I’ve found that I have the best alone time when walking my dogs on a nice morning. A few days ago, it was unseasonable warm here in Pennsylvania, and I was spending some quality time with two of my dogs. I started thinking about training.

Having been head coach of the Warren Central powerlifting team for almost ten years, I can tell you without hesitation that training teenagers has to be one of the most frustrating, and at the same time, rewarding jobs of my life. Many of the guys I have coached came into our weight room as freshmen having never even seen a weight only to leave after their four years having won district, region, and even some state titles.

I have spent this past winter training young hockey players, often as young as 11-years-old and often by myself in groups of 12–15 kids at one time.

It isn’t pretty, but it’s a reality. Our youth are getting fatter and unhealthier by the day. Physical education classes are either gone or absolutely minimized in our educational curriculum. The classes that are still intact are ill-suited for the new generation.

What are the attributes of an effective strength and conditioning coach? I was recently asked this question, and as I stumbled over myself for a few minutes, I thought it would make a great topic for an article.

As coaches, we all know about the myriad problems we’ll encounter in the course of trying to make our athletes better. These problems are generated by everyone our players come into contact with on a daily basis. From their parents, to their friends, to the ubiquitous “guys on message boards,” our kids are bombarded with stuff that’s not coming from us. From where I’m standing, there are two major problems with this:

As gymnastics coaches, sometimes we get caught up in sport-specific strength training because that’s what we know best. The belief is that if we strength train for sport-specific movements repetitiously, the gymnast will not only become stronger during those movements but will have less cause for injury. However, it is that frame of mind in which we fail as coaches.

In football, a defensive player’s success will depend on whether or not he can position his feet correctly to place himself in the best possible position to make plays. Foot speed is critical for improving athletic performance on the field. If a defensive lineman’s first step is exaggerated or slow, he will lose balance and be driven off the line of scrimmage.

You might disagree, but hear me out on this. As an ex-college football player and currently a strength coach, I’ve found the utilization and teaching of Olympic lifts to be tedious, inefficient, and downright boring. As a college athlete, I hardly found the patience to learn the correct lifting technique for the power clean. Although I held the St. John’s University power clean record in my freshman season, muscling 335 lbs (152 kg) off the platform, my technique was completely flawed. My attempt looked more like an axle clean and press in Strongman than the smooth pull of an Olympic weightlifter.

The title of this article is a little misleading. It’s not about the balance that most trainers think about such as standing on one foot on a Bosu ball. It’s about building a physically and structurally balanced athlete. These ideas and qualities are what form the exercise selection of our strength program. Our staff has five major goals in mind for our strength program—increasing power/explosiveness, increasing speed, increasing strength, increasing lean muscle tissue (size), and preventing injury.

Coaches believe that technique should not be touched. They firmly believe that technique is an individual thing that is innate to each individual. However, these ideas could not be further from the truth. One of the most effective ways to improve sports performance is to improve technique.

About three years ago, my fascination with serious weight training began.

As a strength and conditioning coach, I feel there’s a duty not only to educate and learn from fellow sport-specific coaches on proper implementation of strength and conditioning programs but to educate and learn from the athletes as well.

Good talking to you yesterday. I even tried to keep you on the phone longer since I knew you had to hit the “head” to relieve yourself. I have to tell you, I always walk away refreshed after talking to you. It makes me realize that there ARE other nuts out here with a different view and that’s good stuff.

Did you ever wonder how song writers or comedians come up with their lyrics or material? As a person who loves music as well as a good comedy, I always wondered that very question. When I started my career coaching and training athletes, I researched other coaches to come up with new ideas for old exercises. Then it clicked. The more a person surrounds himself with the subject at hand, the more thoughts come to mind about that subject.

This is the time of the season when I’m sure you’re asked the same question over and over—how do I run a faster 40? Here are the top seven tips to increase your 40-yard time dramatically without having to run a step.

Although there are several different reasons for this, lack of time in the day is a large one (especially for the collegiate strength coach). Here at Northwestern State University (NSU), we developed a method for classifying our athletes to make their programs/training more individualized.

I get bombarded with emails on a daily bases ranging from business issues, training questions, product opportunities, spam and a number of other issues. While I personally answer most of my emails there are times when I forward them onto people I feel can do a better job answering the questions than I could.

It’s funny some of the things you see being a strength coach. I probably see most athletes more than their sport coaches do on average. So during a normal day in a somewhat normal week the things I see always amuse me in some form.

Keeping your athletes motivated is one of the hardest things to do as a strength coach.