So You STILL Wanna Be a Strength Coach?
After writing about how bad this industry can be for both your physical and mental health I hope that I’ve dissuaded some of you from jumping head first into this field. You can find that blog post here along with a video explaining how hard it can be to make it in this field. However, if you’re anything like me you wouldn’t have listened anyways because you’re gonna do what you wanna do, facts be damned ammirite!?
For those of you who are hell bent on getting into the fitness industry here are some of the things you need to do to ensure you’ve got a chance to make it!
Get a Degree IN THIS FIELD
Now this should go without saying but you NEED to get a degree in this field. I don’t know why but the fitness industry is RIDICULOUSLY oversaturated with people and for the most part it’s oversaturated with people who didn’t care enough to get a degree in anything having to do with fitness/science. Whether its Athletic Training, Physical Education, Exercise Science/Physiology, Kinesiology or Applied Physiology and Kinesiology you need to have a solid base from which to program and getting the education in these areas does just that. One overlooked aspect of this is that it shows you actually cared enough to do it, and to your future potential employers it matters.
When you’re programming you need to have a sound understanding of why you’re doing something, and the why goes all the way down to the molecular level. If I asked you “why are we doing this specific exercise with this specific load?” and you answered “because it makes us stronger” my next question would be “why/how does this make us stronger?” If you cannot answer that question then you have no business programming that movement/load/etc. If your answer is “because reps at 1-5 increase strength” then you’re on the right path, but you still don’t have a real understanding of the why behind it. Here’s a real life example of a conversation I’ve had with coaches:
As an intern prior to graduating college I spent about two years interning in both the private and university/team setting. This gave me a really good understanding of how different these two settings can be. While at the University of South Florida I got to see training in a legitimate team setting, where accountability was important and jobs were on the line every single day, and while at the Athletes Compound I got to see a more laid back approach to off the field training even though with NFL Combine and MLB Spring Training prep there were millions of dollars on the line. These two scenarios seemed to be diametrically opposed to each other but the end game of both was physical preparation for sport. At the university level as a coach you’re an authority figure demanding they do things, and in the private setting you’re more of a partner in their growth. They’re very different dynamics.
I had two different instances (one at each facility) that really stood out to me when it comes to the “why” of training and programming. The first one was at the Athletes Compound at Saddlebrook Resort when I was working with an athlete that the director had programmed for. He was to do dumbbell Arnold presses while sitting on a stability ball. This seemed odd to me so afterwards I asked the director “why did you program this movement with this athlete?” His answer was “because it’s training through all three planes of motion and he’s working on his core stabilization on the physioball.” This answer wasn’t enough for me in the moment so I pressed him as to why that’s important and he answered “to help prevent injuries.” This is a terrible justification, and there’s a million and one reasons why this wasn’t the best possible choice of exercise for this athlete. I wasn’t gonna press him too much, I needed a letter of recommendation after all this was said and done so I shrugged it off and said “ok.” But what I should have asked was how does this movement prevent injuries? What injuries are we trying to prevent? How does taking away neural drive away from the shoulders by forcing him to balance on a ball help prevent injuries and make the athlete stronger? Now my boss was a smart dude, but if you can’t explain to someone with an exercise science background the why down to the molecular level you shoyldn’t be programming it.
Fast forward two years and I’m at USF with the football team. We had just gotten the redshirt freshmen in during Summer B and they were in a volume intensive block. This program was a HIT Method program (more on why those programs are trash here) so they were running 45 seconds on/45 seconds of rest on all their movements. The load on the bar was the same across the board for ever athlete, and for added insanity they had pull ups thrown in the mix. This lift legitimately looked like someone forgot they had a group coming in and threw a few movements together to get some work in. Now I’ll be the first to tell you that a volume intensive block is a solid choice during your first few weeks to lay the ground work for the higher intensity work that’s coming later in their training however everyone was failing 20 seconds into every movement. A few days later I had some time with the Associate Director of Strength and Conditioning and I asked him “why are we lifting for time and not for reps?” and his answer was “I don’t know.” Now this guy wasn’t in charge of the programming (the Director was) so it wasn’t his burden to answer with any real substance, however the Director hadn’t done his job in informing the assistants and interns as to the Why. In addition to that during the summer for conditioning the team would run 300’s every Wednesday (this is stupid, football plays last on average around 5 seconds, a 300 is roughly 45-60 seconds long, football players will NEVER need this). We would stay off the field and run on the track and for most of the Summer I wondered why we ran on the track, so finally I asked the Associate Director why we ran on the track. His answer? “Because that’s how they did it at the U” and he rolled his eyes as he explained it to me. Again this is a terrible rationale as to why you’re doing anything. Physical preparation for football at the university level is an interesting venture, and too many football coaches get to dictate what goes on in the gym, I’ll leave it at that.
