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The Role of a Coach

 What is the role of a coach? Yes, this question can be viewed in many ways (which I will explore), however, there is an underlying reason and purpose of a coach. For this discussion, I will be separating between sports coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, and other coaches (i.e. nutrition, 'life', etc). 

The Role of the Sport Coach

Sports coaches are the coaches that coach the individual sports they have gained expertise in. Be that head or assistant coach, they are usually specialized in 1 or 2 sports or positions from their experience as athletes, or from learning their craft through (hopefully) careful study of their game. The role of these coaches is to teach the skills and knowledge necessary to execute the game. This could be specific skills (i.e. a QB coach teaching reads and drops) or large-scale schemes (i.e. running a live scrimmage at practice). With this in mind, sports coaches SHOULD only focus on those aspects of their sport. Strength, conditioning, rehabilitation, nutrition, and recovery should be left to their respective professionals to ensure proper information and safe execution. 

The Role of the Strength and Conditioning Coach

The strength and conditioning coach is responsible for building and maintaining the athletic foundations necessary for athletics. This includes strength, power, speed, agility, injury resilience, and recovery. It is important to note that the S&C coach needs to be working with the sports medicine staff to TRULY be effective. This is where the emergence of sports science is coming into play, but just being aware of injury trends and how beat up the athletes are, is crucial information for an S&C coach to make informed decisions about training and recovery. Additionally, it is critical that the S&C coach and the sports coach(es) are talking about practice/lift intensities, athlete performance and attitudes, and, depending on the coach, why workouts/practices are done the way they are. These are all important steps in creating cohesive and effective coaching for the athletes. 

The Role of Other Coaches

The primary coaches in 'other' include nutrition and recovery/sports science. Nutrition should absolutely be handled by an RD specialized in your population. Although there are nutrition certifications for coaches to take and learn more about, they are by no means comprehensive enough to cover all of the demands of sports at the different levels. This is why an RD does the amount of schooling and rotations they do. as S&C coaches, we like to say that a PE teacher or other people shouldn't be giving fitness information, why is that different for us when it comes to nutrition? There are professionals for that and we should delegate to the professionals. 

Sports Science is a newly emerging, coaching practice that works to be "a constant source of objectivity in a world that heavily depends on the subjectivity of discipline experts" (NSCA -National Strength & Conditioning Association et al., 2021, p. 8). This role seeks to blend together the data from emerging technologies and provide it to the sports coaches/medical staff they work with. This is becoming more important in today's sports that are becoming more technology dependent and utilizing this information more. I covered this in one of my previous blog posts. 

Overall Roles

Finally, one purpose all of these coaches have is to provide the best for the athletes that they can. This applies to not only the skill development of the field/court or weight room but also the psychosocial development that comes with working with kids of all ages. Strength and conditioning coaches are often the ones that need to fill this role since they are often not limited by coach-athlete contact rules and can spend the most time with the kids throughout the year. Providing for the well-being of our athletes is why we are here as coaches. A very small number of coaches will work with the "elite" or even people that want to be there. Knowing that a kid is out for football because his parents want him there and he may not want to be, shifts our perspective of our role as coaches. Yes, coaches want to win and see the success both personally and for their teams and athletes, however, the greatest success a coach can see is the person that athlete grows up to be later in their life. This is the role of a coach. 


References

NSCA -National Strength & Conditioning Association, French, D., & Ronda, L. T. (2021). NSCA's essentials of sport science. Human Kinetics Publishers.

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