Someone with an advanced degree can go on to training athletes. Your government would hire you to train its Olympians for the next games if you were post-grad with experience but would most likely pass on the 16 year old with a 1 year qualification…
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Well we’ve got 4 physiologists, 2 work with high school tennis players and the rest are no different to PTs. Then we’ve got one PT who specialises in barbell and strength training, whilst all the rest (5+) mostly cater to the middle-aged trying-to-get-in-shape type training.
My dream job is to be a strength coach for a high school. Unfortunately, the state doesn’t license stregth coaches so the people training these very impressionable kids only have PE degrees. None of the classes for that degree cover biomechanics, physiology, or anything related to weight lifting, agility, speed, or conditioning. The majority of the teachers end up being the high school football coach…whose only experience is from his playing days in the 70’s or 80’s.
Heaven forbid they hire someone qualified.
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The quality of strength and conditioning coaches in the US as a whole is a joke. As Jim Wendler says, it’s a bunch of dudes throwing shit at the wall yelling “Intensity!” Hoping something sticks. Who needs to be qualified when you can just have 14-17 year old kids doing half rep squats that are WAY too heavy and reverse curl “power cleans”?
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Any form of actual lifting weights would be a huge improvement over what the strength coaches for my wrestling team have us do.
After I graduated from my 4 year I went to a D2 school and walked on to the basketball team. I wrote our workouts and we stopped once practice started. There was no strength coach. Athletes got out of it what they put into it----which wasn’t much.
The wrestling coach misspelled triceps on his team’s workouts. I about lost my mind when I saw tricepts.
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I feel compelled to reply. I was studying for my CSCS but have abandoned it for now because I teach HS and there are no Strength Coach jobs in Long Island. Not sure where @Frank_C lives, but our PE teachers have Masters Degrees, most in Exercise and Physiology or some shit like that.
So, when I was studying for my CSCS, I spoke to the AD about being a Strength Coach and he told me basically no, it would have to be spread amongst a group of coaches that agreed to give up a stipend to have a Strength Coach, but I could supervise the weight room after school. I thought that would be cool, make $50 an hour to lift with my kids.
So I asked my kids what their training program was like and they told me, WOD (Crossfit).
I’m out.
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I’m in Kansas. My wife has an Exercise Science degree as well and went back to school to get her PE degree. She was a D1 heptathlete. She knows a decent amount from her training and school but there was nothing provided by her teaching degree.
You have to have a teaching license here so I’m screwed. Kansas passed a new rule/law for specialty teachers where you can get a certificate that allows you to teach. To get a full time spot you have to work full time in your area of expertise for the previous five years. If I could make any money training athletes then I’d already be doing it! The beauty of high school is that the parents don’t have to pay extra.
Maybe I can volunteer or pick up a coaching stipend when I retire.
In most countries you can do a one year post grade course that allows you to teach in schools.
Pain in the arse but if it’s your dream job…
Not here. It might be a different story if strength and conditioning was already a licensed position. I’ve contacted the State about making it a licensed program and they said they only consider adding a program after they’ve received a lot of requests for it. I doubt many people have asked them besides me.
The best option here is to get a teaching license in anything and then become the head football coach. I have no desire to coach football and I’d be terrible. I’ve never paid much attention to the sport. Once you’re the head coach then you get to do whatever you want. At my wife’s school the head coach has mostly weight lifting classes and he doesn’t know jack. She now has a couple lifting classes and the kids all love it because she teaches them things and pushes them. They often comment about how coach doesn’t do that. It took her a couple of years to get a weight lifting class because she’s a woman and all, but they’re figuring her out. During her first year she was the only PE teacher who didn’t have a weight lifting class. She was also the only woman. They made her department chair (head of all the PE teachers) after one year.
It takes 2.5 years to get a PE degree after the Exercise Science degree. I just can’t stomach going back to school for that. I’d be teaching PE and I have no desire to do that (sex ed, critical issues, and other classroom life lesson type stuff). I just want to teach kids how to lift with good form and watch them grow without getting hurt. If my wife made double her paycheck then maybe I could afford to volunteer. But they still wouldn’t take me because of liability and other red tape nonsense.
I did not know that! My oldest is in the Exercise Science program at his school. I suggested he get his CSCS certification to have even if that is not the true route he plans on going career wise.
Yeah I got one of those years ago and yes it was the biggest joke I had ever seen
I have a horror story about that regarding my buddy if your interested.
I have cringed at what I have seen by these types in High School weight rooms.
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I’ve got time to read about it! Feel free to drop it in my log if you think it doesn’t belong here, but I’m sure others might be interested too.
I’ll write it up tomorrow brother👍
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How do you all write programs for clients? Do you use excel, google sheets? Are there any programs that allow for client tracking?
I’d be interested in knowing about this too.
I design corporate training as part of my day job and I would love to make a platform that helps trainers deliver programming. Like an LMS or Blackboard for the gym.
I use excel a lot for my nutrition plans, but as far as tracking how, I’ve developed a series of charts/sheets that I use that allow me to monitor the variables I need to stay on top of, and easily check the adjustments made to diet/cardio/training that resulted in said changes.
It’s not just a daily or weekly thing, as with contest preps, you have to expect certain fluctuations and so it’s necessary to be able to see the whole picture.
S
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Recent compilation article is a good read:
The question was, “What do most people NOT know about personal training or coaching?” Six coaches, including Thib and Dan John, gave answers about the unglamorous realities of being a trainer.
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Worth a bump. Anyone still wearing the Staff/Trainer t-shirt?
Summer being in full swing, gyms are probably a bit more crowded than usual with “I wanna lose 30 pounds in 2 weeks”-clients. So how’s business?
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Still rolling deep.
I teach about 45 classes a month.
Spin cycling and weights based circuit training.
I PT one guy and it’s more through loyalty as I’ve known him for years.
PT bores the utter shit out of me now to be brutally honest. I get so many referrals from the receptionists and throw them in the bin.
Too difficult trying to juggle the dad life and hustle for PT
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