Our blogging team hopes you enjoyed last week’s kickoff of this hot topic! We had good discussions with people with some positive feedback.
This week I’d like to continue the topic with two questions:
1. If you had a quality high school sport coach, then how do you value that coach today?
2. In your experience, what value do you put on the role of the wife/mother?
My answer to the first question is that I had one high school coach who influenced me a lot. His name was Coach Springer. Coach Springer saw that I was a “late developer” and assured my dad in a private conversation that I would mature and eventually excel in sports. This was an accurate assessment as I did develop over my junior year in football, basketball, and track and field eventually earning a scholarship to throw javelin at a junior college and eventually the University of Tennessee. Today I place a pretty high value on that conversation!
In the second question I’ve seen research that says the wife/mother has the hardest job in society but still sees the least value monetarily. The estimated total value of one year’s work for a wife/mother can total more than 113,586K (Reference 1) This is based on the top 6 roles roles like 5 loads of laundry a week, 3 rounds of dishes per day, and buying groceries and planning 21 meals per week! How would someone put a value on those diverse and important roles? We should all wave harder at your mom at the game and show appreciation!
I share these two illustrations because I think it can be difficult to place value on the role of a strength coach.
When I was finishing up the final edits on part 1 from last week I had a few meetings with some at my high school students who were interested in this topic series. The first student asked me, “that’s interesting….what is the difference between a strength coach and a personal trainer?” In another conversation the student stated “there really isn’t any difference…is there?” In a third conversation, a university professor in exercise science stated, “well, there’s really not much difference between the two areas.” Finally, in a personal conversation with a coaching colleague, he stated “I don’t like to use the word dislike, but I really dislike how some people can’t see the increased value of a strength coach vs a personal trainer.”
Top 5 Ways to Value a Strength Coach
#1 The word COACH has a deeper meaning
The “etymology” or the origin of the word coach is worth exploring. According to my colleague Steven Wright on his website (reference 2), he explains “the word ‘coach’ reveals some interesting information that will contribute greatly to our understanding. The term ‘coach’ is traced back to the 16th century and the country of Hungary. The Hungarian word “kocsi” is the original term that came to define the ‘coach’ concept. ‘Kocsi’ originally referred to a ‘carriage of Kocs,’ the village where the popular horse-drawn carriage was constructed.”
Author and leadership expert John Maxwell quotes his friend Kevin Hall: “A ‘COACH’ remains something, or someone, who carries a valued person from where they are to where they want to be.” In Japan, a “sensei”, in Sanskrit, a “guru” taking someone from darkness into the light, in Tibet a “lama”, in Italy a “maestro”, in France a “tutor”, in England a “guide”, and in Greece a “mentor”. All these words describe the same role: one who goes before and shows the way (Maxwell, Pg. 219-220)
#2 Strength Coaches and Personal trainers can add value to others
Before I go into depth about this I’d like to briefly discuss my experience with personal training in the Triangle Area. During a period when I was between jobs I had the opportunity to submit approximately 50 resumes for personal training jobs. In one follow-up opportunities with Studio Revolution I learned the value of personal trainers working with business clientele. They had very experienced personal trainers and happened to be looking for someone with a strength coaching background. In the end I didn’t get the job, but I learned the value they attached to this position was 50K. If the job was offered to me I has strongly considering it because of the professionalism shown to me by the owner and other trainers.
Over the past 12 years I’ve served as a college strength and conditioning coach at North Texas University for one year, NC State University for 9 years, and 2 years at Cardinal Gibbons High School. I’ve had the great privilege to lead the NC State internship program with 35 young professionals, and now an assistantship at Cardinal Gibbons with 5 young professionals. In the first role at NC State experience it was labeled a top 25 internship program in the country by my supervisor Coach Bob Alejo” and I believe the current assistantship at Cardinal Gibbons is one of the best in the southeast.
The reason I share this is because educating and coaching is my life’s passion, and it’s hard to understand why some people don’t see the value these young professionals bring to the health and fitenss field. The other day I tallied up where these 40 coaches are now, and only 50% of them are in the coaching profession now mostly because they couldn’t make a living at coaching!
Here is good take-away from John Maxwell (Reference 3) says good coaches share five common characteristics. They:
C are for the people they coach
O bserve their attitudes, behaviors, and performance
A lign them with their strengths for peak performance
C ommunicate and give feedback about their performance
H elp them to improve their lives and performance
#3 Strength Coaches have unique certifications
There are many certifications out there today for strength coaches and personal trainers.
The first category of certification is what I’d like to call part-time certifications. This category of certifications is for coaching as a hobby. These include the USAW (United States Weightlifting), Level 1 Cross-Fit, and FMS (Functional Movement Specialist), certifications that a participant can get over a weekend. These are the most more common type of certifications because they are good resume builders and show continuing education. Professionals brushing up on skills or seeking to build knowledge in the profession commonly go after these certifications.
