An important aspect of all industries is the development of relationship with different professionals that may be of help to you down the road. In the field of strength and conditioning, it is important to have relationships with doctors (specialties and primary care), physical therapists, athletic trainers, registered dietitians, psychologists, and administration. Most of these specialties mentioned have a direct impact if an athlete’s is having a problem or just needs help to overcome an issue, but one department that can indirectly help is the administration. Having the support of the administration is how the development of our program can grow and improve. The best way to see the strength and condition program grow via administration is to have supporting reasons why you doing what you’re doing and evidence to back it up. Scientific evidence from professionals who have accredited credentials are the best supporting evidence. The design of a program is all scientifically based. Important aspects of training are intensities, movement patterns, injury prevention, sport specific drills, and correctional exercises. But some of the most important aspects occur out of the weight room, such as being in a stress free environment. The environment of the athlete needs to calm and positive to allow an athletes to maintain their performance level throughout their career.
One group of professions, which is really important to have a good relationship with, is the coaches of the teams you are training. The coaches of the teams are happiest when the team is winning and uninjured. The best way to sustain this type of environment is to keep athlete’s motivated and be able to show their progress, but not with just increasing increments of weight. The best example to show athletes improvements would be trough improvement of athlete’s movement pattern of a lift. But a more realistic approach to show athletes improvements would be through comparing teams or individuals within a team to specific exercise relative to their body weight. Another simple task is always alerting an athlete to know how much they are improving, hearing it from a coach can some of the most positive and rewarding factors.