During this week’s education session we discussed the ability to market ourselves. But not just ourselves – our profession as well. As strength and conditioning coaches we are often overlooked when it comes to team success. If a team is successful, the players are very talented and the sport coach is doing a great job. The strength and conditioning coach often goes unrecognized. When something goes wrong, however, such as a player getting injured, the strength and conditioning coach is immediately blamed. For this reason it is important to market ourselves not only to the athletes, but also to the sport coaches and to the administration.
A working relationship with sport coaches is crucial to creating a successful program for athletes. The two coaches (sport/strength) need to communicate regularly in order to design and implement a program that is best for their athletes. Too often it seems as though egos get in the way and in the end it is the athlete who suffers from it. If the strength coach can market strength and conditioning and sell it to the sport coach, the sport coach is much more likely to have his/her athletes adhere to the program and will also work with the strength coach. This will be a huge benefit to the athletes. It is also very important to establish a good relationship with the administration. Administrative support will go a long way in ensuring the success of the strength and conditioning program; but only if the coach can sell why it is so important.
So why is it important? Well first of all is the obvious answer – strength and conditioning will help to make the students more successful athletes which will hopefully allow the athletics program as a whole to grow and become more successful. In addition, strength and conditioning will help to prevent injuries from occurring during the course of a season. While this is great for the athletes, it is also a huge money saver for the school. It will save money on hospital and surgery costs, on follow up visits, and it will save money in man-hours for staff that would be required to care for these athletes on campus. If this point can be sold to the administration, they should be more generous with the amount of money allocated to the strength and conditioning department because they realize that it will save money for them on the back end if they put more in up front.