Just like the last blog post please know that this comes with nothing but love in my heart for the field of strength and conditioning. You might think I am wasting my time with this article. I think I am not. We NEED to unite and have this be our title. In this article I will lay out exactly why we need this to be our title, and how doing so will help us get paid more. If you want to get right to the X’s and O’s of earning more money - go to the end of this article. If you want to hear the whole rant and understand the history of our profession, keep reading. 

Why Not Sport Performance Coach 

Listen, it sounds great saying sports performance coach. It really does. It has the word sport in the title and we work with athletes that play sports. And it has the word performance, which obviously we want our athletes to perform well. So why wouldn’t we want our title to be sports performance coaches?

Well, lets start with the fact that our field of strength and conditioning is still very young. Please keep in mind that it was just about 50 years ago the first S&C coaches got paid to train athletes. Whichever camp you belong to you either think Coach Boyd Epley or Coach Alvin Roy were the first paid S&C coaches. Based on the research I have done, it seems like Coach Roy was the first and then Coach Epley did what he did with the Nebraska football team - but I digress.

Need to Understand the Past

You might be asking yourself why did Justin talk about two coaches from 50+ years ago and how in the world will this help me earn more money as a strength and conditioning coach? I am glad you asked. The reason is our profession is still young. This is something that Coach Ron McKeefery highlighted to me ino our CMW together (click here for the conversation). Why does this matter? Because right now we are trying to establish ourselves as “legitimate” in the industry of athletics. Rather than spending time breaking apart from one another - we need to unite.



Take a look at the above image am I attempt to illustrate my point. Up at the top is the whole strength and conditioning field. As coaches come up with more and more titles for ourselves we get smaller and smaller into fractions. Names like sports performance coach, athletic performance coach, functional strength coach, sports development coach, etc… simply confuse people who are trying to hire us (and these are often the people who have the money or are controlling the money in order to hire you).

How Other People View Us

Pretend you are the owner of a professional organization. You are the person whose names is on everyone’s check. The general manager is the one coming to you telling you things. They come to tell you that the prior strength coach is leaving for a new job. Fear not your organization is going to hire a sports performance coach. Well that sounds great, but what about our strength and conditioning coach that we had. Will our team be strong and in shape? Fear not the general manager tells you, of course the team will be strong and in shape, this sports performance coach will make sure our players can perform when playing sport!

You are slightly concerned, but you go along with it anyways. The general manager comes to tell you that this coach has also decided to leave for a new job. Again, fear not you are hiring a functional performance coach. Well what is this you ask yourself? Was the training the last two coaches done not functional? What is functional? See where I am going with this?

I hate to admit it but the people who hire and pay us don’t know what they are getting in the product when we don’t have the same name. Let’s call it like it is. No athletic director, owner, general manager, or anyone else working up in the C suite of an organization REALLY knows what we do (unless they themselves were a S&C coach). Sorry if this his harsh news to you but that person has a TON of other things going on. They are not supposed to know all the ins and outs of our job and how important we are to the players and coaches. And guess what - changing our title to whatever we each individually want isn’t going to help them know what you do.

There has never been nor will there ever be an admin or owner that says to themselves “oh thank goodness we got rid of the strength and conditioning coach and have a sports performance coach because I KNOW what they do.” That ain’t happening my friend. 

Getting Paid More Money 

So how does this help us all get paid more? Thank you for asking. Well let's start off with congratulating the NSCA for the fact that they went to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for strength and conditioning coaches. Read that sentence again. It might seem like a throw away sentence but it is not! What the NSCA did for strength and conditioning coaches is to get us federally recognized in the 2028 Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) click here to read more about it.. This is REAL progress in people understanding what we ACTUALLY do. Strength and conditioning coaches for the longest time have wanted to be viewed differently than the personal trainer at a local gym. Now we have that progress!

When talking to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics the NSCA helped establish what we actually do, work environment, how to become a coach, pay, job outlook, and unique nature of the profession. THIS IS HUGE. This helps the United States (the best country in the world) understand exactly what we do - so that we can be paid and understood. The NSCA already had to say “The NSCA respectfully requests the SOCPC include ‘Strength and Conditioning Coach’ as a detailed occupation within the existing major group 29-0000 (Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations), minor group 29-9000, and broad occupation 29-9090.”

Now imagine how it would look if they had to go back and say - hey United States Bureau of Labor Statistics can you please add to it 29-9091 for sports performance coaches. Keep ALL THE SAME info on pay, job outlook, how to get hired, etc…but just change the title. Oh and can you please create 29-9092 for athletic development coaches too? Yes please keep ALL THE SAME info on pay and whatnot? Hopefully you are laughing because you know how silly that would be. Well that is what is happening to our profession right now. We are fighting over what our title is - and in the process we are ruining our field. Athletic trainers are not fighting over their names.

So that is one way we can help ourselves get more money - keep the same title, report your salary to the NSCA when they ask for it (so they can report it to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics - who can then set standards of pay - think like minimum wage type stuff). But here is another way we S&C coaches can earn more money. This way affects coaches with respect to hundreds of thousands of dollars. And sadly for you, you will have to wait for the next article to come out.

Until then read another blog post by clicking down below, watch a video on our YouTube channel, or members go check out the 180 different webinars in the members home page. If you are not already a member click here for a trial membership where you can see all that SCN has to offer.

See you soon in Pt 2 of this series.....