Being a young coach in the ever-expanding landscape of sport preparation is probably quite a daunting experience. You have books, webinars, conferences, and courses, all of which require a critical appraisal to determine what is worth your time and money to pursue, and being presumably an unpaid intern, the latter is at a premium, ergo you want to avoid feeling as though an investment into your professional development isn’t a sunken cost. Couple that with the vast universe that is social media, and the proliferation of coaching social media, which can either be a popularity contest without substance, window-dressing without pragmatism, or self-proclaimed gurus with garbage methodology or no actual on the floor experience, and your head might be spinning at where to start in learning so you can close the immense gap you’ve (hopefully) realized exists between your education and the knowledge and skills needed to be a competent coach.
The reality is this: there is no substitute for the lessons learned while being on the coaching floor. This is why so much of this article series has harped on finding internship opportunities that will afford you the chance to gain experience towards what you want to be doing, which is coaching. If you are only setting up, breaking down, and cleaning up at your internship, and not being given any chances to coach, either you have taken the wrong internship, or if you notice others from your cohort are getting opportunities to coach and you aren’t, you are not demonstrating attributes that warrant your supervisors trusting you to do so.
Beyond that, however, there is obviously supplemental knowledge to be developed regarding foundational concepts, methodology, and application around sports preparation that can and should be pursued to advance your knowledge and understanding as a practitioner. This will also help you avoid being the coach whose only contribution is being a meatstick with a tight polo and ripped sleeves. With that, the reality is that to be a high-level coach, you can’t just be a “______ guy” (think: speed, westside, data as possible words to fill in the blank there); you have to be a jack of all trades or you put a ceiling on your potential to climb the career ladder. As well as taking on professional risk by not possessing multiple skill/knowledge sets that may make you more appealing to a wider variety of coaches and roles they may have to fill on their staff.
In the last article, I went into what you need to do to learn the most you can whilst being on the floor. In this article, we’re going to look at all the options available to you off the floor. Let’s dive in.
Off the Floor
While the time on the floor is invaluable for your growth as a coach, there is also time to be spent away from it growing your knowledge and skillsets as a practitioner. Here are a few tips for how to do so during the busy time of your internship.
Books. One of the interview questions that Keir and I always asked of interns is what books they are reading at the moment. The worst answer? “None”. You should always have something in your queue that you are reading. I generally try to keep a performance-related book and non-performance-related book on hand at the same time, with the goal of 10 pages per day from each. You can do 10 pages, I promise. If you don’t think you can, then go check your screen time weekly report on your phone for a reality check of where your time goes.
Book Suggestions: https://rugbystrengthcoach.com/books
Podcasts. These make for great background listening and learning while you are commuting, doing cardio, or maybe more extensive cleaning tasks. Just like books, keep training and non-training podcasts queued up, as there are a ton of great ones out there that have nothing to do with training but will impart invaluable lessons to carry with you both as a human and as a coach.
Training Suggestions: Rugby Strength Coach, Just Fly Performance, Mike and Brooker Show, CVASPS, Jacked Athlete
Non-Training Suggestions: The Knowledge Project, Making Sense, Philosophize This, Lex Fridman, Psychedelic, The Blueprint
Research. Keeping up with research can be daunting, but it’s certainly a valuable skill to learn how to parse research to assess its value to your practices. What I typically do is keep up with social media channels to see what research has positive support in the coaching community, as well as what some of the pages that are far more research-oriented are publicizing, and then I will go download those articles, add them to my Google Drive, and attempt to do 1 per week. This just helps with streamlining the filtering process, with the amount of research that’s published trying to consume everything even on one topic is just not feasible. When topics particularly interest me, I always find it very worthwhile to comb the references to find other papers that were used in the writing of that particular paper and climb further and further down the rabbit holes of that particular topic.
