The Most Important Part Of Making A Program Successful

One of the best and most exciting parts of strength & conditioning coaching is the fact that there are so many different ways of doing things and constant opportunities for us as coaches to learn and develop our programming philosophies.  There is no one best way to do things and success can be found with myriad of different programming philosophies.  So what makes some programs yield better results than others?  Obviously there are a lot of variables involved in responding to that question.  However, I would like to talk just a bit about what I feel is the most important factor in making a strength & conditioning program successful, and it’s not whether we are doing olympic lifting, powerlifting, functional training, etc. 

First an example.  In football you see the spread offense, option offense, west coast offense and the list could go on.  There have been a lot of great and bad teams that run every type of offense that exists.  Obviously, talent is important.  However, talent being equal, what separates the success of one team from the success of another team offensively, as there are many talented teams that don’t achieve maximum results.  Is it the offense they run?  I don’t believe so.  I would argue that the most important factor is the team’s motivation to give phenomenal effort and their commitment to the offense being run.  There is no doubt that a team that buys into what they’re doing offensively and gives 100% effort with what they’re doing will be much more successful than a team that is not motivated and committed to what they’re doing.  It’s getting the members of the team to buy into the plan, the process and the program that makes a team as successful as they can be.  There are many football coaches that are amazing with x’s and o’s, but they lack the ability to motivate their teams to buy into the system and give the necessary effort.  That’s why you see teams that run different types of offenses winning national championships in college or the super bowl, because the system they run is not the most important factor in the team’s success.  Again, talent is huge.  But there are often less talented teams that come out on top because of the effort and commitment they have to the team and how things are being done. 

It’s the same with our strength & conditioning programs.  We as strength & conditioning coaches could put together an absolutely incredible program on paper that in theory would produce great results.  As with football, many different types of programming philosophies have the potential to yield excellent results.  However, how successful will any program be if the athletes don’t buy in and give phenomenal effort in everything that’s outlined in the program?  The answer is obvious that the results will not be what we would want them to be.  So, we as strength & conditioning coaches should absolutely spend time trying to develop our programming philosophy.  However, I feel like it’s at least as important for us to also constantly develop ourselves as motivators and leaders so that we are capable of getting our athletes to buy into our programs and put forth the type of phenomenal effort that’s necessary to get maximum results from whatever program we put them through.   Just as there are countless different types of programs, there are many different ways that we can motivate and help our teams and athletes to buy into and be committed to what we are trying to accomplish.  Different teams and athletes will often require different motivational techniques.  It’s up to us as strength coaches to find strategies that work for us and that work with the specific teams we work with.

Great blog entry written by Coach Sean Skahan, Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Anaheim Ducks, that talks about this same subject.  Great Stuff!  “Getting Athletes On Board Your Bus” –
http://www.strengthperformance.com/profiles/blogs/getting-athletes-on-board-your-bus.

Be Sport Specific Without Overtraining Specific Movements

There’s a lot of evidence out there that shows that we as strength & conditioning coaches need to try to be as sport specific as possible with the movements and exercises we choose to develop strength and athleticism in our athletes.  Some of us have more flexibility in what we have available to us to be able to train in a sport specific manner.  But regardless of restrictions when it comes to available equipment, space, staff, etc., we should do our very best to be as sport specific as possible in our training methods with our athletes.  I think that for most of us, this is a very well understood concept that we are always trying to improve on.  I’m just wanting to discuss some thoughts and ideas that I’ve had in regards to being sport specific in our programs in an intelligent manner.  

