What is the role of the sports performance coach in a High School
athlete’s athletic career? With this industry growing every year and more and
more kids taking part in outside training programs there almost always seems to
be a conflict of interest between what the performance coach is telling the
athletes and what the high school coach is telling them at their work
outs. I hope that this article will help
both performance coaches and trainers as well as the high school coaches
understand that we should and can work together for the best interest of the
athlete and the team that they play on.
Having been in the sports performance field for around 8
years now and the Director of Strength and Conditioning at one of the top
football programs in the Southeast for the past 4 years I have had the
opportunity to see both sides of the situation.
As a high school
strength coach we need our kids to be “all in” with our training program. We do
not let our kids miss workouts or not do anything that we ask of them. What we
require from one of them we require from all of them and we demand 100% effort.
I believe that one of the most difficult
things we as coaches have to do with our athletes is to get them to believe in
what we are doing and give everything they have to the program and to the team.
Getting this “buy in” is hard enough without having outside sources telling
them that what they are doing is wrong and that they do not need to be going to
the workouts etc. When we have those outside sources telling our kids this, we
now have to fight a kid who believes he is bigger than the team and will not
buy in to what the team is doing to improve. This is a battle that should not be
brought on by an outside trainer whose job is to help the athletes and their
teams not harm them.
As a Sport Performance Coach who makes my living off
training many high school kids who are part of someone else’s program we try to
be very conscious of what we tell our kids. I realize that some high school
training programs are better than others. I will admit that I do not 100% agree
with what goes on in many high school weight rooms. But, my role is not too
make the high school coaches’ job more difficult. It is to give him better
athletes, with better attitudes who are leaders that can help him when games.
We will never let a kid miss a school function to come to one of our workouts.
The school and the team come first! Enhancing our athletes “buy in” to their
school program will help them become better team leaders and help them work
harder in their school programs. As well as set us up as someone who the
coaches can look to for help with their training programs. Not as someone
looking to make a buck, while making their jobs more difficult!
4 Things Sports
Performance Coaches can do to help their High School athletes Become better
teammates:
1.
Supplement
the High School Program – With the amount of kids that are run through a
high school training program it is somewhat easy to know what they are doing at
school. Most programs are going to bench press, squat and clean. Most are lacking
in posterior chain work, unilateral work and multiplanar development. Knowing
this we as performance coaches know what we can work on to help these athletes
automatically. Also, talking with the coaches and players to know what they did
that day at the school will help you design a program that supplements their
high school program, not replaces it.
2.
Evaluate
and Screen for Potentential Movement Dysfunctions or Injury Predictors – Most
high school programs will not screen or evaluate their athletes’ for movement dysfunctions
or for other possible predictors of injury. As performance coaches who usually
work in smaller numbers we can make a huge difference with these athletes and
high school programs by properly screening these athletes for these dysfunctions.
Once we screen them if needed we can design a program to correct these issues
or get them stronger in places that need be to help them perform during their
games. Attacking things that the individual athlete needs is a positive tool
that we have as performance coaches to help our athletes.
3.
Support
the Coach and the Team First Attitude – When an athlete says that he cannot
go to a school work out because his “trainer” told him not too, or the trainer
says the coach doesn’t know what he’s doing, he is putting himself ahead of the
team, disrespecting his coaches and his program. Our job as performance coaches
is too support the programs that these kids are part of. These athletes are not
“our” athletes, they are the programs athletes. If a kid misses all of the summer’s
workouts because he is working out on his own, he will have absolutely no
respect from his teammates who were not able to get their own trainer once the
season comes. He will not be able to lead, or win championships because he has
not been there doing what his teammates have been doing. He has no buy in! We
as coaches may have helped him become a better athlete but we have also
succeeded in making him a worse teammate!
4.
Be a
consultant to the High School Coach – If the High School coach knows that
he can trust you and that you are in support of his program he will look to you
as a consultant. He will send his athletes to you knowing that you will not bad
mouth him or his program and will trust that you will send him back a kid that
has improved both athletically and as a teammate. A win for you the performance
coach, the athlete, high school coach and the Program.
Hope this helps!
Happy training!!
Coach Hunter Wood