In all the instances above the coaches programming the work had a solid background in exercise physiology; one had his masters and the other his Phd. If they struggled with explaining the why, imagine someone who has zero background in physiology/physics/etc. If you don’t understand what happens at the lowest levels of adaptation you’ll struggle with the why of your programming and if you cannot understand or convey the why, you shouldn’t be doing it. While I understand that I sound like somewhat of a gatekeeper here, I do not care, call me a gatekeeper. This field needs MORE gatekeepers IMO.
If you want to be taken seriously in this field by your peers it would go a long way to get a degree pertinent to this field. There’s too many coaches with business and marketing degrees, some with sport management degrees and some with no degrees at all. And that’s all going to change soon here with the NSCA not allowing non-fitness related degrees to get certified with a CSCS anymore, so if you’re not getting a pertinent degree you’ll soon be SOL.
Get a Legitimate Certification in This Field
If you want to work with athletes get your Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) certification through the National Strength and Conditioning Association or your Strength and Conditioning Coach Certified (SCCC) certification through the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association. These two are the gold standard in this field and anything else doesn’t hold water when looking for employment. While other certifications exist they all fall well short of holding weight in your endeavors of becoming the best possible strength and conditioning/sports performance coach you can be. Some certifications you’ll see in this field are the following:
National Association of Sports Medicine - Performance Enhancement Specialist (PES)
National Association of Sports Medicine - Corrective Exercise Specialist (CES)
ACE/NASM/NSCA/ACSM/etc - Certified Personal Trainer (CPT)
USA Track and Field - Level 1 and 2
Crossfit - Level 1, 2, 3 and 4
USA Weightlifting - Sports Performance Coach Certification (USAW SPCC)
USA Weightlifting - Level 1 and 2
International Sports Science Association - there’s like a million certs from this association
National Council on Strength and Fitness - Certified Strength Coach (CSC)
National Strength and Conditioning Association
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS)
Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach (RSCC)
Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach with Distinction (RSCC*D)
Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach Emeritus (RSCC*E)
Certified Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association
Strength and Conditioning Coach Certified (SCCC)
Master Strength and Conditioning Coach Certified (MSCCC)
There’s a lot of letters up there and for the most part the majority of them mean nothing. The NSCA and the CSCCA are the only two governing bodies that matter. NASM isn’t a terrible organization, but let’s just say that my certification exam for my PES was online and took me about 30 minutes to complete. To be fair I also passed my ATC exam (a 4 hour exam) in about 75 minutes and my CSCS exam (also a 4 hour exam) in under 90 minutes. But my ATC and my CSCS exam were in person, I actually got searched for anything that I could use to cheat (cell phones were taken and locked away and I got patted down), we had cameras on us, and I had to show proof of my degree to sit for those two. Do with that information what you will, but just understand that not all certifications are created equally.
There are ALL KINDS of nonsense certifications in this industry. There’s TRX certifications, kettlebell certifications, nutrition certifications, and a wide array of “strength and conditioning” certifications that mean nothing. It’s fun to add letters to the end of your name and early on in my career I did just that because without a bunch of experience you feel like people will take you more seriously if you’ve got letters after your name. I had a ton of certifications that meant absolutely nothing. If you’re interested in those niche certifications then awesome have at it! But just understand as an owner of a gym if you don’t have CSCS or SCCC after your name when it’s in the resume pile, it probably won’t even get looked at. Save your money.
Spend Time Interning
Interning is important! Not just for the learning process and gaining experience but it allows you to decide if you want to be in this field for the long haul. When you intern get in there and WORK. Get there when the director gets there and stay until the director leaves. Find out if you’re even built for the 12-15 hour days before deciding to spend the rest of your life in this industry. You may find out that you’re just not built for the long days, and that’s ok!
