All posts tagged Development

Importance of Mentoring Future Coaches

I like to think that our Wichita State University strength and conditioning department does a tremendous job at setting up future strength and conditioning coaches for success.  Part of my enjoyment in this position is having the ability to mentor student-interns who volunteer their time in our weight room.  I’ve seen and heard both positive and negative experiences with internship programs and vowed that our WSU program would be absolutely top notched.

The program with internship programs is that the majority of internships trade resume experience for cheap labor.  I’ve always told our interns that I expect them to question, learn, and evolve; every single day their in the weight room.  A failure to do all three is a failure on my part as a coach.

I had such a tremendous experience working at Michigan State University under some of the greatest sport mentors and coaches.  When I speak to other industry colleagues who share different stories of their ‘horrible’ experiences; it makes me unset.  I think to myself, what a wasted opportunity to positively influence a future coach in our profession.  Part of being in the strength and conditioning field, or any other coaching field, is fostering and mentoring the development of younger coaches.  I know positively that if I didn’t have the great mentorship that I have today; I would not have evolved at the rate that I have today.

Establishing a Positive Coaching Environment

The first ideology of our department is to steer away from “me” thinking.  Our department is a team; it’s not me and the interns.  We are a team and we’re only as good as our weakest and most inexperienced intern.  One of the policies I have in our weight room and our strength and conditioning internship program is an open door policy.  I know open door policies are a common practices among professionals but I try to extend above just being “available”.  Whenever we are in between team training sessions, every intern is responsible for questioning what were doing.  It’s their job to look at everything, question everything, understand everything, and try to see if there are better and more efficient ways to producing the same results.

Similar to Zappos and Facebook, the culture at WSU Strength & Conditioning is our team mindset and brainstorm sessions.  It’s common place for me to retire to my office with the team and throw out hypothetical questions about injuries and program design.  Often times we’ll go up to the whiteboard in my office and have Brainstorming sessions.  Rather than sending the interns to clean and maintain the equipment in our facility, I’d rather have them sit on my office and all take notes on Strength and Conditioning Webinars.

I do this for a couple of reasons.

1. I want to provide opportunities for our team to grow together and group sessions foster our team mentality.
2. I want our interns and team to learn and be the best and most knowledgeable strength and conditioning staff.
3. This helps prepare our team to think about different situations; injuries, complications with program design, etc.
4. It provides an opportunity for our team to ask questions and see things in a different perspective.

Conclusion

Our team is only as good as our weakest link.  If there is a situation where I have to be out of the weight room with a different team, than I need to trust and know that my team is more than capable to the needs of training individuals or other teams.  Rather than leaving that up to chance, I make sure that we’re a team that is working together, growing together, learning and evolving together. It is my belief as a coach in the field, this is our obligation to younger coaches.  Relationships are formed and bonded with the amount of work that you put into them.  If you want to grow your coaching tree and network, (and better your coaching team and staff) than it becomes a responsibility to foster the development of everybody you come in contact with.