Why you may be making your assistant coaches worse.
Are you a bad example as a head coach or business owner?

First of all, I have a tremendous amount of respect for anyone who will take young coaches under their tutelage and help them earn a living while coaching others. Even the coaches that mentor unpaid interns are still making a huge time commitment in order to facilitate a comprehensive internship program. Internships, mentorships, and even part-time employees is the backbone and a lifeline of the coaching profession. No other experience is more valuable than evaluated experience from an expert in the field. As we all know, knowledge plus experience equals wisdom. And the job of a director of sports performance or head strength coach is to develop young coaches while benefiting the athletes they train.

The problem with so many internships, part-time positions, and even full-time assistant positions is the experience does not match the hours committed. Meaning, the amount of time that an assistant coach or intern puts into a strength and conditioning program may not be worth the actual knowledge and meaningful experience they receive. The biggest disservice that directors and head coaches make is believing that the knowledge they say is worth more than the behaviors they model. Young coaches will always refer to how their head coach interacts with athletes, their assistants, sport coaches, and administrators. No where is the "actions speak louder than words" cliche more realistic. This is where I feel that very good coaches can be poor mentors.

Here is some ways they do this and some strategies to help avoid this pitfall:

The wrong message #1
Communicating that being strong is the only relevant factor when getting others strong.
I am in no way saying that coaches should not train hard and not ask any athlete to do something they are not willing to do. But, I have said before that being strong can feed your ego, but getting others strong will feed your family. They are several things that can serve as examples of this.

First, anytime you ask really good athletes how they did a certain skill, specifically a soft skill, most will not know how they did it. A great pass-rush move, a drive to the basket, or an outstanding defenseive play which requires a tremendous amount of coordination, talent, ability, and skill sometimes do not have a clear explanation of how it was done by the athlete themselves.

When I heard Michael Johnson speak at the CSCSa conference back in 2006, one of the things he admitted was when he first opened his training facilities he was not a very good coach. His candor was refreshing and it made sense to me. For quite some time he was the fastest human being on earth. Being fast was easy for him. It is the same thing for an Olympic lifter who just "gets it". If you're on the platform and have to think about the specific steps in order to make a lift, you probably will not be very successful on the platform. This goes back to the unconscious-competence scale.

Athletes that never have to think about how they perform the skill sometimes are not the best coaches. It's like the genius professor that has no idea how to get the point across to their students. So, looking at coaching strength, being strong may not be the best tool to get others strong. Sometimes you're just plain stronger than others for a multitude of reasons. The act of coaching requires taking it individuals goals, needs, and weaknesses to formulate a plan to improve upon.

Here is the second flaw in that theory. If being strong is a prerequisite to getting another strong, then having the physical attributes of other fitness requirements will be necessary too. Do you institute mobility and soft tissue work into the program? If you're teaching athletes how to be fast amd explosive, does this mean that the coach needs to be fast and explosive as well? There is a difference between a coach knowing how to teach their athlete's how to jump and land. There's a difference between a coach knowing how to demonstrate a proper technique in the clean. But, is it necessary to have a higher vertical that every athlete you coach in order to get their vertical jump higher. If you are going to play the "We are stronger as a staff" or "I am stronger as a coach" than your competition in order to get athletes strong; then you should also have a staff that it's faster more mobile, and can jump higher, than your competition as well. This theory is flawed.

Sometimes the average player or the field or in the weight room makes the best coaches. Thinking analytically about how to break a plateaus and addressing weak points is the anecdotal experience that make good coaches, great.

The wrong message #2
Taking credit for individual or team success
This will resonate with private sector, collegiate, and high school coaches. One crucial aspect all coaches need to understand is that the physical development is only a portion of the overall development in preparation. If you are considering that physical preparation is about one fourth of the total athletic preparation then there are many more aspects that we are not directly or even indirectly responsible for.

One thing that drives me insane is when a strength & Conditioning coach takes credit for an athlete's success on the field, Court, or track. To equate the success of an athlete in their sport to the specific training program being coaching on the platform by a strength coach is ludicrous.

There was an example of a young man praising the success of a certain major-league baseball player to CrossFit. Now, regardless of what you feel about CrossFit, I, in no way feel that that young man made it to the major league due to the specific training protocols that were implemented up until draft day. Furthermore, most training protocols are rarely clearly defined. In order to bring and success by a particular training protocol would have the assumption that all coaches in specific modifications of that training program are identical. In other words, there are thousands of ways to implement conjugated periodization into a training program. There are many varieties of 531. And, 1 million ways to implement a CrossFit program. For athletes. In fact, most training programs that are popularized by coaches nowadays are adaptable, variable, and diverse by their very nature.

Case in point, the Tier system is one of the most adaptable training programs for athletes. Triphasic training can be instituted in just about every training methodology known to coaches. So to credit success to a specific training program leaves itself to too many questions. Oh yes, and the baseball player who made it to the majors because he did CrossFit? I would bet my mortgage that his ability to play baseball was bu far the greatest determining factor in his success. If you say that being strong, explosive, and mobile are prerequisites for success on the field then you are assuming that CrossFit is the only method to reach those goals. Also, the coach that includes box squats with chains in the program probably shouldn't take credit due to the fact that the implementation of this exercise is to varied.

