Why Your Training Feels Wrong - And What God Might Be Teaching

Trusting the Coach: Navigating Faith and Athletics with Ronnie Baker

In this episode, Olympic sprinter and Christian mentor Ronnie Baker shares his journey of learning to trust his coach and draws parallels to trusting God's plan. He discusses the challenges athletes face in surrendering control and emphasizes the importance of faith in the process. Baker also promotes his Instagram page for engaging with fans and introduces new merchandise. The episode concludes with actionable steps for listeners to identify areas where they need to surrender to God’s authority and encourages faith even when the path seems unclear.
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Transcript

0:00

He's the third fastest man. Welcome to Defeat is Option. Here comes Ronnie Baker, 9 77. Baker's running away with this one. Surely they can't get back to it. In your journey, the greatness defeat is never the final answer. It's a choice. So let's get to work.

Ronnie Baker 0:14

What if, what's holding you back is your ability to buy in and trust your coach. Every athlete has a coach, but not every athlete is coachable. The hardest part isn't doing the work. It's trusting the one, writing the plan. I am Ronnie Baker, your favorite Olympic sprinter and Christian mentor discipling you on how to navigate your faith in your sport. In today's devotional, we're gonna talk about how important it is to trust your coach and what that can tell us about our relationship with Christ. First, before we jump into this episode, I wanna let you guys know about two things. The first one is the Defeat is optional podcast Instagram page. It's a page for my most loyal fans and a way you can get involved with a podcast if you have puzzling questions, if you have things you're struggling with In your faith journey and you want those questions answered in the devotional, it's a great way to reach out to me and DM me directly and I'll make a video specifically for you. Secondly is the defeat is optional. Merch has officially launched with our very own wristband. It has the slogan, defeat is optional, along with Second Corinthians four A through 10. That reminds us when we are crushed, we are not destroyed. And defeat is a choice because of Christ's sacrifice they already made for us. So make sure you go over to the feed is optional podcast page on Instagram, which will be linked in the show notes and get your wristband before they're all gone. There's a very limited supply. Alright, back to our devotional. So it was 2023. Everything in my training felt like it was finally coming together. I was healthy, I was focused. I was more motivated than ever coming off an injury in 2022. And I think that the podium felt pretty close. This was a good year. It was starting well, things were going great, and then the voices started. Yeah, not critics, but people actually cared. People who wanted to see me win, they started saying, bro, you've gotta fix your start. This is the missing piece. Or You're too powerful not to be dominating the first 30 meters. Or You've been doing this same thing for years. Have you ever thought about switching it up? Have you ever thought about getting a different coach? And honestly, it made sense. I'm a detour oriented guy. I take pride in the process, I locked in. I told myself, maybe I am missing something and these are the things that I'm missing. Maybe if I did them, I'll get to the top. So this extra work for me became obsessive. Every start had to be perfect. Every cue had a lineup. I studied film on myself. I was going to perfect every single problem, and I started to do that. I started to obsess over all the small details and I started to listen to a bunch of different voices that were not my coach. People outside of my training that don't see me train every day. They just were looking at my races and saying, Hey, you need to fix this. And my mind would be going on and on and basically I'd say, should I be doing something different? And I didn't tell my coach. I didn't wanna disrespect the plan, so I just started doing extra behind the scenes work I did more starts, I adjusted my start, I adjusted my pedals a little bit more. I did more drills, I did more reps, I even started watching my other competitors on Instagram, seeing what they were doing, wondering if I needed to copy their setups in order to be successful. And I wish this story ended with a breakthrough. I wish I could say that I found the missing piece and dominated that season, but I didn't. I was mentally exhausted. I was physically beat up'cause I was working extra over time. And the more I tried to fix things, the more I broke my own rhythm. Now you have to understand that I have been a pro for, at that time. Man, let's see, 20 17, 20 18, 20 19, 20, 20, 20, 21, 22, 2, 20, 23, almost seven years. And I was good, But I wasn't training anymore. At that point. I was micromanaging myself. And then all