Archive for evidence based practice
So you want to be an S&C coach? Part 3: Continuing your development!
Posted by: | CommentsFirstly, if you’ve missed any of the past 2 parts you should go back and read them before you read this.
Click here for part 1 which is all about getting the knowledge required.
Click here for part 2 where I look at how you can get your coaching experience.
This post is all about once you’ve got some experience and are working in the industry, how do you keep on evolving and progressing into the coach that you really want to be.
We all have specialist areas of interest within the umbrella term of strength and conditioning coach. You need to have a level of competency in all the areas of job which are:
- Coaching and designing strength and power sessions and programmes.
- Coaching and designing speed, movement, and conditioning sessions and programmes.
- Rehabilitation and injury mechanisms for your sports and all sports.
- Periodisation and annual planning for the training units above.
- Nutrition, lifestyle support, psychology basic understanding and application.
- Underpinning knowledge of anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, S&C principles.
- Monitoring and recovery and principles behind these.
- Comminication with coaches/athletes and clients. For some this comes easy, for others it has to be the primary area of focus as this is what really gets you results!!
- S&C for specific populations- Rugby, MMA, Youth, etc etc.
But within these areas (and you may include more than me) most people will have a specialist interest. For me it is the strength and power training as well as movement and agility training. But I also have a strong interest in nutrition and injury prevention too. There’s a lot to keep up to date with and there are so many sources of information out there to read/watch/listen to.
The hardest thing as a full time S&C coach for me is finding the time to keep up to date, but at the same time I personally believe that it is absolutely imperative to do so!! So managing your schedule to include reading time, reflection time etc is very important. You’ll never have as much free time as when you are studying and immediately following your studies when you’re looking for work, so I would make the most of it and try to get through as many books and DVDs as you can!
I still read a fair few books, but I find it easier to digest information through blogs, websites and DVD’s.
Here are a few websites/blogs that I would highly recommend you check out:
- Vern Gambettas blog on athletic development- a pioneer in the field with a huge amount of experience.
- Eric Cressey Blog- Eric comes up with some gems of knowledge generally on the corrective exercise side of things.
- Mike Boyles strengthcoach.com website- another pioneer in the field and a wealth of information on this site.
- Strengthcoach.com podcast- a great resource to listen to on your way to work.
- Strengthpower hour podcast- a great resource featuring the one and only Bill Kraemer. Well worth listening to purely for his gems of wisdom.
- NSCA online journals- a very good resource in general that you can tap into quickly and get some good info from.
- Professional Strength and Conditioning (UKSCA Journal), most of you will be members but the journal has good overviews of research areas that are worth reading.
- Precision Nutrition- John Berardi’s website has some great nutritional information for coaches that I’d highly recommend.
- EliteFTS website- a must for the strength and power training, this site has some great practical info (including a handful of articles from myself 
)
- TNation- A bit of a bodybuilding site but some good authors on there contributing some good stuff all be it with a physique slant. Still well worth checking out though.
- UK Athletics coaching website: Some great podcasts and articles on speed training, strength training recovery and more on here.
Reflection is the Way Forward!
One of the best ways I have found to improve my coaching is to find the time to regularly reflect on what it is I’m doing. I don’t mean sitting cross legged with some whale music in the background, unless you really feel the need, its more about finding 5 minutes to think about how that session went, or how your exercise selection could be improved for the next phase of training. I always carry a diary with me and regularly write notes when I have an idea for a movement or exercise for a specific population. I also scribble down websites to check out when people mention them to me in the gym, and anything else for that matter. I keep the pad by my bed at night too so that when I wake up in the night I can remember the ideas that come up (and pass it to my therapist). Incorporating this into your week will improve your performance as a coach, so make time to do it!
Continuing Education:
This is of course a key concept, not only for developing as a coach, but also for maintaining our accredited coach status with any reputable organization.
Here’s a few courses that I’d recommend you check out along with a load of books that are worth a read too:
- Mobilis Performance Injury prevention workshops: These are written by top physio Martin Haines. This guy is an encyclopedia of knowledge and experience. The courses are good, some is difficult to apply in an S&C setting but worth the investment.
- UKSCA Annual Conference: Always an excellent couple of days and a bargain at the price. Duncan French has done a great job organizing it these last few years.
- Movement Dynamics Physical Competency Workshop with Kelvin Giles: Kelvins philosophy has been a great influence on many coaches including myself. Get to his workshops if you can.
- Optimal Shoulder Performance- Cressey and Reinold. Another great product from these guys and well worth the investment if your are interested in this area.
- High Power Plyometrics DVD: Jim Radcliffe is an authority in the area. Fairly basic but good overview of plyometrics.
- Training for Warriors DVD- Martin Rooney: A good voerview of what a practicing coach is doing with their athletes. Great watching!
- Kelvin Giles Movement Dynamics- Physical Competency screening and athletic development manuals- The best screening process out there in my opinion from a leader in the athletic development field.
- Practical Programming for strength training- Rippletoe: A great guide to periodisation from a practicing coach. Well worth a read.
- Starting Strength- Roppletoe: An in depth look at the basic barbell exercises which form the cornerstone of most S&C programmes. Great investment.
- Developmental Essentials: IYCA manual: With contributions from some great coaches, this manual is a must if you work with young athletes.
- Tapering and peaking for optimal performance- Mujika: This is the text to get if you wanrt to learn from the authority on tapering. Truly a great resource.
- Athletic Development- Vern Gambetta. Need I say more? Buy the book.
- Nutrient Timing- Ivy and Portman: Released a while ago but a good look at the science and practice behind nutient timing.
- Sport Physiologuy for coaches- Sharkey and Gaskill: Some interesting stuff on monitoring training loads as well as basic physiology which is always good to go over again.