I feel like it’s extremely important that while we need to put an emphasis on sport specific movements, it’s equally important for us to not train a specific movement in a specific way so much that it leads to overtraining and chronic issues.  The regimen that our collegiate athletes are put through can be extremely taxing on their bodies.  They are constantly practicing, competing, etc.  Even in the offseason, they will still be practicing their sport, whether it be on their own or with the team in offseason practices.  With all that being considered, they are going to be doing those sport specific movements almost constantly, year round.  For this reason, I like to make sure we train sport specifically with our athletes, but also find different variations of the sport specific movements, or similar movements that will contribute to the improvement of those sport specific movements, so that their bodies(muscles, joints, etc) don’t suffer from overtraining and an increased likelihood of injury.  In other words, while we should be sport specific, I think it’s important that we are not constantly TOO specific.  Also, I feel like it’s extremely important that we train those sport specific movements hard and effectively, but also give the athletes necessary recovery time from those movements, also considering the frequency that those movements are performed by the athletes in their actual sport training.  This will help the muscles involved have time to physiologically adapt to the training we are putting them through, and will also help to avoid the chronic over training that could lead to injury. 

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.  A movement that is extremely important for a basketball player is their vertical jump.  I know that our basketball players here at Dixie are constantly playing throughout the year, whether it’s their regular games during the season, practices, open gyms, training on their own, etc.  Least to say, they are constantly jumping, which can really take a toll on their bodies.  Having said that, we know that the basketball coaches are always wanting their kids to be able to jump higher, and rightfully so with how important a movement it is to their success on the court.  It’s obviously a sport specific movement that it’s our responsibility to develop and improve in the athletes during their time training with us.  When considering our program design for our basketball players, we will absolutely incorporate just some simple vertical jumps.  That’s as specific as you can get as it is the exact same movement.  However, we will also add variations to it by doing some high box jumps, hurdle jumps, depth jumps, squat jumps, broad jumps, etc.  These variations will definitely transfer over to their vertical jump on the court, but are different enough that it will work the muscles a little bit differently, helping to avoid overtraining.  Other training examples that will absolutely transfer over to our basketball player’s vertical jump capability are basic strength exercises such as squats and box squats done in a variety of ways(different weights, reps, etc.).  So here’s a very general example of what we would do in the weight room for our basketball team during a two week period of the offseason to help develop their vertical jump if we had a split routine of doing two lower body lifting days and two upper body lifting days.

Week 1
Day 1 – Medium weight/repetition box squat accompanied by some auxiliary lower body exercises
Day 2 – Upper Body
Day 3 – Off
Day 4 – Fairly light box squat focused on the speed/explosiveness of the upward movement from the box accompanied by some hurdle jumps.
Day 5 – Upper Body
Week 2
Day 1 – Heavy free squat accompanied by some auxiliary lower body exercises
Day 2 – Upper body
Day 3 – Off
Day 4 – Fairly light box squat(slightly different weight and/or sets/reps from the day 3 the week before) focused on the speed/explosiveness of the upward movement from the box accompanied by some high box jumps. 
Day 5 – Upper Body

This is just a very general idea of what I’m talking about.  During these two weeks we would definitely be developing the power necessary to improve specifically the vertical jump of these basketball players.  However, we would not be overworking one specific movement and the athletes would have plenty of time to recover and adapt to the training we are putting them through.  There are definitely other exercises that could be incoporated such as power cleans, leg press, etc.  I just wanted to give an example of the idea that I’m talking about.  Now obviously we need to cycle through different movements/exercises we use so as to be able to accomplish and track progressive overload, but that’s a totally different subject.

Strength & Conditioning Coaches Are Not Magicians

Today I just wanted to talk a little bit about an oft-misunderstood concept that we often have to deal with as strength & conditioning coaches.  Obviously the coaches we work with want their athletes to be faster, be able to jump higher, get bigger, etc.  We want the same thing for their athletes.  However, it must be understood that not all athletes have the potential to become physically what coaches want them to be.  Recently I had a meeting with one of our coaches.  This coach spoke specifically of one of the athletes on the team and exclaimed that this athlete NEEDED to jump higher or they will never play or amount to anything on the team.  The ironic part of the situation is that this athlete is one of the harder workers on the team and has made HUGE progress on their jumping and physical abilities in their time here.  The problem is, this athlete is also probably one of the least gifted athletes on the team physically, so even though they have made a ton of progress from where they started, they still are way off what they would need to be to be a successful athlete at this level.  They started at a lower level than a lot of the other athletes on the team and have a lower genetic potential than most.  Of course this coach either didn’t recognize or didn’t want to recognize that this athlete had already made a ton of progress, just that they are not at the level the coach wants.  The concept that this coach needs to understand is that things like speed and explosiveness(jumping) are to a large degree pre-determined genetically. 