Also of importance when you intern is to try to do it in different settings and under different coaches. In my last write up I said that your degree gives you the bare minimum education and it’s 100% true. You now have to find philosophies, principles and programming/coaching styles that fit your personality, ability and goals as a coach. When you first graduate you’re not ready, and in saying this I’d like to apologize to the many clients I had early on when I first got into this field. I DID NOT KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING and neither will you! And that was after three years of interning under a wide array of different coaches in different settings. But learning under different coaches allows you to see different programming strategies, different coaching styles, etc and it will allow you to understand more about the field as well. You’re doing yourself a HUGE disservice if you only intern in one setting, under one coach because you’ll more than likely mold yourself to who you interned under and there’s SO MUCH MORE out there. Bite off a little bit from each coach and mold yourself into the best possible coach for your clients. There’s value in spending time in the clinical setting under a DPT, or working with the general population at a general fitness center even if you plan on working with athletes only once you get into the field. You’ll wear MANY hats as a strength and conditioning professional, get out there and learn it all.
Network Your Ass Off
With the exception of ONE job I’ve had in this field every single job I landed came out of knowing someone, or someone knowing me. My first job was the only one where networking didn’t play into it but he said when he saw that I was a hockey player he knew I’d be personable and more than likely a good fit for his facility. Here’s a breakdown of how I got into my positions:
The Athletes Compound (as an intern) - I needed to get observational hours to be able to apply to the Athletic Training Education Program at USF and found the ATC at the Athletes Compound. They needed a strength and conditioning intern last minute so I was offered the position
USF Football (as an intern) - I worked in the athletic training department as a student athletic trainer and got introduced to the director of strength and conditioning
Athletic Edge - Thought I’d be a good fit because I played hockey. Of note as well, he knew my old boss from the Athletes Compound, while this didn’t necessarily help me it showed that I had worked in a legitimate setting
The Athletes Compound - I interned for the director, and was offered a position when one became available
The Performance Compound - I actually coached a few of the owners when they were still playing NFL/CFL ball
AdventHealth Center Ice - The director of Sports Medicine at AdventHealth was a former professor of mine, she strong armed management to get me in there (Thanks Barb!)
USA Hockey - I worked with the assistant hockey coach at AdventHealth Center Ice. He introduced me to the General Manager for USA Hockey and the rest is history
44 Vision Hockey - A kid I worked with for 6 years’ dad happened to know the owner of 44 Vision, Rob Schremp. He introduced us and it was a good fit
The Lyons Den - Granted this is my facility, I own it but I still have financiers. The same dad from number 8 got in my ear about starting my own facility and got the ball rolling on all of it.
As you can see pretty much every opportunity I’ve had in this field came out of knowing someone. You’ll find that this is going to be true no matter what field you get into, but the S&C world is a small one and it’s only gotten smaller with the invention of social media. Get to know people.
Learn to Market
This may seem like it doesn’t belong here, however just bear with me. No matter what you decide to do you’re going to have to market yourself. If you’re in the private sector you’ll live off your ability to market early on, and if you’re in the university setting you’ll essentially have to market yourself in an effort to find work. While marketing yourself for a position, and marketing your services are a little bit different, they’re incredibly similar in a lot of ways. You need to create a social media presence of some kind and it would probably be a good idea to create a website as well. You don’t have to sell anything or any services, but you could start a blog or just have a landing page with your resume and some facts about you or perhaps a video explaining who you are as a coach. The blog function (the place that you’re reading this) on our site has helped us become to top search result for “sports performance in Wesley Chapel” and we even rank pretty high with our articles about Westside influenced programming internationally. In 2020 I put together a free pdf with a Westside for Athlete’s program in it and we rank just behind Westside Barbell’s website for “Westside for Athletes”. We rank higher than all the following (these are all really well known international and national brands/coaches):
Eric Cressy’s Westside for Athletes program
Joe Defranco’s Westside for Skinny Bastards program
Rogue Fitness’s Westside Fitness Equipment
Garage Strength’s Westside for Athletes program
Every single EliteFTS article on Westside for Athletes
You don’t have to have a huge name or even a facility (I wrote that program before we even signed our lease for this facility) just good ideas and an ability to distribute those ideas. We get thousands of hits on our site from our blog space alone and this makes google take us more seriously. If Google takes us more seriously, we rank high which makes everyone else take us more seriously. It’s a cycle. When most people go to hire or find a strength coach, the first thing they do is a Google search of the applicants, strength coaches and general managers/athletic directors are no different. Make your name matter!
