Throughout my twelve-year career I’ve been incredibly blessed to have the chance to work under some amazing strength coaches and athletic trainers. From the private setting, to the collegiate level all the way up to the Olympic level. I was also incredibly fortunate to do my undergraduate work in the Morsani College of Medicine’s Athletic Training Education Program at The University of South Florida. Going through an athletic training program located in the college of medicine of a major university gave me such valuable understanding of not only anatomy, physiology and kinesiology but of what my lane as a strength and conditioning professional is. It taught me the value of knowing what I don’t know within this field, and more importantly what my lane ISN’T within it. You see, a lot of times in the field of sports performance, especially in the private setting, the lines get blurred when it comes to what’s acceptable behavior legally and ethically by a sports performance coach. That needs to change. 

Defining the Problem of the Sports Performance Trainer

I’m more than likely going to get hammered for this but it’s important: the field of sports performance doesn’t actually exist. A true sports performance department/facility is a collection of individuals from fields that consist of strength and conditioning specialists, athletic trainers, registered dietitians, sports scientists, sports phycologists, physical therapists, and medical doctors that all come together to create an environment conducive to physical and psychological development of athletes. There is no governing body for sports performance, there is no certification or national board exam to be a sports performance coach, you can’t be a licensed sports performance professional, it’s merely a branding effort in the private sector to try to create a better understand what our jobs are as strength and conditioning coaches. And to be completely honest it worked fairly well. But here’s the problem: you can literally just call yourself a sports performance coach with no background and no education and there’s no consequences for it. Imagine being able to open a medical or construction business with no real idea of what you’re doing and that’s just, ok. While it’s given the public a better understanding of what our jobs are, it’s watered down our field in the worst possible ways. 

Since the mid 2000’s colleges have been pumping out roughly 30,000 new exercise science professionals each year. Roughly 30% of these new graduates would end up in the field of “sports performance” which is about 10,000 new fitness professionals in a field that already has about a quarter million people in it. Now that wouldn’t be a problem if the industry was prepared for that kind of influx year over year but it really wasn’t. It had to pivot towards growing private sector facilities in an effort to give a space for these new professionals to be able to hone their craft and earn an income. While the market tends to fill voids in the best possible of ways, this time around growth was too big too fast and there was now a need for more “trainers”. Enter the former athlete or someone who lost a bunch of weight who is now an expert, many of whom have no real understanding of what they’re doing. They accomplished something with a hammer and now everything’s a nail. They called themselves sports performance trainers because they really couldn’t ethically call themselves strength and conditioning coaches and thus a new industry was born. Now there’s a training facility on every corner, “speed” coaches left and right, and the best trainers in the area don’t know their ass from their elbow but they’re damn good at sales.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, in the beginning stages of training anything/everything works. Everything is a physiological stimulus for the untrained. Running in an agility ladder? Stimulus. Running laps? Stimulus. Lunges on a BOSU ball? Stimulus. Squats with poor positioning? Stimulus. You get the point. So early on no matter how trash the training is, you’ll see benefits on the field of play. This allows these trainers to get away with not knowing that they don’t know, because everyone is getting better, right?

Now fast forward to 2020 and this problem seems to only have gotten worse. I’ve worked at facilities with weekend cert personal trainers who played a sport and are now an expert, former pro athletes who called themselves sports performance trainers who just implemented the workouts they did as an athlete, and people who lost a bunch of weight and are now life coaches. I’m not saying you can’t learn the things you need to learn to help foster success with your athletes, but the majority of these types tend to only have a hammer in their tool box and called themselves sports performance trainers. Just because someone did it, doesn’t mean they understand how to get you to do it. Take a look at the NHL, Wayne Gretzky is arguably the greatest to ever play the sport, and was BY FAR the worst head coach in my lifetime when he was behind the bench of the Coyotes. He never had to learn it he just had it, which makes it incredibly difficult to teach it for a lot of people. This is the problem with the average sports performance trainer.

A Little Bit of Knowledge can be a Dangerous Thing

“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it” - Albert Einstein.

This is one of my favorite quotes. It really highlights the problem with having just a small amount of knowledge on a subject. You think you’re an expert. And I can absolutely relate to it. Back when I first graduated from college I had two years of interning in strength and conditioning and also two years of interning in athletic training in both the collegiate and private setting under my belt. On top of that I had this piece of paper that said College of Medicine on it stating that I was an expert. I finished both my national board exams in 1/5 of the allotted time. I’m super smart now. You couldn't tell me that I didn’t know something, after all I had spent what I thought was a lifetime learning and working in this field. I knew it all, and you couldn't tell me otherwise. Then after graduation I had an extended time of not being able to find employment in the field so I spent some time working other kinds of jobs here and there to pay the bills. During that time I had a lot of free time on my hands and not a lot of money, so I decided to read everything I could find. From brushing back up on basic biology and anatomy, to anything written by Siff, Bompa, Cook, Boyle, Gambetta, Harre, Zatsiorski, Verkhoshansky and to more recent literature by Louie Simmons, Cal Dietz, Mark Rippetoe and Kelly Starrett. This process really started to make me question everything I was doing in the field. Opening my mind to all of this knowledge really made me realize that I knew NOTHING. It humbled me and really forced me to develop a set of principles and a philosophy when it comes to coaching. It was a great experience and it’s the reason I’ve been as successful as I have been as a coach. The problem here is that many of these sports performance trainers never go through this process to be able to arrive at the same conclusion. They don’t know that they don’t know, and this becomes a dangerous situation for the athletes in their care.