I loved how several of the presenters at the Michigan State University Strength Clinic I attended recently alluded to the importance of good genetics in helping athletes develop their speed, explosiveness, strength and such.  As they said, it doesn’t matter what we do with them if they don’t have the genetic potential to get to where they need to be to be successful.  We as strength coaches can absolutely help athletes progress towards and hopefully reach their genetic potential.  However, we are not magicians and are not able to alter that genetic potential much if at all.  Or in other words, we are not going to be able to turn an athlete that runs a 5.5 forty into an athlete that runs a 4.5 forty just because the sport coach wants and needs an athlete that can run a 4.5 forty.  However, we could probably get an athlete to improve by a couple to several tenths of a second.  We COULD probably help develop an athlete who comes in running a 4.6 or 4.7 forty into an athlete that can run a 4.5 forty.  This is extremely important for the sport coaches to understand so that they don’t have unrealistic expectations of us, and also so that they realize the importance of recruiting athletes that are gifted in the physical areas they feel are important for their sport.  However, not only is it important for the sport coaches to understand this, but it’s important for all of us to understand it as well.  We set ourselves up for problems if we promise unrealistic goals to athletes or sport coaches when genetically those goals may not be possible.  We are not going to do any favors for ourselves if we make promises to sport coaches that we are not going to be able to make happen.  When a sport coach does not understand this concept it is important for us to tactfully, professionally and respectfully help them to learn and understand it.  There may be a different way to do this with every coach, and it is up to us as strength coaches to make sure we have the type of relationship with our coaches that we know how to go about helping clear up such a confusion in an effective manner.

Michigan State University Strength & Conditioning Clinic

I had the great opportunity this past weekend to attend the annual Michigan State University Strength & Conditioning Clinic.  The MSU Strength & Conditioning Staff put together a heck of a clinic and it was an excellent experience.  The clinic featured presenters such as Dr. Ken Leistner, Mike Joseph(West Virginia), Dan Riley(Former NFL Strength Coach), Jason Arapoff(Detroit Lions), the Michigan State Strength & Conditioning Staff and many others. 

I loved how Coach Ken Mannie, Head Strength Coach for Michigan State, pointed out at the end of the clinic that many of the of the presentations contradicted and disagreed with other presentations in the clinic, and that’s a good thing!  Both Coach Mannie and many of the presenters pointed out that there is not just one way to do things and that we should always be open to learning new things and learning from the ideas of others so as to continually develop into the best strength & conditioning coaches that we can be.  For this reason, clinics such as this one are perfect opportunities for us as coaches to be exposed to different ideas and philosophies that can help us to develop.  I can honestly say that even though I didn’t agree with every little thing that each presenter shared, I absolutely took at least a couple of things from every single one of the more than a dozen presenters and came back excited to try some new ideas with my athletes.  We should absolutely make it a priority to attend similar events to help contribute to our personal development as coaches and to share with others.  However, we need to be careful of something as we attend such events.  One of the presenters pointed out(I believe it was Dan Riley) that too many coaches will go to clinics and conferences not being open to other philosophies and ideas, but more just to have their ideas and philosophies reinforced.  Truthfully, it was nice to have the presenters back up things that we do with our program, and that’s natural I think.  However, Riley pointed out that it is equally if not more important for us to attend such events to be exposed to new ideas and that we need to put our guard down and be open those ideas, even ideas that challenge what we think and believe. 

