When an athlete is looking to hire a nyc personal trainer or sports performance coach, instinctively most will search for a candidate that’s played at the highest level within their respective sport. i.e. I’m a basketball player therefore I’d hire a former NBA player. While on paper this all sounds good and dandy, unfortunately in reality this isn’t the case at all.
Athlete vs. Coach
I can see the appeal of being coached by a former professional athlete. But in reality most athletes get to where they are via good coaching, genetics, and timing. The key point for this post is COACHING, particularly a sports performance coach. There is a science behind programming for an athlete, it’s not just pushing the athlete to exhaustion or strength gains, anyone can do obtain these simple qualities. The art of coaching is developed not just through research but in the practical field under the guidance of an experienced and knowledgeable strength and conditioning coach. Throughout my career I’ve seen a lot of unqualified coaches through gadgets at their athletes to make training seem cool, when in reality it’s just wasting time to “entertain” the client. It’s infuriating to me to see, as that time could’ve been better spent on specific drills that actually have translation to the sport or test.
Example:
Speed Ladder- the speed ladder has been touted as a great foot work drill. While it potentially could have some neuromuscular adaptation in relation to foot coordination, I doubt it’ll have a great translation to performance on the field or during a test- unless it’s a speed ladder test, which I’ve never heard of any legitimate league or team do. These type of drills can be beneficial for the younger athlete (8-12) but beyond a warm up I wouldn’t find this “speed tool” very beneficial for translation to sprint training.
Going back to athlete vs. coach, the athlete has experienced the game through the athlete’s perspective a great quality to have but a much different view point from the coach. From a performance coaches perspective, the coach is analyzing movements and assessing what is needed to get stronger and developed during the off-season. The assessment and program design will then hopefully have a great carry over for the athlete’s given sport.
Coaching
I don’t believe that the “Art of Coaching” is getting the respect it deserves. Coaching is a skill set in it of it self, you can read all the books, goto all the seminars, and do whatever theoretical research but it doesn’t compare to real world coaching. When an athlete is doing a 3-5 yard sprint start that takes less than 1.5seconds, which will help you develop the athlete, your text book notes or your coaches eye? I’m not saying that education isn’t important but the implications of not having practical experience as a COACH is a much different experience. It’s very comparable to people that goto seminars and critique and try to belittle the presenters, until you’ve been up there you don’t know how much work it takes to make it entertaining, thorough, and informative- a very difficult task.
A more generally relatable example would be of teachers, just because a teacher graduates with a degree in teaching doesn’t make them an effective teacher, neither does just being a student equate to you becoming a good teacher. The greatest teachers have a knack to be able to easily relate information to their students without boring them to death.
Conclusion
The point of the post is to make very clear that coaching is a skill set that takes time to develop. Merely stating that you’ve played sports all your life and have been a “gym rat” is not coaching experience, that’s athletic experience and it’s two completely different realms. Personally, I’m just tired of seeing so called “personal trainers” or “sports performance coaches” running athletes through random drills, fad equipment, and beating them down to a pulp to make it seem as if they are hardcore and doing actually something. When in reality, this is just a random roulette of exercises disguised as a program for sports performance training and it equates to shit results.
A qualified coach is one that can assess the athlete’s needs, cue the athletes in the simplicity terms, and make the biggest impact on the athletes performance while balancing risk of injury. Strength in the weight room is one part of the development of an athlete and because of this we don’t do absolute maxes with our athletes, the risk vs. reward isn’t worth the risk of injury. In another post we’ll discuss the benefits of the various aspects of strength and what we’ve found to be the most effective for our athletic development.
Stay strong,
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