WHAT DID I LEARN WITH THE BOOK “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”.
I have always been fascinated by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, and I finally picked up a book I had been putting off for years: Poor Charlie’s Almanack.
On the surface, this is a book about finance and investing. But as I was reading it, I kept stopping to think, "This has nothing to do with money and everything to do with coaching."
Charlie Munger had a rare ability to strip problems down to first principles. When you look at training, performance, and long-term athletic development through that lens, a lot of what we see in modern functional fitness suddenly makes much more sense.
Here are a few ideas from the book that stayed with me, and how I see them applying directly to coaching.
Idea number one: using one model for everything is how smart people do stupid things.
In coaching terms, this is what happens when a coach sees the world only through one lens. Strength percentages. Conditioning intervals. Gymnastics volume. Or the belief that improving the engine fixes everything. Sooner or later, that approach breaks athletes or stalls them.
Good coaches do not think about what method they believe in.
They ask, “What does this athlete need right now?”
Performance is never one-dimensional. It is built from physiology, psychology, skill acquisition, recovery, life stress, and incentives. Miss one of those, and the entire system underperforms, no matter how good the program looks on paper.
Idea number two: most errors come from bias, not from lack of intelligence.
This one hit close to home.
Athletes chase workouts they enjoy. Coaches repeat sessions that get praise. Everyone copies what elite athletes do without understanding the context. Volume slowly creeps up because more feels productive.
The result is familiar. Athletes feel busy, tired, and committed, but they are not actually improving.
Strong coaching often means protecting athletes from their own biases. Sometimes that means holding them back when they ask for more, even when it is uncomfortable for both sides.
Idea number three: You do not need to be brilliant; you just need to avoid obvious mistakes.
In performance terms, this is surprisingly simple.
Do not max strength while trying to peak conditioning.
Do not introduce new skills when deeply fatigued.
Do not train year-round at competition intensity.
Do not confuse suffering with progress.
Most plateaus do not come from lack of effort or motivation. They come from doing too much, too often, for too long. Consistency beats heroics.
Idea number four: works beats what sounds clever.
This might be the most relevant lesson for functional fitness.
Boring strength progressions work.
Repeated aerobic work works.
Long accumulation phases work.
Organised calendars work.
What usually does not work is constant novelty, weekly testing, using “feeling fit” as a metric, or programming driven by emotion instead of intent.
Great coaching often looks unimpressive in the moment. The results only become obvious after months or years of compounding.
Idea number five: the moment you stop learning, you start decaying.
Coaching is not static. Methods evolve. Athletes change. Context shifts. Stressors increase.
Coaches who struggle tend to defend old systems, protect their identity, and stop questioning their own programming. Strong coaches do the opposite. They update their beliefs, audit their results, change their minds, and stay humble enough to evolve.
In sum, reading Poor Charlie’s Almanack reminded me that great coaching is less about having the perfect programme and more about having sound judgment. Judgment to choose what matters, to remove what does not, to manage bias, and to avoid repeating obvious mistakes.
In a space that often rewards intensity, noise, and complexity, long-term performance still belongs to those who can think clearly, plan patiently, and coach with intent.
Sometimes the smartest move in training, just like in life, is not doing more. It is doing less, but doing it better.
Let’s chat about your training programme.
Eddie,