Learn to Hustle and Grind
This doesn’t mean to work hard and not smart, you honestly have to do both. Grinding more than you have to shouldn’t be worn as a badge of honor at all, you’ll eventually burn out. If I can make the same money in 4 hours that I make in 15, why the hell would I want to work 15?? You’re going to be putting in a lot of hours, you’re going to be “grinding” more than your fair share so you’ve gotta learn to get in the trenches and get the job done. This being said making your day longer than it needs to be, or putting in hours that don’t give you any real return is an exercise in futility and you want to avoid that at all costs!
You’re gonna have to hustle. This job is a SALES job. I’ll say it again, THIS IS A SALES JOB. If you don’t make the sale or get the job, you can’t do the coaching so you’ve gotta learn to sell either yourself or your services. You can’t rest when you finally do get those clients or that job because at some point in time, you’ll have to replace those clients when they fall off, move, hit financial hardships, go off to college or with your pros when they retire from sport altogether. If you’re in a team setting, there’s always someone coming for your job and there’s always a head coach/athletic director/general manager who’s looking to place blame when there’s a tough season and the strength coach is an easy fire. This means you’ll be in a situation where you have to consistently bring in clientele (if you’re in the private setting), and don’t ever turn down business if you can fit it into the schedule. Until you’ve created a name for yourself you won’t be in any kind of position to turn down clients, so squeezing them into hour number 13 of your day or hour number 76 of your week will happen more often than you’d like. In the team setting you’ll have to do any and everything you can to keep management happy, and some times that’s going to mean taking one off athletes at odd times, or completely going out of your way to change a schedule here or there. The hustle never stops.
Learn to Live WELL Under Your Means
This is good advice for everyone, but this is incredibly important in a field where you’re going to be starting off at near poverty levels of income. If you take a GA position and there’s any kind of housing offered lieu of financial compensation take it, especially in today’s housing market. If they offer you a meal plan, take it. You may have to have a roommate early on, you’ll more than likely going to have to go without a new car for quite a while and your dream of owning a home will be put on hold for a little bit. Just DO NOT expect to make money early on and do what you can to keep your expenses as low as possible early on in your journey into this field.
Diversify Yourself
This is good advice for everyone but it seems like in this industry it’s even more important. You’ll have very little job security throughout the majority of your career, and when you inevitably get fired (it’s not a question of if but a question of when) you’ll need to have as much education/experience/knowledge as possible to get the next job wherever it may be. In this field when you’re coaching at the university level when the head football coach get’s fired, 99% of the time your job (for example) as the men’s tennis strength and conditioning coach is in jeopardy. You could have zero to do with football, but you’ll have a hard time holding onto your job when the new head football strength and conditioning coach comes in and wants to put his own staff in place. When you’re coaching at the pro level any change in the head coach, the GM or ownership puts your job in jeopardy. When you’re in the private setting (unless you own the gym) any drop in revenue or deviation from their plan will put your job in jeopardy. These things are sometimes completely out of your control, but you’ll be in a position to lose your livelihood fairly often due to these kinds of things.
Get your MBA, get a minor in business, attend entrepreneurial conferences, learn how to monetize your skillsets outside of being a coach.
Create Revenue Streams that Don’t Rely on Your Employment
I remember back in 2009-2011 when I was in college and interning with the USF Football team we used to have Mondays with Mac (Ron McKeefery). He would sit us down and go over the management and entrepreneurial side of this field every Monday morning. At the time I don’t think any of us really appreciated the lessons we were learning but looking back at it I wish I would have heeded his advice to us a lot earlier in my career than I did. He was probably the first strength and conditioning coach to create a podcast that people actually listened to and it was called Iron Game Chalk Talk, he wrote a book called CEO Strength Coach and ended up working in education for a gym flooring company called PLAE when open strength and conditioning positions ran dry. He was really emphatic about us creating websites, creating the right kind of social media presence, starting podcasts, etc. These are all things that can be monetized when you inevitably get fired at some point in your career. And understand this as well that when you get fired you won’t just be able to go down the street to the next university, professional team or private facility. You may have to pack up and move to the other side of the country, hell you may have to pack up and leave the country all together! There aren’t that many jobs in this field so you’re going to need to have some kind of revenue stream that’s constant and can get you through the times when you’re on the job hunt. Here’s a few things that you need to start to grow early in your career, they won’t make you money in the beginning but they’re a great thing to have in your back pocket when shit hits the fan:
Create a brand. This can be something like I’ve done here with the Lyons Den, or it can just be creating a brand for yourself as a coach. Either way you’re going to need to establish a brand to move onto the following steps.