Coach Mannie shared something else both at the beginning and the end of the conference that was impactful.  He reminded all of us that we are really there to influence young people and to help them to develop into better human beings and to have them more prepared for whatever they decide to do with their lives after their college careers are finished.  It’s having that opportunity to make a positive and lasting impression on the lives of young people that makes it all worth it.  I put up an article by Coach Mannie in the Resources section of the website that talks about how we can develop our athletes through “tough love” as he put it. 

Lastly, I was extremely lucky to spend some extra time with Coach Tim ‘Red’ Wakeham, the Head Strength & Conditioning Coach for Olympic Sports at Michigan State.  He was gracious enough to share some excellent insight and advice with me which I am very grateful for.  I hope that we can all strive to be coaches that are willing to help other coaches as Coach Wakeham was willing to do with me.  It’s that type of attitude that makes our industry better.  Again, it was an excellent experience and I would recommend this clinic to any coach who could possibly make it in future years.  Thanks again to the Michigan State Strength & Conditioning Staff for putting on such a wonderful clinic!

Importance Of Strength & Conditioning Coaches in College Football

It’s been fun the last couple of weeks to see some articles from around the country discussing the importanace of strength & conditioning coaches when it comes to the success of college football programs.  It’s nice to see these types of articles and to hear head football coaches around the country give strength coaches the credit and emphasis that they deserve.  It seems to be that most football coaches around the country are of the opinion that who they hire as their strength coach is one of if not the most important hire they will make on their staff.  These aren’t exactly articles that are going to help us become better coaches, but it’s fun to see coaches get the credit they deserve and to see that strength & conditioning coaches are being recognized as important hires for college football programs.                                                                                                                                               
http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/training-day/201201/most-important-football-hire-head-coach-can-make-may-surprise-you

http://www.buckeyextra.com/content/stories/2012/01/17/meyer-relies-on-marotti-for-tougher-buckeyes.html

http://huskerextra.com/sports/football/article_bede4894-eab3-5f92-9082-ea23e8f87e18.html

Conjugated Periodization For Collegiate Strength & Conditioning Programs

By: Eddy Schumacher, Volunteer Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach, Dixie State College of Utah.

There are many approaches to strength coaching, but all have the same key goals – prepare the athletes for the physical rigors of competition.  This includes everything from foundational strength, sport specific conditioning, injury prevention and pre-habilitation, to team spirit building and psychological preparation, and many more things in between. 

But at the core of it all is strength and conditioning, as the job title indicates.  Studies repeatedly demonstrate that during competition seasons, as specific skill sets increase, absent an effective program, strength can significantly decrease.  Training inherently cycles through different periods, a.k.a. periodization, in order to provide progression without overtraining.  Just as a season has an off-, pre-, in-, and post-, so strength and conditioning goes through cycles.  There are many periodization models that are followed, from the traditional/linear model first espoused by Medvedev, which proved effective for peaking for a single event but insufficient for prolonged competition seasons, to a variety of undulating and non-linear periodization approaches with a broad variety of macro, micro, and meso cycle durations and rotations.

One method that has consistently proven effective is the conjugated periodization method.  It basically involves rotating sessions of max effort, repetition training, dynamic effort, and recovery.  Pioneered mainly at Westside Barbell, and without going into a detailed paper on the method itself, there are many advantages to this approach in a collegiate athletic program. 

The max effort days allow for each athlete to compete with his own previous personal best in a given rep range.  Rather than externally imposed rep maxes, the individual athlete competes with his own recorded achievement.  Intrinsic motivation has always proven superior to external goals.  The dynamic days emphasize explosive movement, or the power aspect of the lifts, contributing directly to athletic performance and contributing to improvement of strength on the max effort days.  Repetition days can be used pre-season and in-season for sport specific metabolic work and specific muscular endurance, or off-season for hypertrophy.  Especially important for in-season in particular are recovery days, where the work load and activities allow for recuperation without stagnation. Each of these can also be combined in a variety of ways as needed during the year or season.  Max effort upper body can be combined with repetition supplemental exercises and a short bout of recovery (using light weights, flexibility and mobility) in a single workout, as long as it contributes to the overall progression of the program.

