Do you have ring around the collar?

Overall responsibility.  That is a boring topic.

 You sweat, your collar of your shirt gets dirty, you pre-soak the shirt in detergent, wash the shirt, and, magically, the ring disappears.  Referring to this rather ancient laundry detergent advertisement is rather odd, you may think, but the true responsibility is that you must wash your neck.   There is not anyone available to apply the Wisk so that the ring is removed; you need to keep that neck clean so that the ring doesn't appear in the first place. 

Coaching responsibility is to get the best out of you in every session of every day.  Doesn't always go as planned, but that is still the responsibility and goal of every individual session.  A program (whether a 4 week or 12 week or 48 week program) has the objective of raising your lifts beyond what you thought you could do.  A coach is irresponsible if he or she shows up with a "training program" generated when he was pumping gas earlier that afternoon. 

A lifter is responsible for putting forth the effort needed in each training session taking place.  Specifically avoided here is the terminology of "workout".  A lifting session is not a workout.  To me a workout is just to do some exercises to get a sweat going so that you can eat more at the next meal.  A training program wants you to improve by 2-5% by the time you finish it.  Our experienced lifters know that the six week "Russian Squat Program" works 100% of the time giving a hard working lifter a 2-5% increase in his or her squat. 

A new lifter has the responsibility to learn the lifts, learn the definitions of the lifts, understand what warm up is required, what different effort feels like, etc.  New lifter must also be willing to accept that there may be a  need to do brain surgery.  Take out all the old yucky crap that is residing in the gray matter about what is involved in lifting, replace that crap with fresh material on the lifts and their accessories, allow it to grow for a while, and then affix the skull before sending you on your merry way. 

450 pound sumo deadlift?  Part of that soon to be replaced crap.  320 pound low bar squat?  Ditto. Clean and press 100 kilos?  Ditto.

An intermediate or advanced lifter must accept the responsibility that focus and attention is needed from the moment the first warm up is started until the barbell is unloaded at the end of the training session.  Once this lifter wraps his or her hands around the bar, hopefully employing the hook grip, there is nothing but the barbell.  Want a 2% improvement at the end of 4 weeks?  You need to accept the responsibility of focusing on the task at hand.  Want 5% improvement at the end of 12 weeks?  Might want to make double sure that your neck is clean.

So, the question to you is:  Are you a lifter waiting for someone to beat your ring around the collar every time or are you a lifter who keeps his neck clean?