Monday, October 28, 2013

The Role of the Sports Performance Coach with the High School Athlete



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

No comments:

Post a Comment