Research-Based Accounts to Follow: Chris Beardsley, Yann La Meur, Daniel Kadlec, Franco Impellizzeri, Matt Tenan
Conferences. There are A LOT of conferences out there and accompanying misconceptions about their value for learning and networking. Candidly, the quality of conferences has seemed to diminish into recycled presentations, where people turn their excel training cards into a PowerPoint and then the room smiles happily when they receive their confirmation bias that it turns out, that big-time program does Olympic lifts, squats to parallel, and runs 300-yard shuttles just like they do. That being said, conferences are definitely a great opportunity to meet others in the field and if your organization is willing to pay for you to go, you definitely should, as your coaches (hopefully) will look for opportunities to promote you to their colleagues for next steps if you’ve demonstrated yourself to be worthy of that recommendation. Not to mention as an intern, you’ll enjoy plenty of good food and drink with a bunch of other coaches (the rules of how to act and not act from the previous article instalment are still in effect here, click here to refresh your memory).
If you are in the position of having to fund yourself to get to a conference and presumably go by yourself, there will be far more to be gained from going to a smaller conference than going to a big national one, as the more intimate environment will lend itself to better opportunities to connect with other coaches. Look for conferences promoted by coaches you enjoy, or that they are speaking at to help you filter what may be worth attending.
Conferences to Check Out: CVASPS, IUSCA
Internet Stuff (Webinars/Courses). If you’re reading this, hopefully, you have a membership on the Strength Coach Network site, in which case, it should be quite easy for you to aim to knock out one webinar per week. I will do mine on the weekends so I can sit down, write notes, and not be distracted. I will do the same with courses, like the Strength Coach Network Fundamentals Course that can be signed up for at this link here, and aim to complete an hour or so of courses if I have one that I have paid for. Keep these longer, more involved learning opportunities to days where you are going to be more rested and able to pay attention, and keep something constantly in your queue for deeper learning.
Suggested Courses: Strength Coach Network Fundamentals (The most comprehensive, pragmatic course for strength coaches, spanning problem-solving/mental models, finance, and every aspect of sport preparation you could imagine), Complementary Training (variety of courses on Athlete Monitoring, Excel/Google Sheets, and Strength Training), Excel Training Designs (learn how to use Excel in an S&C context)
Social Media. Whatever your opinion is of the social media landscape for strength coaches, at the end of the day, the format is extremely conducive to maintaining a curated, concise feed of anecdotes, ideas, or funnels into deeper pieces of media that can help you find new concepts to explore and apply to your knowledge and skillsets. Sitting down and attempting to hone in on the number of social media takeaways that have found their way into my practice after critical appraisal and trial of those ideas is far too expansive to even attempt an estimate. It also provides a great avenue for casual interactions/questions of posts from the practitioners you follow, providing valuable relationship-building opportunities. I even had a job opportunity present itself to me because I responded to an open-ended question a coach posted that I took the time to provide an answer to. Not to mention doing so familiarizes your name and face to prospective coaches you may apply for future jobs with, providing you with a small leg up in the application process. Should you engage with other coaches, try to keep questions brief, or if you want to ask a longer-winded question, be proactive to ask if they would be willing to answer a more in-depth question before asking, rather than assuming they will be willing to answer. Also, bear in mind that there are coaches who make their living and provide for their families by consulting with other coaches/organizations, so asking for their time for more extended conversations via video or phone call can be a presumptuous move that doesn’t farewell. The altruist in me would hope that full-time coaches would be willing to pay it forward to aspiring coaches and invest the time talking with them, but the reality is that there are far more egos in the field that believe there is a hierarchy and that they are “above” talking to certain coaches. Sadly this especially applies to those who are just starting, so it is better to be overly cautious, rather than presume every coach is willing to open the kimono with you.
Conclusion
With the advent of the internet and the proliferation of social media, the rate at which new information becomes available and is expanded upon is exponentially increasing. With that comes the critical need to filter what is useful, while discarding the rest. This can be a tough task when in the early stages of your career, as you have not had time to hone your bullshit detector. Hopefully, this installment gives you some ideas for how to go about learning off of the floor while in the midst of your internship and has provided some good starting to pursue.
