Athletic Development Coach and Fitness Development Coach, Not Personal Trainer or Strength Coach
Print This Post
By Sal | June 23, 2010
There is no way to pick one, two or even ten things that could be singled out as highlights of the GAIN 2010 experience and certainly no way to sum up the almost 60 hours of learning in a single post. However, I have to start someplace, so here goes.
I had a moment of clarity during the first day of the conference in that it is time for serious people in the field to shed the out-dated monikers of “personal trainer” and/or “strength and conditioning coach.” For years I have moved away from identifying myself using either of these titles and cringe when somebody refers to me as a personal trainer. Unfortunately, the title has been diminished over the past twenty years by the sea of substandard fitness professionals. Just as unfortunate is the image conjured by people who use the title strength and conditioning coach. While it’s unfair to those of us who do the right thing, reality is a bitch, and as a result it’s time for a change.
Practitioners of legitimate functional training methods need to secede from the pack, and we can do so by using more modern and descriptive titles. Fitness development coach has a nice ring to it and is an appropriate title for those of us who implement functional training methods with our clients; the everyday folks who we work with.
Vern Gambetta has been using the title Athletic Development to refer to the practice of proper application of functional training principles, and so the title Athletic Development Coach replaces strength and conditioning coach.
While I will continue to use the term Personal Trainer as a way to drive traffic to the site, my goal is to encourage practitioners of legitimate functional training methods towards the use of the terms Fitness Development Coach and Athletic Development Coach.
Related Posts
Topics: Personal Trainer Coaching, Training Education, Training Philosophy | No Comments »
Comments
« Vern Gambetta’s 2010 GAIN Apprentorship Program | Home | Fartlek/Speed Play Training for Team Sport Conditioning »