When Brian Washburn and I started talking about building Endurance Learning together, he was already publishing his thoughts about training.
The Train Like a Champion Origin Story
On January 2, 2012 he described the reason for the Train Like a Champion blog:
As we were driving to the training center for the first day of a workshop we’d be facilitating together, I was asked if I did anything special to prepare myself before getting in front of a group to facilitate. I thought for a moment, then said: “I crank up the AC/DC on my iPod, I draw a flipchart that says ‘Train Like A Champion Today’, I hang it above my hotel room door, and I make sure I tap it twice on my way out of the room.”
I laughed and told them I was just kidding.
The more I think of it, however, the more I wonder why “train like a champion” needs to be just a joke. What can trainers, facilitators, presenters learn from the world of champions?
This blog is intended to explore answers to that question.
11 Years of Change
Needless to say, over the last 11 years the blog has moved well beyond the sports metaphors and has dug into a wide variety of training experiences. That wasn’t the only change, however. Brian also started a podcast to interview guests and had some guest posts from trusted colleagues.
The biggest changes to the blog have come over the last few years as our team at Endurance Learning has grown. Our colleagues have brought their insights and expertise in instructional design, working with customers, elearning development, visual design and more to the blog.
Why Move the Blog Now?
For the past several years, we’ve known that we needed to update the Train Like a Champion blog, but it became more clear to us when Brian got wonderful feedback on a blog post he “wrote”. While he was flattered, it wasn’t really fair to our colleague, Erin Clarke, who actually wrote the article.
Train Like A Champion, which began as Brian’s idea to share his thoughts and experiences in learning and development with the world, had grown into a team effort. Going back to the question of what lessons we can learn from the world of champions, the best teams are those who have contributions from every person on the roster.
It’s time to officially move the blog to be one with our company website and offer you, the reader, access to every member of our team. This platform will offer you access to every member of our team – some of whom specialize in instructor-led training, some in elearning development, some in creative instructional design practices. Some of our team members are growing their skillset in Augmented Reality, some have insights to share about how to make your learning more accessible and inclusive, and some can offer you insights on better visual design for your own learning experiences.
Finding the Articles that Matter to You
When you visit our blog home page you’ll see articles organized into three categories:
- Elearning: Our team is constantly exploring the latest technology and finding new ways to solve training problems and writing about them for the blog. You’ll find a wealth of how-tos and new technologies.
- Instructor Led Training: Whether delivered virtually or in person, our team believes that facilitated training sessions are an important part of many training initiatives. Our team shares tools, techniques and lessons learned.
- Learning & Development: Our projects aren’t always elearning or instructor-led as a focus. Often they are comprehensive initiatives that require bigger thinking. When we question something about they way instructional design is done, discover some new research or want to share general lessons about how to get the work of training teams done, it lives in this category.
Fun — There’s a Right Way and a Wrong Way
When Train Like A Champion was spotlighted by the Association for Talent Development in their monthly TD magazine in 2015, they wrote:
There are a couple of reasons why we highly recommend Washburn’s blog: First, every post contains informational nuggets that you can apply immediately to your job, as well as links to helpful external resources.
Second, the blog is choke-on-your-coffee funny. As Washburn writes, “Fun—There’s a Right Way and a Wrong Way.” This blog does fun the right way.
While all of this will remain true for our blog, you now have access to a whole team’s experiences and expertise!
