Becoming a strength and conditioning coach

Quickest way to become an S&C coach

Excelsior athletes warming up

I had some e-mail correspondence yesterday with someone interested in Coaching athletes. They were looking for short cuts to working with top level athletes.

Keith Morgan, my strength coach, gave me some sound advice years ago when he said

“get a group of young athletes, work with them and you will develop as they develop.”

I was thinking this yesterday when talking to someone else about the Level 3 S&C course. It is difficult to develop as a coach if you are working with funded athletes who are at the mercy of arbitrary decisions as to where and when they train.

You may see someone for 3-6 months, then not again for a year, or not at all again. How does the athlete progress with these gaps? How do you as a coach progress if you can not see how your work is affecting the athletes over the long term?

Vern Gambetta talks about having 20 years experience- or doing 1 year 20 times over. If you are constantly having to work with a new influx of athletes, you may become very good at doing the same thing each time, but you are not progressing.

In New Zealand, some school rugby coaches start of with their team at 12-13 years old and then keep the same team as they progress through the age groups. When the kids graduate from school, the coaches go and coach the next lot of 12-3 year olds. This way you are working with players for 4-5 years and can actually help them develop.

In this country it is seen as a promotion if you work with under-16s instead of under14s, but it is a very short term in approach.

4 of our young gymnasts

Frank Dick always said that you want your best Coaches working with your beginner athletes so that they can gain good habits at an early stage. I am lucky enough to have worked with one group for 3 years and am really seeing the results.

It constantly amazes me that people with no experience at either playing or coaching want to work with elite athletes as if that was the pinnacle of success.

There are hundreds of teams and athletes in the UK that are crying out for good advice at lower levels, plenty of opportunity to help them and gain experience as a coach, but not many people want to work with them in an S&C role because it is beneath them.

I think that they will get a rude awakening if they do actually come into contact with some hairy-arsed veteran players.