Next month’s installment will dive into the thick of your internship experience- what to expect, and considerations to bear in mind to ensure that you continue to maximize your opportunities to develop and prepare yourself for the next step. As always, if you are seeking other sources of learning, there are tremendous discussions and resources on Strength Coach Network’s forums for you to learn from and interact with coaches sitting in the chairs you want to sit in someday, who are willing to help you learn and grow, so go take advantage!
The reality is this: there is no substitute for the lessons learned while being on the coaching floor. This is why so much of this article series has harped on finding internship opportunities that will afford you the chance to gain experience towards what you want to be doing, which is coaching. If you are only setting up, breaking down, and cleaning up at your internship, and not being given any chances to coach, either you have taken the wrong internship, or if you notice others from your cohort are getting opportunities to coach and you aren’t, you are not demonstrating attributes that warrant your supervisors trusting you to do so.
Beyond that, however, there is obviously supplemental knowledge to be developed regarding foundational concepts, methodology, and application around sports preparation that can and should be pursued to advance your knowledge and understanding as a practitioner. This will also help you avoid being the coach whose only contribution is being a meatstick with a tight polo and ripped sleeves. With that, the reality is that to be a high-level coach, you can’t just be a “______ guy” (think: speed, westside, data as possible words to fill in the blank there); you have to be a jack of all trades or you put a ceiling on your potential to climb the career ladder. As well as taking on professional risk by not possessing multiple skill/knowledge sets that may make you more appealing to a wider variety of coaches and roles they may have to fill on their staff.
In the last article, I went into what you need to do to learn the most you can whilst being on the floor. In this article, we’re going to look at all the options available to you off the floor. Let’s dive in.
Off the Floor
While the time on the floor is invaluable for your growth as a coach, there is also time to be spent away from it growing your knowledge and skillsets as a practitioner. Here are a few tips for how to do so during the busy time of your internship.
Books. One of the interview questions that Keir and I always asked of interns is what books they are reading at the moment. The worst answer? “None”. You should always have something in your queue that you are reading. I generally try to keep a performance-related book and non-performance-related book on hand at the same time, with the goal of 10 pages per day from each. You can do 10 pages, I promise. If you don’t think you can, then go check your screen time weekly report on your phone for a reality check of where your time goes.
Book Suggestions: https://rugbystrengthcoach.com/books
Podcasts. These make for great background listening and learning while you are commuting, doing cardio, or maybe more extensive cleaning tasks. Just like books, keep training and non-training podcasts queued up, as there are a ton of great ones out there that have nothing to do with training but will impart invaluable lessons to carry with you both as a human and as a coach.
Training Suggestions: Rugby Strength Coach, Just Fly Performance, Mike and Brooker Show, CVASPS, Jacked Athlete
Non-Training Suggestions: The Knowledge Project, Making Sense, Philosophize This, Lex Fridman, Psychedelic, The Blueprint
Research. Keeping up with research can be daunting, but it’s certainly a valuable skill to learn how to parse research to assess its value to your practices. What I typically do is keep up with social media channels to see what research has positive support in the coaching community, as well as what some of the pages that are far more research-oriented are publicizing, and then I will go download those articles, add them to my Google Drive, and attempt to do 1 per week. This just helps with streamlining the filtering process, with the amount of research that’s published trying to consume everything even on one topic is just not feasible. When topics particularly interest me, I always find it very worthwhile to comb the references to find other papers that were used in the writing of that particular paper and climb further and further down the rabbit holes of that particular topic.
Research-Based Accounts to Follow: Chris Beardsley, Yann La Meur, Daniel Kadlec, Franco Impellizzeri, Matt Tenan
Conferences. There are A LOT of conferences out there and accompanying misconceptions about their value for learning and networking. Candidly, the quality of conferences has seemed to diminish into recycled presentations, where people turn their excel training cards into a PowerPoint and then the room smiles happily when they receive their confirmation bias that it turns out, that big-time program does Olympic lifts, squats to parallel, and runs 300-yard shuttles just like they do. That being said, conferences are definitely a great opportunity to meet others in the field and if your organization is willing to pay for you to go, you definitely should, as your coaches (hopefully) will look for opportunities to promote you to their colleagues for next steps if you’ve demonstrated yourself to be worthy of that recommendation. Not to mention as an intern, you’ll enjoy plenty of good food and drink with a bunch of other coaches (the rules of how to act and not act from the previous article instalment are still in effect here, click here to refresh your memory).
