I was in Nashville this past weekend attending the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s Coaches Conference. There were a lot of great presenters and a lot of colleges were represented with their strength coaches at this conference.

In fact, I flew down with a strength coaching peer, Andy Britton, who is an assistant strength coach at the Ohio State University.

As I was listening to one of the speakers, he asked a show of hands of how many of us worked with college athletes or higher. There were more hands in the air than not.  

As he continued on with his presentation, himself a strength coach at a college, he said something that I had heard quite a bit from other speakers. Not just at this conference, but Andy and I had a similar talk at the airport prior to our flight.

“A fair amount of our college athletes when they report to us as freshman had very little, if any, background in any strength training during high school.”

A lot of people naturally assume that athletes at a high level know how to workout because they’re an athlete and they’re supposed to do that. They assume they know how to eat like an athlete because they’re an athlete.

The problem is they don’t know these things because a lot of them aren’t doing those things!

Strength and conditioning is still a relatively new industry.  In the 80’s, strength coaches were starting to appear at colleges. Anyone who had access to a strength coach at that time was probably an Olympic athlete.

In the 90’s, more colleges were starting to accept the fact that the strength coach needed to be part of their faculty. Strength coaches were also starting to matriculate into the private sector working with anyone who hired them. High schools started getting strength coaches in the early 2000’s.

Even though some high schools were starting to have strength coaches, most did not. Budgets that are already tight can’t make way to find the extra income for a strength coach. If they can hire a strength coach, a lot of times he/she is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of kids that must be supervised.

Most colleges have the head strength coach, plus assistants, grad students, and finally interns to help run the weight room. Most high schools have one set of eyes and maybe a coach from the sport that is being worked out in the weight room.

Out of the small number of strength coaches that did not raise their hands saying they were affiliated with a college, I’m guessing some are from the private sector. Some might work at high schools. A small percentage nonetheless.

What does this mean?

Once again it is another example how youth coaches are unintentionally hurting today’s young athletes. Why is it most of these freshman athletes from sports not of football or baseball, have never lifted a weight in their lives?

They have the potential to develop a serious injury which so far they have been lucky not to have. And they have some serious imbalance issues when they get to college.

If these athletes desire to play college sports, they must have more of a fitness background developed into their program. This in turn will help prevent future injuries, but also give them the opportunity to really enhance their overall athleticism.

So, for the umpteenth time I urge sport coaches to stop emphasizing the skill of the sport at such a young age. Why continue to have practice after practice working on the skill of the sport when the athleticism of the athlete is being neglected??

Develop that fitness base first and foremost. Sacrifice some of the skill/practice time and work in the fitness component. If we continue to neglect this, yes you will always have some good athletes that rise to the top. But, we are missing out on a whole lot more who didn’t get the proper guidance to be the best athlete they could be.

Photo courtesy of U.S Army on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/familymwr/