07 Dec Four Challenges of Being a Strength and Conditioning Coach

I was having a good conversation over a coffee with a young footballer (soccer) I do some work with yesterday. He asked me about some of the harder aspects of my job. It got me thinking. In terms of working with people I think that there are four areas that can be tough at times:

1 – As a strength and conditioning coach you will never know how many injuries you helped to prevent or minimise, something that is a big part of our job – there is no justifiable way in which we can consistently measure something like this

2 – The uneducated athlete generally just judges how good they think you are by how hard you make them work – this can be extremely frustrating at times (I have written a previous post regarding the dangers of increasing volume and/or intensity way too quickly). Education is obviously crucial here. Hopefully such education will begin to diminish the concept of more is always better (‘more’ is good when it is applied appropriately and sensibly in a long term plan)

* Short term success is never worth it in my opinion if it leads to long term problems eg some good early season results are pretty useless if it means you break down later in the year

3 – We are often the first people athletes/individuals turn too when there is a setback or injury. Am I strong enough? Was I lifting too much? What should I have done better? etc. This can at times be very frustrating as most injuries are generally very multifactorial. There are numerous points I could make here however Il leave it with again education is critical.

4 – Working with other people such as coaches and other health professionals can at times also be extremely difficult. Communication and working with people who you trust is key here.