of a sudden, guys, it hit me. I didn't trust my coach. And deeper than that, I wasn't trusting God. I thought I was taking control to succeed. And I think this is one thing as athletes, we do, we try to take control over what we're doing. We believe that we can control the future by our present actions. And the reality is that we can't do that. And when you try to control the future with your present actions, you're gonna do more. You're gonna take more action. Sometimes you're gonna do more than you need to do. And then. when the time to execute comes, and it doesn't go your way, you're gonna feel like I didn't do enough. Now you're in a loop. You're in a cycle. I was in a loop, and really I was taking control because I didn't trust the process. I didn't trust the person leading me. I started to lose trust. It's not that I never trusted my coaches, it's that I started to lose trust because I was in my head about what I needed to do. Instead of just trusting my coach that we were gonna get it together, that the plan that he had for me was going to work out. So here's the teaching point. A lot of us trust God when we like the direction, when we like what we're doing, when it feels good. But the moment he tells us to slow down, to sit out or to take a different route, we try to take the clipboard from him. We try to take the stopwatch from him. We try to take the plan from him and say, okay, let's rework this. We start coaching the coach. We say things like, God, I think I should be further by now. This isn't what I prayed for. This isn't how my competitors are training. This doesn't feel like the fastest way to the goal, but Isaiah 55, 8 through nine hits us with a reminder. It says, from my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways. My ways, and what I wanna remind you is that even though it doesn't feel like the plan or the path that you're on is the fastest way to success or the fastest way to your goal, God's plan for your life, his path for your life is the fastest way to get you to where he want you to be, even if it seems like it's taking forever. God sees the whole field. He's like the defensive and the offensive coordinators, they don't sit on the field. They sit up high so they can see everything and the call plays from a booth. That's how God is. He sees the whole field. He sees your whole life. He's not rushing. He's not confused. He can see the defense, he can see the offense. He knows what play to call, and he's not wasting a single rep in your life. So when God says His ways are higher, He's calling you into trust just like a coach designed training blocks that don't always make sense in the moment. Just when you're doing all this crazy volume that you feel like you shouldn't be doing, you're exhausted. Your legs hurt. Sometimes it doesn't make sense. God builds your life with long-term transformation in mind, not short-term results. He's not just shaping your speed. He's not just shaping your athletic ability. He's shaping your character. He's shaping your heart. He's shaping your discipline and your dependence on him. The question isn't, can you work hard? The real question is, can you surrender even when it's confusing? That's the real question. So here's our call to action. Here's our challenge today. You've gotta ask yourself, honestly, Step one, where am my life? Am I coaching God instead of trusting him? Let's answer that. Write that down. Where am my life? Am I coaching God instead of trusting him? Step number two, I want you to write this down and I want you to pray this. God, I surrender this part of my life to your authority. Whatever you wrote down in the first step, I want you to say, God, I surrender this part, and I want you to quote what you wrote down. I want you to surrender that to his authority. That's step two and step three, I want you to say this phrase, when doubt hits, when doubt comes, when you start to doubt the process, when things don't seem to be going right, when you feel like you should be doing something else, I want you to rest in this. I want you to say this, I trust the process because I trust the coach. I trust that God's putting the right things in my coach's mind to put it on the paper to give to me so that I can run better, perform better, whatever the case may be, whatever support that is for you. Alright, so let me pray for you. God, sometimes we like control. I like knowing what's next, but today I choose to trust you, not just with my dream, but with the process to get there. You are the true coach, so train me, shape me and lead me even when I don't understand. Amen. So guys, if dis encouraged you today, share it with another athlete who needs to hear this. And if you're still trying to figure out how to balance faith in your sport, I'm gonna let you know right now that you're not alone. So keep showing up, keep trusting God. And remember, defeat is optional when your hope is in him. I'm Ronnie Baker and I'll see you in the next one.