The huge advantage is the flexibility of the system to adapt to season, sport, and athlete, so that forward progression is more constant than other models of periodization.  It also acknowledges, unlike working solely with single rep-max percentage calculations that are externally imposed, the fluctuations of individual performance.  It is unlikely that any athlete gain the EXACT same yardage or shoot the EXACT percentage of field goals in EVERY game.  He/she may average a certain performance, but not achieve it in every outing!  Likewise, superimposed rep maxes can set up an athlete for unreasonable failure, rather than simple expecting the best each time out and average growth over time regardless of occasional fluctuations in performance.

It is by no means the only way, but because it is effective and flexible, it works really well within the structure of a collegiate athletic strength and conditioning program.

http://articles.elitefts.com/articles/training-articles/efs-classic-the-periodization-bible/ – Great article about conjugated periodization by Dave Tate.

Leadership Development

This week I spent quite a bit of time reading the many excellent blog entries on Coach Tim ‘Red’ Wakeham’s website, “Until Lamb’s Become Lions” (http://timredwakeham.wordpress.com/).  If you haven’t taken a look at his website, I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend it.  He shares some great insight along with a lot of experiences.  Something I love about the site is that he talks almost exclusively about how to be better leaders to the athletes as coaches and also how to develop the athletes into better leaders.  It’s true that as strength & conditioning coaches we should absolutely continue to try to learn and develop our knowledge of exercise physiology, different types of programming, etc.  The physical development of our athletes is extremely important and we should make the development of our knowledge as far as that goes a top priority.  However, our development as leaders ourselves and the type of people and leaders we have the chance to develop in our athletes is equally important.  As we have heard many times, most of our athletes will be professionals in something other than the sport in which they participate as collegiate athletes.  So, if we are able to develop our athletes into better leaders and people through our leadership abilities, not only will it serve them very well during their collegiate athletic careers, but it will make them all the more successful in whatever they decide to do after their collegiate playing careers are over.  I feel like this type of development is sometimes overlooked or not given the emphasis that it deserves.  I hope that we will constantly try to develop ourselves, not only as coaches that can develop programs that will be effective for our athletes physically, but that we will try to develop ourselves into better leaders that can better develop our athletes in other aspects.  We can put together an extremely effective program for our athletes physically, but if we aren’t having a positive effect on them as their leaders/coaches and not developing them into better leaders and people we are not meeting our potential as strength & conditioning coaches and we are failing our athletes.  Here are just a few quotes from Coach Wakeham’s website that I particularly enjoyed:

“I think leading means consistently using standards, boundaries, consequences, and rewards to shape behavior and accomplish the mission.”

“I’m not going to apologize to anyone for having high standards, believing in my people’s ability to live up to those standards, and telling those who don’t that I’m disappointed.”  

“The golden rule of feedback is: Compliment people on things you want to see again.”  

“Sports, training and life are a process of mistakes.  Feedback about mistakes shouldn’t be taken personally.  It should be used for growth.”  

“I respect you too much to lower the standard for you.”  

Thanks to Coach Wakeham for the excellent insight!

 Another great article about leadership as strength & conditioning coaches:  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FIH/is_10_74/ai_n17209289/ – “Tough Love is in Effect Here: Perspectives on Coaching and Leadership” by Ken Mannie, Head Strength & Conditioning Coach at Michigan State University.

