Vincent Thibault is discussing connection—connection to training partners, to the environment, to those who practiced before you. Then he drops this:

“There’s also connection with the people who will come after you. Because—sorry to deliver the news—but you won’t be there forever and you won’t be coaching forever if you’re a coach. And you won’t be moving in the same way forever, and you don’t know when you’re going to see it.”

He moves on quickly to discuss authentic connection and adaptation. But that particular piece deserves its own space, because it names something most practitioners actively avoid thinking about: you’re doing something temporary, and you don’t know when it ends.

This isn’t the usual motivational “life is short, train hard” messaging. It’s more unsettling than that. Thibault isn’t saying practice like it might end tomorrow. He’s saying practice while knowing it will end at some unknowable point—which is a completely different relationship to what you’re doing.

Consider the difference. If you know something ends tomorrow, you can optimize for that timeline. Final session, go hard, no regrets. If you know something continues indefinitely, you can plan for the long term, pace yourself, build slowly. But practicing something that will definitely end at an uncertain point in the future? That requires holding two contradictory orientations simultaneously.

You have to care enough to keep showing up and improving, but not so much that the inevitable end devastates you. You have to invest in getting better while knowing the return on that investment has an unknown horizon. You have to build relationships with students or training partners while acknowledging you won’t always be there for them. You have to develop coaching skills you might not use forever, teach movements you might not always be able to demonstrate.

The temptation is to resolve this tension by pretending one side doesn’t exist. Either pretend it’s permanent—I’ll be coaching forever, I’ll always move like this—or pretend it doesn’t matter—everything’s temporary anyway, why invest? But Thibault’s framing suggests neither denial works. The practice requires holding both: this matters deeply right now, and it won’t last.

This might be why he connects this observation to the broader theme of connection. Recognizing impermanence isn’t nihilistic if you simultaneously recognize continuity. You won’t be coaching forever, but someone will be coaching. You won’t be moving this way forever, but people will keep moving. The work doesn’t end just because your participation in it does. That’s the connection to “people who will come after you”—you’re part of something that extends beyond your individual timeline.

But here’s the harder part: you don’t know when you’re going to see it. Not knowing the timeline makes planning impossible. You can’t say “I have five more years of peak movement, so I’ll focus on X now and save Y for later.” You might have five years or five months or fifteen years. An injury could end it tomorrow. Age could erode it so gradually you don’t notice until it’s already different. Life circumstances could shift your priorities suddenly.

This uncertainty forces a different question than “how should I train for the future?” It forces “how should I train right now, given that this might be the last chance or might be the beginning of many more chances, and I have no way to know which?”

Maybe the answer is in what Thibault emphasizes throughout the conversation: ease, connection, adaptation. Not grinding yourself into the ground because you might not have much time left. Not coasting because it’s all temporary anyway. Instead, practicing in a way that’s sustainable if it continues and complete if it doesn’t. Being present with what’s actually happening rather than fixating on either preservation or urgency.

This reframes what it means to pass something on. If you’re coaching with awareness that you won’t be coaching forever but don’t know your timeline, you can’t just prepare people for the skills they’ll need. You have to prepare them to continue without you. You have to teach in a way that makes them less dependent on your presence rather than more. Every session carries the possibility that it might be the last one you offer, which changes how you approach helping someone understand something.

The same applies to your own practice. Moving with awareness that you won’t move this way forever changes what you pay attention to. Not just building capacity, but appreciating capacity while you have it. Not just chasing the next achievement, but being present with current ability. Not assuming you’ll have time to get back to something later, but also not forcing everything into right now.

There’s something liberating about acknowledging the timeline is unknowable. It removes the illusion of control—that you can plan it all out, pace it perfectly, time your decline. You can’t. But what you can do is practice in a way that honors both the significance of what you’re doing and its temporary nature. You can be serious about getting better without being attached to how long better lasts. You can invest in relationships knowing they’ll change or end. You can teach something you’ll eventually stop teaching.

The news Thibault is “sorry to deliver” isn’t actually news. Everyone knows they won’t do the same things forever. But there’s a difference between knowing it abstractly and practicing with that awareness actively present. The second changes everything—not by making you stop caring, but by clarifying what’s worth caring about when you know it won’t last but don’t know how long you have.

This field note references the Movers Mindset podcast episode “Communication with Vincent Thibault,” published December 15, 2023.