Now, I am in no way saying that a comprehensive sports specific training program is not important for the athlete's or team's success. The Takeaway point is that if you are going to take credit as a strength coach for your team winning, then you should take the blame when they lose. I often hear that "We lost because that team had better players". So with the team that beat you because they had better players than the team you beat was because you had better players. You can't have it both ways.

If your team beat another team because your training program then any loss you accumulate was because you're training was inferior for that particular week. You'll agree with me as I am typing this that saying that statement out loud doesn't even make sense. I agree you should be proud of the physical development, improvements, teambuilding, and even mental toughness had a positive impact. But, don't steal the spotlight from the kids you are trying to spotlight.

Every loss is not the coaches fault for the play calling abilities in every win was because your team is more physically dominant. Again, you cannot have it both ways.

The wrong message #3
Your way is the only way
We were always fortunate to have a lot of young people intern for us. I hope that doesn't sound arrogant, but one of the things I have been pretty good at is developing young coaches. Educating coaches on how to be better coaches is something I take pride it. This is not because I was the best strength & conditioning coach (far from it), but probably because I made as many mistakes as anyone in the field. I have been on all sides of the street to developing internship. I have hired interns, I have been an intern, I have helped coaches develop an internship curriculum, and I have helped young coaches find internships. Lastly, I have tried to assist former interns into graduate assistant or full-time assistant positions in the strength & conditioning field.

I know I was guilty of not preparing our interns in the best manorr possible. Some of that was on me, some of it was on the situation that we were in that the Division III level. The biggest thing I learned when having interns was that it was an educational experience for them. Having an intern so that you can cover the weight room or cover teams is the biggest mistake I ever made as a strength coach.

The other side of this: is the fact that head strength coaches know they need to develop their assistants. Interns need to be prepared for GA positions, GAs need to be prepared for full-time positions. The hardest subjects and the most difficult aspects of stength development to both assess, evaluate, and address are factors that are often neglected in the academic curriculum. This is the standard difference between the art of coaching and the science of coaching. Sometimes there is a large disconnect. Specifically, program design is one of the most underdeveloped attributes in young coaches. I do not think that this discrepancy is due to a lack of effort, knowledge, or time. Often times the situation does not allow for young coaches to truly design programs for the teams they work with. Shared facilities limit the coaches ability to design programs in a realistic setting for their teams. Designing programs for multiple teams in the same facility requires an integrated system to allow optimized usage of equipment and resources. Even the largest weight rooms like the one I worked in at West Point which was 20,000 ft. All coaches needed to coordinate what areas and what equipment in the weight room they would be using for that particular time period. So as a head coach, we are often left with having interns provide mock programs in theoretical situations. This can definitely be a benefit to your interns and assistants if done correctly. Designing a program for teams they are not familiar with during a cycle that is difficult to program for will help them develop and implement their coaching philosophy.

The key is an honest, Peer evaluation and critique from the head coach. Think of this as a rough draft it as the knowledge base of the intern or assistant increases, so does the depth of the programming and intricacies of the program over the course of the internship.

So what happens in most situations? Assistants implement the same exact program across all sports and teams. A template is provided and most coaches need to work within that template. This is often necessary but empowering coaches to make mistakes and learn from experience is one of the best lessons they could have. There is a balance between allowing young coaches to develop their philosophy while still acclimating to the head coache's philosophy while they are employed. Not an easy dilemma to deal with. But, there is another problem that arises from the situation.

It is my opinion that coaches can it should be evaluated by the abilities of their assistants. How ready and prepared is your assistants to be the head coach themselves? That is part of the job and is essential for our profession. In the private sector, are your employees fully prepared to open girl business one day? Understanding that they may become a competitor in the future, it is still the head coach's responsibility to prepare them to do so. That is the difference between a businessman it a true coach.

Many coaches have different philosophies and methodologies. The biggest mistake a coach can make is not giving their assistant the opportunity to decipher between what is valuable and what is not. If your coach who loves the Olympic lifts and you are hired by a coach who does not use them based on beliefs or logistics; you're in a tough spot. You should be flexible enough and have the knowledge base to provide a comprehensive program for your athletes without using the tools you most believe in. The other option is opening your own facility. In the collegiate sector, arguing coach's philosophies with your new boss is a delicate undertaking. Sometimes it's not about right and wrong. It's about what is right for your situation.

WEDNESDAY AM
53lb Kettlebell Swing w/ Light Band
3x10
supersetted with....

Med Ball Floor Slams
3x6

Log Press
170 for 8 triples

supersetted with....

Neutral Grip Pull-Ups
8 x 3 w/ Grips 1,2,0,3,1,2,0,0

Dumbbell Bench Press
100s x 10

Ring Rows
1x20

Ring Triceps Extension/ Abdominal Fall-Outs
1x15/15

THURSDAY
Conventional Deadlifts
330 for 6 triples

Sprints
(2) 10s
(4) 20s