Outsourcing by Coach Amer
in CEO STRENGTH COACH
Outsourcing is a strategy used by different companies to better control costs, time, data, and tasks by transferring full or partial parts of work to outside suppliers rather than having a part of the company complete these tasks. Ron McKeefery mentioned that many strength and conditioning coaches try to be jack of all trades. While this is a great attribute to have, it may be necessary to delegate and invest time in more unique tasks that only a strength coach can do. Furthermore, Coach McKeefery mentioned three main types of tasks to outsource: 1- Highly Skilled. 2- Highly Repetitive. 3 – Specialized Knowledge. I will discuss how my position as an intern, coach, and trainer benefit from outsourcing tasks to help me focus on becoming a better coach.
- Highly Skilled: I often preach training and fueling go hand and hand, and results are not going to happen without the two working together. However, while I pride myself as a great coach who prescribes great programs for training, I take a full stop when it comes to full details on fueling, eating, and dieting. I deal with many different types of clients (weight loss, performance, special population), and each have their unique take on food and what their bodies need. At Lifetime Athletic, whenever I am asked about a detailed nutrition plan, I simply refer my clients to our registered dietitian, as I lack the complete knowledge of how certain habits of eating affect each individual. Outsourcing this task to nutrition coaches and RD’s saves me time in training clients and getting the most out of their hour of training versus me trying to guess what to have them eat or avoid eating.
- Highly Repetitive: when I interned at two different facilities I had a very repetitive task: cleaning and maintaining equipment. Though I hated that task it gives me a lot of appreciation for the equipment I have the privilege to use. Many of the coaches and trainers at my former places of internship had a lot of clients and athletes to take care of; as a result, they pass the repetitive tasks of cleaning, stacking papers, entering regular data, making phone calls to us interns. Now that I am at Lifetime athletic I do help clean and manage many of these tasks; however, we have a nightly crew that comes in to make sure it is a brand new house before reopening at 4am.
- Specialized Knowledge: you wouldn’t do your taxes on your own, would you? (if so more power to you). Specialized tasks like graphic design, event setup, product promotion, product placement, massages, nutrition, and café service all require someone with the right amount of experience and knowledge behind them. At Lifetime Athletic there is always a promotion going on with video shooting to show what it looks like to work with a trainer. All we had to do as trainers was to be there and perform a few tasks. Lifetime Athletic has an outsourced guy who does all the video editing, timing, and final production, to make the video look exciting. Eventually, I will need to update my resume, or build my own website. I will pass basic information to someone professional in these fields and have them help me. It will take major time to do all that work on my own, time I can be using to coach more clients and help more people.
In conclusion, outsourcing does not mean you have to oversee someone do your task for you. However, to invest your time on the tasks you do best, a strength coach needs to delegate. Allow good planning and help from others to benefit you and your facility, so that you can coach people to become stronger, faster, and healthier. If we cannot help in a specific area, we can direct them to someone more specialized. Time management can become more manageable with outsourcing.
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Amer Nahhas CSCS, NSCA-CPT, USAW-L1
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