In the field of strength and conditioning, it can be very challenging to find your value and be confident with that value.  There is an endless supply of contradicting methodologies, ideologies, and variations, especially when working in a high performance sport environment; whether that be from sport coaches, physiotherapists, higher management, or other S&C colleagues.  There are a lot of S&C coaches out there that have big egos and think that there way is the best and only way, which is a problem with the industry itself and could probably use it’s own blog post – so I’ll save that rant.  Taking value for yourself and your work as an S&C coach requires integrity, an open mind, and a focus on what the specific goal(s) for your athlete(s) is.

I have recently just finished our off season hockey training camps that consisted of a large volume of individual athletes looking to improve their performance, which always tests my values as an S&C coach.  From recruiting, organization and management, programming, monitoring progress and coaching, I get a lot of outside input, complaints, success, and pressure; this often has me questioning the value of the product I am providing.  In order to provide value for myself and for my athletes I have taken an approach of open mindedness – taking input from other coaches with programming, reviewing previous experiences by doing a gap analysis, and having continual open communication with the athletes to ensure they are valuing what we do and also themselves.  With having a more open mind to accepting more feedback and input, I feel that this was by far our most successful camp.

In previous camps I had decided not to add cleans into my programming, despite coaches and athletes asking to have it put in.  I had decided that due to the technical difficulty of the exercise  and having such a short period of time to teach and produce enough positive gains from, I had left them out and chosen alternate exercises with the same product.  This year I found a way that I was happy to add in the lift, although not for every athlete (mainly older athletes), and was happy with the outcome.  I feel this built some morale with coaches and the athletes got more value out of our camp this year.  In turn I find myself with more value and a greater feeling of accomplishment.

Recently I have been working with a russian/Japanese pro hockey player trying to get a new contract in north america.  He came to me with a very different background and experience with training and we found it difficult at times to get on the same page with the vision of his development.  Being open to his wants but keeping my integrity on what I know will get him to achieve his goals, we have been able to make massive improvement in his performance both on and off the ice and I now have his full bought in attention to the program.  Coming over with no contract nor any direction, he now has been offered big contracts in Europe and will be attending a training camp in North America.  Taking the athletes values, while sticking to yours can be a fine line, but if common ground is achieved, you will have the greatest results produced.

Now that this summer has come to completion I am looking forward to doing a more in depth gap analysis on this years camp as further my knowledge with this through the HPCTL program.