- Theory and application of modern strength and power methods- Thibaudeau: Great little text on strength and power training with a good overview on the more commonly used methods.
- Stretch to win- Frederick: Really good book on fascial and general stretching methods. Highly recommended.
- Qualitative analysis of human movement- Knudson. A great look at kinematic biomechanical analysis of movement. Helped me a lot during my MSc studies.
- Stability, Sport and Performance Movement- Elphinston: Great book recently released from a UK physio covering screening info, progressions and regressions from late stage rehab through to healthy.
How do you want to develop?
There’s a load of different topics covered on this list from strength training to stability and stretching to nutrition. All of which are part of the S&C coaches scope of works so to speak. You need to have a good understanding of all these areas from and theory and applied perspective. All the learning material you need was covered in part 1 of this series. When you are coaching everyday you will find the gaps in your knowledge through your experience which should lead you to the right resources to check out. Following this it is down to you as the individual to decide which areas you want to develop more or less than others which for most of us will be based on our personal interests as we all like to read the things we are interested in. However its still important to keep in touch with other areas that are important within the role. For me I’ll always be happy to read up on athletic development, strength and power training, and sport specific S&C, sometimes I need to push myself to read up on nutrition as there’s always something else that you can put to the top of the pile, even though I have an interest in this.
Where are you and where do you want to be?
Identifying your areas of development is a better way to develop your knowledge than simply reading random stuff you come across on the internet or wherever else. Its nice to have time to read what you want to read, I think this is very important, but I would also recommend having a kind of must read list, which should be based on your development needs as a coach. I try to get my interns to write up a competency map as I call it when they come into the programme which is basically a profile of where they are in terms of knowledge and experience coming into the post on a 1-5 scale with 5 being the best coach you can be in that area. I usually talk this through with the individual and then identify areas of development. It works very well You need to get to a baseline in each quality in order to be able to do the job well and this should be addressed first, from there you can choose to go down a specific path to improve your knowledge in that area. Then you can bring up your weak areas when you feel like they need improving. Very often this will be triggered by something that goes on at work, or a conversation with a colleague about programming etc which meakes you think you need to brush up in that area. These are all healthy things to be doing and will improve your competency as a coach no end.
Who’s in your network?
One of the main ways you can keep yourself sharp is to pick up the phone and call up someone else in S&C. Have you ever heard that phrase ‘you are the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with’, make sure those 5 people challenge you in some way and from an S&C perspective get you to think about your programmes and ideas. Even if you decide to keep everything the same at least you’ve rationalized your programme.
So that completes part 3 and the series as a whole. Had a load of good feedback on this series which makes me think that it was probably worth writing! Again to your success, Brendan
If you enjoyed it make sure you leave a comment below and retweet the link to your followers.
Also don’t forget to sign up to my newsletter by leaving your details in the box below so you can download your free recovery guide and a few other bits too!
“Been doing it for 30 years!!”
Posted by: | CommentsIf you work in strength and conditioning and you make some attempt to stay up to date with current trends and research in the industry, chances are you have come across the person who responds to the awkward question with something like the statement above!!
But the question is, is it okay to rely on this type of response to a question regarding the rationale of your programmes, sessions, philosophy or whatever else can be called into question??
For me as always, the answer is it depends. There are certain questions that have pretty damn solid answers that everyone should be expected to know the correct answer and implement in their programmes.
“ How many reps and sets for strength, power endurance etc etc? ”
“ What work to rest ratio for speed/plyometrics? ”
“ Is static stretching appropriate immediately before power training?”
“If I give that girl my best smile will I end up with a smile on my face?”
Okay the last one was a joke (it’s a definite yes )….but the rest are pretty much clear cut these days and should be administered accordingly. However there is a lot of other stuff that actually does not have a solid scientific background that we use everyday, which makes questions in our programmes difficult to answer.
Such as:
“ Why do you put glute activation work into that session?”
“Why would you choose to do contrast or complex training and can you justify the rest interval you are using?
“ Why do you make your athletes take vitamin D?”
The list goes on and on and the answer to these questions will generally be an opinion rather than a fact backed up by hard scientific evidence.
I think that there is a trend in strength and conditioning to come down hard on people who don’t come from a rock solid science based philosophy of programme design and implementation.
My feeling is that as long as you can come up with a rationale for the exercise/supplement/programme design etc etc that you are prescribing as the coach, that is okay! Its okay because we are coaches afterall aren’t we? And its okay to try things out and be creative. We need to ideally be in a position to measure improvements subjectively and objectively if possible as a result of these interventions whether its through performance gains, movement analysis etc, however sometimes you just have to go with your opinion that something works and run with it. I’m certainly not a scientist, I love the science behind training and make an attempt to stay up to date with the research, but in truth it would be detrimental to my programmes to take the pure science approach because I would have to take out some things that I really believe in as a coach…..hell, is there even a solid evidence base for foam rolling?? For sure there is a rationale for it, but can this be backed up with hard evidence? The evidence that most people would use is that their athletes feel a lot better for doing it and it seems to improve movement quality as a result…..I think that’s good enough for me!!
As coaches we need to stay on the cutting edge of the research and use it to guide and inform our practice rather than dictate what we do and don’t prescribe, but don’t forget that its our coaching that gets the results, not the science. Its our coaching that improves people and its our creativity that provides the scientists with things to investigate. The coaches lead the scientists not the other way round and that s the way it always should be!!
Keep training hard, thats all for today!! Oh dont forget to sign up for my newsletter and get your free bundle of S&C stuff, the sign up box is on the right of the page you can’t miss it!!
BC
Twitter
Facebook
