Coach Croft

One of the biggest misconceptions in training is that adaptation should feel obvious while it’s happening.

Athletes are constantly looking for proof… in their paces, mileage, HRV, recovery scores or whatever the tiny wrist computer has decided to say that day.

The problem is that adaptation rarely announces itself with fireworks. It often shows up as training becoming less expensive. You recover a little faster. Easy runs stop feeling like negotiations with your soul. You handle workloads that would have flattened you six months ago. You stop needing three days to recover from every hard workout. Or you become less reactive to bad runs, bad weather, and bad data.

But those signs get overlooked because they don’t produce flashy screenshots.

This gets even trickier for masters and peri/menopausal athletes because sleep and recovery changes. Heat and humidity wreck us. Life stress shift. Yet many athletes are still trying to evaluate themselves through the same narrow lens they used 10-20 years ago.

The goal isn’t to prove fitness every day. You have to learn to create an environment where adaptation can actually occur.

Your body is always adapting to something. The question is whether you’re building resilience and capacity… or simply becoming more efficient at functioning inside chronic stress.

What signs of adaptation have you noticed that had nothing to do with pace?

One thing I’ve learned through reconnecting to community + culture is that coaching cannot exist in a vacuum.

Not every athlete is navigating life from the same place. Ceremony, community responsibilities, grief, healing, family, identity, and cultural connection all shape how someone moves through training.

For Indigenous athletes especially, there are layers to support that many coaches were never taught to see or ask about.

This conversation meant a lot to me because it reflects the kind of coach I strive to be. One who understands that training doesn’t sit above someone’s humanity, culture, or community. It has to work alongside it.

Sometimes the best coaching decision isn’t adding more mileage or pressure. Sometimes it’s understanding what truly matters in that season of someone’s life and building from there.

That’s part of the work too. 🩵🪶

I spent the last 9 months in a local Matriarch program. It recently wrapped up and I’ve been reflecting on my experience.

After a hard 2025 and experiencing lateral violence within the Native community, I realized I needed somewhere I didn’t have to lead, organize, advocate, educate, or hold everything together. I needed a place where I could simply exist as myself and reconnect to community in a safer and softer way.

Matriarch became part of that healing. I missed a few sessions due to travel. One was cancelled. I mostly took photos of food and makers classes because I wanted to stay present and respectful of the privacy and stories shared in the room. But the impact of this cohort reaches far beyond what’s in these photos.

Over these months, we talked about identity, representation, sovereignty, healing, wellness, recovery, violence, relationships, food, culture, and community. We learned from one another. We created together. We ate together. I made new dishes for potlucks, shared meals, and experienced more traditional foods thanks to the incredible chef on the board and the stewardess of Burning Cedar Sovereign Wellness.

This has become part of my reclamation era. It wasn’t loud or performative. Just intentional.

And I know it’s shaping the way I show up for Indigenous athletes too. Not just in advocacy, but in how I listen, how I hold space, how I think about representation, and how I move through community now.

I’m grateful this program exists. And I’m grateful I was able to be part of it 🩵🪶

One of the most important skills a coach can have isn’t knowing how to push an athlete. It’s knowing when an athlete is no longer just tired.

A former client recently shared her burnout story publicly and one thing she said really stuck with me: there’s a difference between being tired and being depleted.

Tired usually improves with rest, but depletion run can run much deeper. It changes how you think, recover, cope, and connect to the things you normally love.

High-functioning athletes are incredibly good at normalizing depletion. Especially women, coaches, and/or Masters + menopausal athletes trying to hold together careers, caregiving, relationships, training, hormones, expectations, and the invisible emotional labor that nobody talks about enough.

Sometimes the most important thing I do as a coach has nothing to do with pace charts or mileage.

Sometimes it’s pattern recognition and noticing when an athlete stops sounding like themselves.When joy disappears and every run feels heavy.Or when “discipline” turns into some sort of survival mode.

Burnout rarely happens from one hard workout. It happens when the load exceeds the support system holding it all together. Rebuilding that support is part of training too.

If this hits close to home, this is exactly why I created Under Load + The Alchemist Challenge. Not to teach you how to grind harder, but to help you rebuild capacity, reconnect to yourself, and find your footing again when life feels heavy. Both are ready for download in the shop in the Guides section 🩵

Older Fans After Dark.
Episode: The 3:07am Summoning.

No further questions.
No refunds.
Please enjoy your cortisol.

And honestly the cruelest part is waking up exhausted while everyone around you says things like
“have you tried a bedtime routine?”

Barbara.
I will fight you in a Kohl’s parking lot.

If providers were actually current on menopause care for Gen X women, they’d stop acting scandalized by HRT and start packaging estrogen patches like tanning stickers…. Hearts. Palm trees. Pl***oy bunnies.

Because apparently our generation can survive Sun-In, low rise jeans, body glitter, tanning beds, Marlboro Lights, and dial-up internet trauma… but estrogen is where people suddenly get nervous.

Anyway. Rotate your patch sites, hydrate, lift weights, and stop letting outdated menopause care try to gaslight an entire generation.