Of Politics & Idiocy, Part 1
Strength & Conditioning at the Collegiate Level
By
The Anonymous Strength Coach
Being a strength coach
Why do people want to be strength coaches? I really don’t get it. Is it for
the money? The prestige? Being on the sideline for Saturday football games?
Being able to live in a weight room? To not have to wear a suit and tie every
day? From discussions with multiple strength coaches, I can’t comprehend why
people want to be strength coaches yet have no desire to learn about the
profession or even take part in what they’re teaching on a daily basis.
Ten years ago, during my sophomore year of college, I discovered that there
was such a thing as a strength and conditioning coach. I honestly had no idea
that you could make a living helping athletes become stronger and better
prepared for their chosen sport. I already loved lifting and training, but this
would give me an opportunity to help others do something to improve their
athletic ability.
Upon changing majors, I did everything within my power to learn about
strength training for athletes, including getting under the bar on a regular
basis. I started out searching the internet, which evolved into reading fitness
magazines and from there books and journals. I would be willing to bet that more
than 90 percent of what I’ve learned comes from self-education, not from the
classroom.
Most importantly though, I kept myself in the weight room. I wrote programs
for myself and evaluated how they worked. I experimented. If it worked, I kept
it. If not, I threw it to the side. I tried new exercises, new techniques, and
new ideas. I learned “under the bar,” and I’m still learning under the bar.
There is no replacement for this. No book, article, or professor can tell you
what it feels like to be under a weight while making your body move the way you
want it to. You have to experience it in order to understand it.
Still today, my motivation to be a strength coach and continue to improve my
abilities as a coach is to help athletes. I care about every athlete I work
with, even the ones who drive me insane. I will do anything I can to help my
athletes in or out of the weight room. I have fought with sport coaches in order
to get the best possible plan for the athletes. I have had athletes in my office
in tears because of other things going on in their lives. I have had athletes in
tears in workouts because they couldn’t perform the way they expected themselves
or I expected them to perform. I’ve pushed athletes to levels they didn’t think
were possible. I’ve kicked athletes out of workouts because they wouldn’t comply
with the program and were a disruption to the team. And I did all of this and
will continue to do these things because I care.
Ok, that was a little long for an introduction. But that is what I expect
from any strength coach. Maybe it’s a little biased, but I’m ok with that. I’ve
worked with strength coaches who have those same ideals or mindset, and they are
the type of coaches I want to continue to work with. Maybe they haven’t outlined
it in words quite like I did, but I can tell based off of conversations and how
they work with athletes that their mindset is quite similar. This is how it
should be, but oftentimes, it’s quite the opposite.
Conversations
Below are some real conversations/interactions with strength coaches,
aspiring strength coaches, or those going into similar professions that I find
very disturbing.
Conversation #1
Myself: Ok, you want to be a strength coach, but what about
your own personal training. What are your goals there?
Intern: I don’t really have any goals.
Myself: Well, why do you lift weights? Certainly, you’re trying
to accomplish something.
Intern: No, I just like to lift.
If you don’t know why you’re doing something or where you’re trying to go,
how do you expect to accomplish anything or get to where you’re trying to get?
The goals don’t have to be complex, but they need to give you a sense of
direction rather than just wandering around aimlessly. And this carries over to
coaching. If you can’t decide what you’re trying to accomplish yourself, how do
you expect to give your athletes a sense of direction in their training?
Conversation #2
This is a statement from a conversation that I overheard between a strength
coach and an athlete.
Strength coach: Energy systems aren’t really important. There
is no need to understand them because you will never use them.
Are you kidding me? Obviously, there’s no education here. And what’s worse is
he’s deemphasizing the value of an education to an athlete who wants to go into
a related profession (this makes our job as strength coaches even more
difficult). Ok, so if energy systems aren’t important, how are you supposed to
design an effective conditioning session without the knowledge of how energy
systems work in each sport? Why don’t we just tell the athletes to go run around
for a little while. That should work.
Conversation #3
This is a statement made to me by another strength coach.