Start a website. You don’t have to have any services or items for sale early on but establish it and start making some content. Our first year of having our website for the Lyons Den we had a total of 578 unique visitors and 1565 total page views. It wasn’t great but it was a start. We now get that biweekly and are hoping to drive those numbers much higher in the coming years. Don’t expect anyone to care early on, but stay at it and it will grow.
Start a blog on your website. Write about things you care about, and that people find interesting. While you may never be able to fully monetize your website having something that people can access and read will give you the chance to write for someone else where you CAN monetize your content. It also gives people an insight into your abilities as a coach which can pay dividends down the road.
After you’ve grown your brand and audience create paywalled content. You can use someone like Squarespace for less than $700 per year (website plus paid membership area). It’s cheap and it’s effective. You can create coaching courses, instructional videos, etc.
Create and grow your social media presence. While followers don’t equal dollars, followers DO equal eyes on you as a coach and a chance to grow whatever brand you create. This is important no matter what part of this industry you get into.
Start a podcast. Doesn’t matter how many listeners you start with. It’ll probably be zero just get on the mic and talk about what you do or things that people find interesting. Get your buddies on the pod with you and have fun. It’ll grow and while it probably will never make you any money it’s good to have as part of your brand. People like that kind of stuff.
Learn to Make Time for Self Care
This is advice I wish like hell I would have taken earlier on in my career. My idea of self care after working 70-80 hours a week was downing the better part of 50 beers over the weekend or down regulating with a bottle of vodka at the end of the day and it took me down a NASTY path for almost 15 years. Get outside, get in the sun, go for a walk, find a hobby, do something that helps you down regulate and recover that isn’t THC or alcohol. Working yourself to death is something that happens in this field A LOT. There’s a trail of broken dreams and even bodies on the path to even making a living in this field and you want to avoid that. You’re going to need to be able to take the time to refresh, rest and keep your mental health in check or you’re gonna have a rough time.
Say Yes to Everything in the Beginning
When you first get into this field you’re going to need to say yes to pretty much every potential coaching or networking opportunity that you can. You need experience, you need to network and you need to hone your coaching skills. If a 10U rec soccer team needs off the field performance coaching then take it! If you’ve got an opportunity to go to a local conference and meet coaches you better do it! Your plan early on needs to be to get in front of as many people as possible, to be in as many situations as possible and to pretty much never say no. You haven’t earned the right to do only the work you want to do, yet. This isn’t to say to take jobs that pay well below what they’re asking you to do, but you might have to do a bunch of stuff you don’t want to do early on. Hell I still have to do things that I don’t want to do and I’ve been in the field for almost 13 years now, but we’re trying to build a business and that doesn’t come without time costs.
This field is incredibly diverse in the way it functions. You can equate your early years of you career to the early years of a diverse athlete. We preach ALL THE TIME that kids need to play multiple sports if they want to make it as an athlete. Specializing is not only a bad idea for long term development as an athlete, but it can be dangerous as well with the potential for overuse injuries and burnout. Why should we treat this industry any differently? Specializing in a particular sector of this industry early in your career is incredibly dangerous for your career and it can close doors that are incredibly hard to open down the road. Get in front of diverse populations, work with athletes, train a group of young business professionals, take on a group of stay at home moms in the middle of the day, get some experience in the clinical setting, etc. As. I stated before you’ll wear MANY hats in this field so you better get out there and experience as much as you can, it’ll pay dividends down the road.
There’s ZERO Guarantees
Like everything in life, you’re not guaranteed success in this field. You can do everything right, you can diversify yourself times infinity, you can learn EVERYTHING possible and it may just not be in the cards for you to have success in this field. You can give everything you’ve got for as long as you can and in the end you may find yourself getting into real estate, sales or going back to school when it’s all said and done and that’s ok. The above info is a good place to start and a solid roadmap with solid advice, but just be ready to make a career change if you’re not where you want to be 5-10 years in because the odds are not in your favor.
If you’re just starting off in this field and need advice or someone to bounce ideas off of drop me a line at Connor@theLDSP.com. I may not be able to get back to you immediately but I’ll make sure I can do everything in my power to help!