If you are in the position of having to fund yourself to get to a conference and presumably go by yourself, there will be far more to be gained from going to a smaller conference than going to a big national one, as the more intimate environment will lend itself to better opportunities to connect with other coaches. Look for conferences promoted by coaches you enjoy, or that they are speaking at to help you filter what may be worth attending.
Conferences to Check Out: CVASPS, IUSCA
Internet Stuff (Webinars/Courses). If you’re reading this, hopefully, you have a membership on the Strength Coach Network site, in which case, it should be quite easy for you to aim to knock out one webinar per week. I will do mine on the weekends so I can sit down, write notes, and not be distracted. I will do the same with courses, like the Strength Coach Network Fundamentals Course that can be signed up for at this link here, and aim to complete an hour or so of courses if I have one that I have paid for. Keep these longer, more involved learning opportunities to days where you are going to be more rested and able to pay attention, and keep something constantly in your queue for deeper learning.
Suggested Courses: Strength Coach Network Fundamentals (The most comprehensive, pragmatic course for strength coaches, spanning problem-solving/mental models, finance, and every aspect of sport preparation you could imagine), Complementary Training (variety of courses on Athlete Monitoring, Excel/Google Sheets, and Strength Training), Excel Training Designs (learn how to use Excel in an S&C context)
Social Media. Whatever your opinion is of the social media landscape for strength coaches, at the end of the day, the format is extremely conducive to maintaining a curated, concise feed of anecdotes, ideas, or funnels into deeper pieces of media that can help you find new concepts to explore and apply to your knowledge and skillsets. Sitting down and attempting to hone in on the number of social media takeaways that have found their way into my practice after critical appraisal and trial of those ideas is far too expansive to even attempt an estimate. It also provides a great avenue for casual interactions/questions of posts from the practitioners you follow, providing valuable relationship-building opportunities. I even had a job opportunity present itself to me because I responded to an open-ended question a coach posted that I took the time to provide an answer to. Not to mention doing so familiarizes your name and face to prospective coaches you may apply for future jobs with, providing you with a small leg up in the application process. Should you engage with other coaches, try to keep questions brief, or if you want to ask a longer-winded question, be proactive to ask if they would be willing to answer a more in-depth question before asking, rather than assuming they will be willing to answer. Also, bear in mind that there are coaches who make their living and provide for their families by consulting with other coaches/organizations, so asking for their time for more extended conversations via video or phone call can be a presumptuous move that doesn’t farewell. The altruist in me would hope that full-time coaches would be willing to pay it forward to aspiring coaches and invest the time talking with them, but the reality is that there are far more egos in the field that believe there is a hierarchy and that they are “above” talking to certain coaches. Sadly this especially applies to those who are just starting, so it is better to be overly cautious, rather than presume every coach is willing to open the kimono with you.
Conclusion
With the advent of the internet and the proliferation of social media, the rate at which new information becomes available and is expanded upon is exponentially increasing. With that comes the critical need to filter what is useful, while discarding the rest. This can be a tough task when in the early stages of your career, as you have not had time to hone your bullshit detector. Hopefully, this installment gives you some ideas for how to go about learning off of the floor while in the midst of your internship and has provided some good starting to pursue.
Next month’s installment will dive into the thick of your internship experience- what to expect, and considerations to bear in mind to ensure that you continue to maximize your opportunities to develop and prepare yourself for the next step. As always, if you are seeking other sources of learning, there are tremendous discussions and resources on Strength Coach Network’s forums for you to learn from and interact with coaches sitting in the chairs you want to sit in someday, who are willing to help you learn and grow, so go take advantage!
