My name is Cooper Napoli, and I hate school.
I dropped out of college in 2017 and never went back.
Also, I love education, and I love making sure coaches have the best possible education in their hands.
I know that’s an insane way to start a blog titled, Education = Freedom. But I ended up achieving my dreams in the field without any formal education – I coached and trained alongside war fighters, pros, executives, ballers, and some salt-of-the-earth normal folk from across the world. I still work with small contingents of bad asses, but I’m fulfilled and proud of what I’ve done. I feel a great sense of pride about what I've achieved.
Most coaches seek a similar fulfillment and healthy pride in their coaching careers, but they struggle to find the path toward such a state-of-being.
Education can be that path. It’s never straight. It’s rarely fast. However, education can set you on the straightest, fastest path to where you want to be. All that being said, education is a vague term, and it means something different to everyone.
I’ll start by defining what education means by citing two dictionaries say:
Education (noun) The process of teaching or learning, especially in a school or college. — Cambridge Dictionary
Education (noun) The act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life. — Dictionary.com
I don’t like the Cambridge one. I don’t like it because it’s vague in the first half. I don’t like it especially because it emphasizes ‘school or college’. Education can include school or college (no shit), but I don’t think it’s a radical idea for me to suggest that’s a limited definition.
I dig what the Dictionary.com definition says a bit more, but I’m not satisfied. Preparing for an intellectually mature life sounds awesome. I dig the verbs ‘imparting or acquiring’ in the context of knowledge. Raising my powers of reasoning and judgement sounds like a winning formula. The words sound hollow when I speak them in my head though. They read a press release from a mega-corporation; vague generalizations and platitudes.
And that’s because they are purely definitions, and thus, a very flawed frame of reference.
Yet, so much of education is just that – definitions with limited scope vomited into the next set of ears in line, regurgitated over and over until the plot is lost, the people aren’t getting any better, and the words become rot itself.
I aim to end that cycle for those open to joining UNRACKED’s mission-first approach.
John Dewey, an American educator and philosopher born in the mid-1800s, shared his approach to education in philosophical terms I’m satisfied with.
Take a look at this quote from an article:
Education is a process of inviting truth and possibility, of encouraging and giving time to discovery. It is, as John Dewey (1916) put it, a social process – ‘a process of living and not a preparation for future living’. In this view educators look to learning and being with others rather than acting upon them. Their task is to educe (related to the Greek notion of educere), to bring out or develop potential both in themselves and others.
So what does any of this have to do with freedom, coaching, and UNRACKED?
The coaches I’ve seen struggle did so because their education didn’t result in knowledge they could act on. They lacked confidence. Confidence to execute. Confidence to evolve. Confidence to strive. Fear underpinned a lot of important decisions, often sowing the seeds of failure. They weren't free.
Freedom comes when you know your craft deeply. Your confidence overrides your fears. You strive. You evolve. You execute. The coaches I’ve seen succeed did so because their education equipped them with the right plays, and a diversity of plays, to run in the face of adversity.
That’s where UNRACKED comes in. The team behind UNRACKED built this because we’ve lived the struggle. We know what it feels like to be knowledgeable but not confident. UNRACKED is a social-driven effort designed to build the informational highways between those figuring out their craft and the experts who’ve walked the road.
Format matters. As such, we deliver in every format we can: live events, blog posts (like this one), newsletters, YouTube videos, and social media. We don’t know where, when, or what idea will spark you in the right moment. What we know is that the information alone isn’t enough. Our content is for coaches, personal trainers, physical therapists, fitness enthusiasts, and everyone between pursuing human health and performance, and it’s designed to be digested in the presence of one-another.
Education is not a credential. It's not a degree hanging on a wall or a certificate stuffed in a drawer. It's not a classroom, a professor, or a tuition bill.
Education is what happens when people commit to getting better together. It's the question asked mid-conversation that changes the direction of an entire room. It's the coach who learns something from their athlete. It's the expert who leaves a discussion with a perspective they didn't walk in with.
That's what UNRACKED is built for.
So if you've made it this far, you already understand something important: you're not looking for someone to hand you the answers. You're looking for the right conversations. The right people. The right environment to grow.
Now show up.
We're going to have follow-up posts to this one, diving into how you might start to think about education in your coaching career!