Favorite Websites, Resources

http://www.strengthperformance.com/ – Strength Performance Network – social network for strength & conditioning coaches. 
http://www.elitefts.com/ – Elite Fitness Systems – powerlifting website with many great articles, many written by strength & conditioning professionals.
http://www.nsca-lift.org – The National Strength & Conditioning Association – Largest organization of strength & conditioning professionals.                                                                                                    http://www.cscca.org/ – The Collegiate Strength & Conditioning Coaches Association’s website.
http://www.footballscoop.com/strength-scoop – Football Scoop/Strength Scoop – Site that posts job and internship opportunities.   
http://timredwakeham.wordpress.com/ – Coach Tim ‘Red’ Wakeham’s website/blog – Until Lambs Become Lions.  Coach Wakeham is the director of strength of conditioning for olympic sports at Michigan State University and shares some excellent insight on his blog.  HIGHLY recommended! 
http://ultimatestrengthandconditioning.com/ – Great resource strength & conditioning website run by Jim Kielbaso and other great coaches.  You have to pay monthly to get access to everything on the site, but you can register for free to get into a lot of areas in the site like the discussion boards and such.
http://www.westside-barbell.com/ – Westside Barbell Official Website.  Great resource!

Coaching Staffs

Today I just wanted to share some thoughts on something that I believe helps make a good and successful coaching staff, and this goes for coaching staffs of any kind, not just strength & conditioning coaches.  Obviously the ability of the coaches on the staff to work together and in harmony is very important.  However, having said that, I feel like something extremely important to having a successful staff is to bring together a group of people with different backgrounds, ideas, strengths, etc.  This is key to having a well rounded staff.  The head coach will have the final say on issues and decisions, however, those decisions and the things done by the staff will often be more effective when it’s a compilation of the work of many coaches that come together.  Now if coaches with different backgrounds are too stubborn to be willing to look with an open mind at other philosophies and ideas, it will cause problems.  This includes the head coach being willing to listen to other ideas without feeling threatened and defensive about how he wants to do things.  A well rounded staff is often a much more successful staff as most coaches have areas where their strengths lie and other areas where they need the support of their other coaches.  Coaches on the staff should be willing to share ideas and also ask the opinion and input of other coaches for the better of the team and also so that all the coaches and learn and grow together.  None of us should have the attitude or idea that there’s only one specific, correct way to do things and be successful.  This will stunt our growth as coaches.  I’ll give a couple of examples I’ve seen of well rounded staffs. 

First came when I was a high school soccer coach.  My main area of strength with soccer comes on the defensive side of the ball.  Our first season we did well defensively and had a more successful season than they had had in several years, but we struggled offensively which hurt us in some close games.  After that season I knew I needed to find someone for our coaching staff who had more of an offensive mind than myself.  I went out and found an assistant who fit that need, but who also was willing to support me with everything and would obviously be easy to get along with.  He understood the importance of sharing ideas as a coaching staff and then being on the same page with what we would present to and do with the team.  I learned a great deal from him that season about offense, and I’m confident he also learned about defense.  We were a well rounded staff and I feel like that had a lot to do with the success we had on the field that season.  In that second season we were once again strong defensively, but we were also much more potent offensively, which led to the best record the school had had in many years and the first state playoff victory in 20+ seasons.  I know that we would not have had as successful of a season if I had gone out and hired another defensive minded coach. 

I also had a similar experience on a strength staff I was part of.  When there was an opening for an assistant position on the staff, the head coach went out and got a coach he was familiar and comfortable with, but who also had a completely different philosophy and ideas about program design than the head coach.  This head coach obviously understood the good that can come from having coaches with a wide variety of expertise and strengths on the same staff.  I believe there are far too few coaches that have this outlook when building a coaching staff.  There is something to be said as well for having other coaches who have your same ideas and strengths.  I just feel like there needs to be a happy medium on a staff with coaches that have varying strengths that compliment each other and who have the desire to learn from each other and put everything together for the better of the athletes.