The second category of certifications are the introduction to the profession certifications. One of the most widely known organizations for both coaches and trainers to belong to the membership of the NSCA (National Strength and Conditioning Association). The certifications include the C.S.C.S (Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist) and the C.P.T (Certified Personal Trainer). I learned recently that there are more than 15,000 CSCS’s in the US and many more CPT’s. The CSCS is a comprehensive certification much like the ACSM (Academy of Sports Medicine) and takes both knowledge and application to pass with a 70% score.
College strength and conditioning coaches formed an organization called the CSCCA (College Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association) which now has 1500 members, and members can get the SCCC (Strength and Conditioning College Certification) of which 850 are certified. President Chuck Stiggins shared with me that there are currently 30 actively practicing SCCC’s at the high school level. This certification is geared to the requirements of a college strength coach and requires a 9-month mentorship with wide knowledge base and also present and defend their program during a practical examination that is one of the most involved certifications out there. Applicants must invest multiple months of study, maybe do a symposium, and master hands-on application to get these types of certifications.
The third category of certifications are what I call career certifications. Attached to the CSCS, SCCC, and other professional certifications are years of experience distinctions. These higher levels of certification show the value of years of experience a professional attains to. This is important because each year these organizations require CEU’s (Continuing Education Units) to remain current on scientific research and practical application of the knowledge. CEU’s typically consist of specifications within a field. For example, personal trainers can become certified Corrective Exercise Specialists or Performance Enhancement Specialists. Many times, CPTs are required to have a certain number of CEUs to retain their certification.
#4 Strength Coaches possess unique experience and application of science
I consider Meg Stone (visionary and leader in the Strength and Conditioning field, Reference 4) a mentor of mine since attending their conference over the last 10 years. She gave a presentation at the Coaches College at ETSU in 2007 that was named “What it means to be a coach!” She stated that strength coaches are a mentor, teacher, and organizer of the strength program. It is a great responsibility to be the strength and conditioning coach for an athlete as many disciples are required in the areas of: Kinesiology, physiology, nutrition, psychology, and sports medicine among other specifics. The coaching education program for the National Federation of High Schools (NFHS) includes 11 key areas: coaching approach, objectives, style, character, diversity, communication/motivation, behavior, technical/tactical, preparation/planning, managing controversial issues, and coaching development.
Coach Stone states “the realization is that coaching is an academic as well as a practical based pursuit that must promote a better understanding of good sports science.”
#5 Strength coaches train sports teams and focus on the need analysis of those athletes
In my experience I’ve found strength coaches demonstrate skill and application more toward team training. Two good articles appeared a few years ago that outlined these attributes: 1) The Profile of high school strength and conditioning coaches 2) The Strength and Conditioning Practices of United States High School Strength and Conditioning Coaches. (Reference 5 & 6)
These two articles outline the way strength coaches practice their skills with off-season, pre-season and in-season programs that zero in on the specific needs for the time of year and the sport that is being trained.
The role of a strength and conditioning coach is a multi-disciplined approach that mixes many aspects of the art and science of training. The art of strength and conditioning is how to get a group motivated and organized in a concise and efficient way. Group dynamics are much like classroom dynamics that separates strength coaches from a majority of personal trainers. The added discipline of sport science cannot be under stressed. The strength coach uses testing and monitoring mechanisms to driven the sport to get feedback that can adjusts the program for participants to reach peak performance.
This academic approach to training one major reason I think coaches salaries should be more in line with that of university professors since being an educator is a assumed requirement by the profession. According to the Profile of high school coaches (Reference 6) article the top 3 content areas in 2010 were physical education, education, and exercise science. In addition, the profile discusses the prorated hourly wage to be $25-27/hour. In this research study it concludes that a normalized 12-month contract for a high school strength coaches on or not on a teacher’s contract would stand at 57K and 55K respectively plus or minus 1 significant digit (SD) of 17K or 15K respectively. My assertion is that a career university professor could be valued at a higher level which does not accurately portray the true value of a strength coach.
By looking at these 5 points, we have demonstrated a need to attach a higher value a strength and conditioning coach. In many other countries a strength coach must go through a rigorous sport science program just to qualify to be a coach. In the United States we need to place education for coaches at a higher level more in the line of how parents and families value the most important things they prioritize with their monthly budget and time invested in sport activities. As parents, sport coaches, and students let’s begin putting value on the education and hard earned experience we expect our strength coaches to have by giving them the support they need to make a living and make the difference we expect!
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References:
The business insider. Online reference: http://www.businessinsider.com/value-of-stay-at-home-moms-2013-5
A Coaching Revolution (2015). Retrieved from website address on October 11th, 2015: http://acoachingrevolution.com/coaching-defined
3. Maxwell, John C. The 15 invaluable Laws of Growth. Center Street Hachette Book Group, New York, New York (Pg. 219-220).
4. Stone, Meg. 2007 Coaches College Conference. Powerpoint “What it means to be a coach?”
5. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research: November 2009 – Volume 23 – Issue 8 – pp 2188-2203 Strength and Conditioning Practices of United States High School Strength and Conditioning Coaches
6. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research: February 2010 – Volume 24 – Issue 2 – pp 538-547 Profile of High School Strength and Conditioning Coaches
Chris Morland, MS, CSCS, SCCC, USAW
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