Dangerous Practices

Now that I’m not as young and as dumb as I was when I entered the field I’ll be the first person to tell you that I don’t have all the answers. And when I look back at some of my old programming I wanna throw up. And most coaches who make it this far into their careers typically have that same reaction. We’re all dummies when we first start off and if we’re any good at bookkeeping then there’s physical proof of how misguided and stupid we were early on in our careers. But all that’s ok and part of the process. We weren’t putting our athletes in danger, we just weren’t necessarily creating programs that would make them any better. But in my career I’ve seen some of the most blatantly unethical practices that needs to stop. Here’s a list of some of what I’ve personally experienced sports performance trainers doing:

• Adjusting their athletes

  • Not legal

• Manipulating various joints of their athletes

  • Not legal

• Writing meal plans

  • You can give guidance, you can’t legally or even ethically write meal plans. You also open yourself up to litigation if they’re missing anything within that diet that causes problems and there’s no liability insurance for that when you’re not licensed so good luck with that

• Prescribing recovery modalities and/or applying them

  • Not ethical/not legal in most states

• Putting kids in saunas during workouts in an effort to get them to lose weight

  • Doesn’t work, and dangerous

• Injecting an athlete with a mystery CNS recovery substance that made him wet the bed later that night

  • Honestly I don’t even know if this is illegal but it’s unethical as hell

• Shovel fracture from a squat bar being loaded with way more weight than an athlete was capable of

  • Unethical, and displays a lack of understanding

• Trying to fix posturing of an athlete who plays a one sided sport

  • This one probably needs some explanation as it doesn’t sound like a bad thing. Some posture deviations are necessary and good in sport. It’s when the posture gets too far out of whack that we need to try to adjust our programming to help alleviate any issue. A lot of posture deviations are normal and needed, this one wasn’t and the athlete developed scoliosis due to the extra volume from correctives

• Athletes being punished with volume leading to injuries and hospitalization

  • Rhabdo is a real thing, and there’s too many instances of this happening. You also don’t know necessarily know the medical history of your athletes, so fingers crossed they don’t have sickle-cell

• Torn ACLs from incorrect volume and positioning in hurdle drills

  • Notice the s it happened more than once at the same facility

• Spotting Olympic Lifts

  • This isn’t illegal or unethical but you could seriously injure yourself or your athlete doing this and it’s something you learn very early in your career

• Prescribing of supplements via magic?

  • I actually worked along side a sports massage therapist who would hold a bottle of a supplement up to her head, close her eyes and then touch the athlete and tell them how much they should take. I wish I was making this up but I’m not

So all of this is super unethical, some of it’s even illegal yet this kind of thing happens every single day within with walls of some sports performance facilities. Why is that? Some sports performance trainers don’t stay in their lane. They don’t know that they don’t know so they see no problem with stepping out of bounds because they don’t know where out of bounds is. This is a problem.

What is the Actual Scope of a Strength and Conditioning Coach?

If you’ve made it this far you’re probably wondering what the actual scope of practice is for a strength coach, here it is directly from the governing body for strength and conditioning the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s website:

Scientific Foundations -> What you should know

1. Exercise sciences

2. Nutrition

Practical/ Applied -> What you should do

1. Exercise Technique

2. Program Design

3. Organization and Administration

4. Testing and Evaluation

That’s it! That’s what your sports performance trainer or strength and conditioning coach is allowed to do. That’s their job. I don’t see adjustments, manipulations, meal plans, supplement or recovery modality prescriptions, magic, or injections of any kind on there and for good reason: We don’t have the knowledge or legal capability to be able to provide these services. Period, full stop.

Now you’re probably sitting there thinking “it even says nutrition though so sports performance trainers should be able to write meal plans” and you’re right is does say nutrition. Nutrition is on there, but it’s under the scientific foundations portion because they need to have an understanding of nutrition to be able to GUIDE their athletes in their training and nutrition needs. So if you’re currently doing it, stop. And if you have a sports performance trainer who’s providing this service to you, get your money back.

Here’s a list of standards of practice from the NSCA as well, it’s fairly long but I promise none of those are found within their literature.

NSCA Standards of Practice

I hope this article has helped you understand what your coach should and shouldn’t be doing. Whether you’re an athlete, a sports performance trainer or a parent looking to put your child in the best possible position for success it’s really important to understand that you don’t know, and to STAY IN YOUR LANE!