Internships From An Intern’s Perspective

This blog entry comes from Eddy Schumacher, one of our intern assistants here at Dixie State.  He has a very unique perspective having already earned a master’s in strength & conditioning to go along with his time as an intern here where he has worked alongside several other interns over the last year.  It’s definitely good to hear some thoughts from an intern’s perspective.  Along with Eddy’s words, I’ve included links to a series of articles titled,
The Strength & Conditioning Internship: A Simple Guide For Strength & Conditioning Coaches, written by Mark Watts, Director of Strength & Conditioning at Denison University.  Great stuff to think about for interns and for coaches who have interns alike.

Part 1 – http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/the-strength-conditioning-internship-a-simple-guide-for-strength-conditioning-coaches-part-1/
Part 2 – http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/sports-training/the-strength-conditioning-internship-a-simple-guide-for-strength-conditioning-coaches-part-2-edited/?utm_source=Store%20Orders&utm_campaign=64fdb5b680-newsletter_12_3012_22_2011&utm_medium=email
Part 3 – http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/the-strength-conditioning-internship-a-simple-guide-for-strength-conditioning-coaches-part-3/
Part 4 – http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/sports-training/the-strength-conditioning-internship-a-simple-guide-for-strength-conditioning-coaches-part-4/?utm_source=Store%20Orders&utm_campaign=059222ec96-newsletter_12_3012_22_2011&utm_medium=email

By: Eddy Schumacher, Volunteer Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach, Dixie State College of Utah. 

This entry offers a bit of a different perspective – that of the Intern in a Strength and Conditioning program.  By way of intro, I am a 52 year old with a Master’s in Sports Conditioning and Performance, and will be testing for my CSCS soon.  That makes my position unique in that I’m coming into this career path later in life than the typical Strength Coach, much less Intern. 

An internship is an opportunity to get hands-on experience in the Strength and Conditioning field, and at the same time see different approaches that can help you determine your own approach to the coaching profession.
In order to get the most out of your internship, the first key is to understand your place in the program.  Being willing to embrace every assigned duty fully is vital.  Some of it is grunt work.  So what? I’m 52 and I still do it! Embrace it.  Fix equipment.  Lay out stations.  Clean.  Organize the messed up weights. Whatever you’re asked to do within the program, do it.  And don’t always wait to be asked or told.  Once you get a feel for the expectations, STEP UP! Act on your own initiative to anticipate the coach’s needs.  All of the above duties, and others, should become part of the routine, and should not require reminding or direction.

The second key is accepting that there are many approaches to training, and you should support the approach of the program where you are interning.  Contribute, don’t detract.  That is to say, when YOU are in charge, you can do it your way.  But as an Intern, you are NOT in charge, and your place is to be positive and strive to blend with the Head Strength Coach’s program to make it as successful as possible. Interns come in with a variety of backgrounds, education, and experiences.  Not everyone’s approach or personality will match yours.  That’s okay!   Jump in and take initiative, but do so within the program the Head Strength Coach has set up.  Who knows?  You may just learn something!! So I have a Master’s.  So what? And isn’t that the whole point of interning in the first place?  I like the old Chinese tale of the student who thinks he knows it all, and the master serves tea, allowing the tea to over-fill the student’s cup.  When the student points out the spillage, the master tells the student that he is like the cup, already full of his own knowledge, and therefore unable to receive what the master has to offer.  As an intern, you must empty your cup. 

 The third key is to speak up.  It’s important to not just sit back and expect to be spoon fed.  Ask questions.  Make suggestions. Contribute.  But never do so in front of a team, where they might perceive discord or disunity.  In a staff meeting, or apart from the team training time, don’t hesitate to ask “Why do you do this or that?”  Or make suggestions, “Would it be okay to try such and such?”  Get information.  State your opinions.  Make suggestions.   

As you do these things – embrace your role, support the system, and speak up to make a contribution to the program – you will earn your coach’s trust, and perhaps his respect, and subsequently receive more responsibility, which ultimately prepares you to advance within your program or to take on your own program down the road.