Reflections - KSI Park City Camp 2026
Written by Victor Chan | Physical Preparation Coach Singapore
Nine annual camps in, and so much to learn still
I got back from Park City, Utah last week. King Sports International’s (KSI) 24th Annual Park City Camp, and my ninth of them, learning the way of the physical preparation coach.
COVID turned two of the nine into virtual seances (“Hello, can you hear me?”). And that is before the other physical preparation coaching camps I have done with my mentor Ian King over the years, including the higher level ones.
Fifteen years of coaching. Four hundred plus clients. And I still get on a few planes to sit in a room where I am the student.
People find that odd. A few have asked me outright, in the polite Singaporean way, whether I have finished learning yet.
Fair question. So here is the answer, and a peek at what actually goes on at one of these camps.
What a camp actually is
It is not a conference. Nobody is at a podium with eighty slides while three hundred people check their phones at the back.
A KSI camp is a small group of qualified coaches and athletes in one place for a week. Athletes train. Coaches coach. Then you get real feedback from people who have no reason to sugar-coat anything or validate your feelings, and every reason to find where your coaching can improve. Then you get up the next morning and do it again.
What I went in wanting to learn
Three things:
Be more concise. I want to say less and mean more. I have known for a while that I use more words than the message requires.
Read sport faster. Work out winning and losing in front of me sooner, and make the appropriate changes faster.
Understand the emotional side. How do you help an athlete whose performance breaks down due to something that has nothing to do with their physical preparation? A crowd jeering at them, momentum reversing, the negative stories in their own head.
Did I get those answers?
Yes. And not one of them arrived as an academic explanation.
They came from observing how little other coaches needed to say, playing volleyball at 6.30 in the morning, and learning from real life experiences in our daily huddles.
I am not going to detail what was said. That material is Ian’s to teach, not mine to publish.
What I felt, and what the review showed
There was one coaching segment I conducted that I thought went reasonably well.
Then we reviewed it.
It was worse than I thought – noticeably worse, and obvious to the coaches debriefing me in the room.
The difference between what I felt and what actually happened was one of the key lessons I brought home, not only for my coaching but also for my clients in relation to how they might feel about their bodies.
It’s the same challenge that shows up when an injury keeps coming back despite rest and treatment.
The unexpected lesson
My learning was immense, and there was more than one major lesson each day.
In a nutshell: I received more lessons on personal development than on professional development in this camp. That was the twist for me, as I have always put a premium on professional development.
I suppose it has taken me this long to actually understand one of Jim Rohn’s better known lines – work harder on yourself than you do on your job.
Two words to compress the camp experience
Change faster.
Not just working harder, but closing the gap between noticing something is not working and doing something else about it.
Most of us, clients and coaches included, sit in the noticing phase for too long. We collect more information. We give it more time. We tell ourselves we are building the perfect plan. Meanwhile the competition is pulling ahead, the body is breaking down faster than you would have expected, or the athlete is losing their focus.
My clients arrive better informed than they ever have. More research, more data off more devices, more opinions from more sources. Almost none of it has made them faster at deciding what to actually do, because none of the training was designed for them.
Information stopped being the bottleneck a long time ago.
Some things you cannot be told
The interesting thing is that most of what I have shared above is not new to me. I have heard versions of it before, some of it from Ian, more than once.
But hearing or seeing something and understanding it are not the same thing. The gap between them can run for years.
Some lessons only land when you discover them yourself.
That is a large part of why I keep going back.
What changed since I got home
I have coached three sessions one day after I landed.
Something was different. My process felt more organic and less mechanical – less like running a sequence, more like having a conversation that happened to involve training. I think my clients saw a more human side of me. Something more relatable and less instructional.
Let us see how it holds by the next camp. I am looking forward to finding out.
So have I finished learning? Guess not.
If any of this sounded familiar
Most of the active adults and athletes I work with have spent months working hard on the wrong thing. Not through laziness. Because nobody helped them find the real problem, and because what you feel and what is actually happening are so often two different stories.
If something in this piece is describing your situation right now, book a complimentary 10-minute call. A focused conversation, not a sales pitch.
No obligation. No commitment. Just clarity.
Not sure if this applies to you? That’s exactly what the call is for.
Want to go deeper than the blog can?
Either way, I write a newsletter called The Long Game. One or two ideas a month for people who intend to still be playing in ten, twenty, thirty years.
And sometimes I write about things that do not make it into blog posts.
Victor is a Physical Preparation Coach based in Singapore, specialising in sports injury prevention coaching for active adults.
His methodology is grounded in King Sports International‘s principles of individualized physical preparation.