Strength coach: It doesn’t really matter what you do. We all
have different philosophies, and they all work.
I didn’t have a response for this statement. I wanted to respond but didn’t.
My response now is that yes, anything might work, especially with
untrained athletes. However, we can do better. We can put out a program that has
a sense of direction and gives the athletes the best possible chance to perform
to the best of their abilities. Programs designed at random with no organization
will give random results.
Conversation #4
Myself: I really push my athletes.
Strength coach: I don’t care. The other day Suzie was
squatting. She was doing a set of eight, and it got slightly difficult at the
end. She could have easily stayed at that weight or done more, but I could see
she struggled a little bit, so I just told her to go down because I really don’t
care.
Are you serious? How can any coach act like that? At least act like you
care!!! I have nothing more to say here.
Conversation #5
I overheard this conversation between two other strength coaches. I’m leaving
out the background information that has considerable context, but I also feel
that this shortened version says something about the quality of some strength
coaches.
Strength coach #1: I know that working on speed technique will
help, but I think to make true progress, we need to develop strength.
Strength coach #2: No, people get faster all the time without
lifting weights. Look at all those performance training centers. Many of them
don’t even have weights.
Strength coach #1: Yes, but once we get technique down,
how do we get faster without getting stronger?
Strength coach #2: Getting stronger really isn’t important in
my system of training. Later we can add resistance by using parachutes or
something like that.
Ok, if strength training isn’t important to getting faster, why do 100- and
200-meter sprinters, whose events rely on speed, utilize heavy strength training
as a key ingredient in their training? Maybe the bodies of athletes in other
sports don’t work the same as track athletes. So, strength training won’t work
for them.
Conversation #6
In this situation, I had two interns teaching me how to do a front squat.
Intern: You should place the bar across your clavicle.
Myself: Why would you want to place the bar across your
clavicle and not on top of your front delts?
Intern: I don’t know.
Myself: Well, why would you want it across your clavicle?
Intern: Because Dr. Smith said so.
Yes, I realize that I’m dealing with semantics and also an intern who has
received more weight room experience in the last six weeks working with me than
in the rest of her life. But this doesn’t change the fact that our current
education system isn’t getting the job done. Most of the interns I get have
almost no knowledge of strength training, and they’re seniors in college, who
will be getting jobs in the next year or two. They have had one or two strength
training related classes and think they know what’s going on in a weight room.
Our collegiate programs don’t go nearly enough in depth, nor do they force the
students to really think for themselves. They simply give basic information and
send the students on their way as if they are ready to train high level
athletes.
Conversation #7 (more of an observation)
We recently had a strength coach who was opposed to lifting weights. Well,
maybe that’s an exaggeration. He is the same strength coach who in conversation
#5 said strength training wasn’t important in his system of training. In the
entire time I knew him, I only saw him squat twice (not more than 225 lbs) and
bench once (not more than 135 lbs). No, I’m not exaggerating about those
numbers. He actually said to me (closely paraphrased), “I don’t need to be
strong. I just want to stay in shape. And you never hear me complaining about
all those aches and pains that you guys have.” My response, “At least I’m
strong!”
How can you be a “strength” coach and not have the balls to get under a
weight? How can you teach others how to lift if you’ve never been under a
respectable amount of weight yourself? How do you expect to get respect from
athletes when it’s obvious you don’t lift yourself?
Conversation #8
This conversation between myself and another strength coach took place after
an athletic trainer prescribed a series of internal/external rotation exercises
for a problem that had been limited down to the supraspinatus.
Myself: Why would you use external rotation exercises for
rotator cuff rehab when the problem does not have anything to do with either
external or internal rotation?
Strength coach: The trainers are responsible for taking care of
injuries. It’s not our job.
Myself: I think it’s important to understand anatomy and how
the body works.
Strength coach: No, we are only responsible for getting the
athletes stronger and faster.
If you’re training the body to work a certain way, wouldn’t it be a good idea
to know how the body works?
Stay tuned for part two. I’ll discuss the political game of strength and
conditioning.
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