I’ve built plans like Strong Anywhere, Speed Play, and Project: Breakthrough specifically because I kept seeing athletes fall apart whenever strength was an afterthought.
Physiology Over Ego
My own journey through early, surgical menopause reshaped the way I see training load. I coach based on nervous system capacity, hormonal season, sleep, life stress, cycle symptoms, and recovery debt. I don't care what the pace chart says if your body is telling me a different story.
This is why my athletes make progress without running themselves into the ground. Their training actually fits them, not the version of themselves they think they “should” be.
Outlier Perspective
I don’t coach the industry’s mainstream narrative. I coach the reality most runners live in. Busy lives. Peri/menopause. Kids. Work. Mental load. Grief. Health conditions. Shift work. Identity shifts.
My job is not to force a rigid training plan onto a complicated human.
My job is to build training that respects the whole human.
Questions Runners Should Ask Before Choosing a Coach
Choosing a coach isn’t like ordering a meal. It’s choosing the person who will see you at your most vulnerable. It’s choosing the voice you’ll hear in your head on the days when everything feels heavy.
Ask yourself:
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Does this coach understand the season of life I’m in?
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Do they coach people like me, or am I trying to squeeze into their mold?
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Do they value strength, recovery, and nervous system health—or just mileage?
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Do they understand women’s physiology or the nuances of peri/menopause?
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Does their communication style match how I operate?
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Do I feel supported or judged?
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Do they teach me how to think, not just what to do?
And ask the coach:
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How do you adapt training when life gets chaotic?
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How do you handle athletes who deal with hormonal changes, stress spikes, or inconsistent sleep?
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What do you believe about injury prevention?
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What metrics matter most to you?
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Do you coach form or just mileage?
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What’s your philosophy on strength?
You’re not hiring a plan—you’re partnering with a brain.
A Few Moments Where My Approach Changed Everything
The “I’m Not Built for Running” Athlete
She came to me convinced she wasn’t athletic. She apologized constantly for being “slow.” What she didn’t realize was that her form was working against her. Once we fixed the mechanics and layered in strength, she started hitting paces she never thought were possible. At the end of her half marathon, she said, “I finally feel like a runner.”
No training app could’ve seen the thing she was blaming herself for wasn’t actually her fault.
The Athlete Who Was One Bad Run Away from Quitting
She was burnt out, deep in peri/menopause, and convinced she was falling apart. Her watch told her she was “detraining.” I told her she was exhausted. We backed off intensity, added more strength, reworked her fueling, and let her nervous system settle.
Two months later she ran a long run that reminded her why she started. That single run could’ve been lost if we kept charging forward without context.
The Athlete Who Trained on Grit Instead of Guidance
This is the one who raced five marathons and a relay in a year. When she came onto my roster, she was running on fumes and stubbornness. We rebuilt everything: strength, form, stress management, long-run structure, pacing, fueling, confidence.
She didn’t PR that year, but she did have other PRs in our time together, she also finished healthy, whole, and proud. And that was the biggest breakthrough of all—learning that progress isn’t always measured by speed.
The Shift Worker Whose Body Needed a Schedule Built Around Reality
Every plan she tried fell apart because her hours were unpredictable. We switched to training windows instead of training times, shortened runs when fatigue spiked, and emphasized strength to steady her system. She finally found consistency—and because of that, she finally found her confidence.
The Real Point
Coaching isn’t about the workouts I assign. It’s the framework underneath. The pattern recognition. The emotional management. The physiology literacy. The narrative reframing. The way I’m watching the whole picture even when the athlete only sees one workout at a time.
Athletes don’t perform because the plan is perfect.
They perform because the plan matches the human they are right now.
That’s the work I care about. That’s the work that actually changes people.