elitefts™ Sunday Edition
Respect Your Guys
The Back Door
One of the great things about the strength and conditioning field is that it’s a way to get a kind of “back door” access to the lives of professional athletes. You obviously have to put in a shitload of work, plus networking, plus time, to get to that point, but once you reach a certain level, you’ll have a few fairly interesting names in your Rolodex.
There’s a flip side to this, and it’s something that bothers me that I’ve noticed out of a lot of strength and conditioning professionals, especially guys in private settings – and that’s the propensity of some trainers to badmouth their athletes when it comes to their knowledge of training.
We’ve all heard it, and I’ve been guilty of it myself frequently. An athlete comes into your gym and has no idea what to do. He doesn’t know how to do certain exercises, he doesn’t even know what stuff is called, and he has all kinds of problems that need to be addressed. I’ll tell you from personal experience that I know an NFL player who’s made the Pro Bowl and he didn’t know what dumbbell rows were called.
The Problem
The problem I see with this comes when we make fun of them for their lack of knowledge. Something like this will happen, and I hear coaches and trainers say shit like, “He’s a f-ing dumbass. He doesn’t know anything.” I’ve heard lots of trainers talk like this – especially young guys with tons of knowledge and little experience, because it seems like it’s become the thing to do over the past decade to get on the internet, read every manual you can get your hands on, and then spout off all over the place about how guys don’t know how to train and don’t know what they’re doing.
It’s very, very possible that these guys are right. In fact, they probably are. Take my friend, The Thinker, as an example. James knows more about training than just about anyone I’ve ever met, and I’d bet my life he knows more about training than anyone he coaches. But you’ll NEVER hear him badmouth an athlete. In years of knowing him and talking to him about everything under the sun, I’ve never heard him make fun of an athlete or speak in a derogatory manner about one – ever. And he certainly could. We all could.
Best in Sport
I think the thing some trainers don’t realize is that these guys aren’t trying to be the best at training. They’re trying to be the best at their chosen sport. I mean, so what if you can squat more than a certain NFL guy, or if another guy was brainwashed by his trainer into standing on Bosu balls and whistling Dixie. Do you really want to make fun of him or talk shit? Because the elephant in the room is the fact that he’s making millions of dollars to compete in a sport where, if you tried to compete against him, you’d be brutally embarrassed and probably permanently hurt.
I definitely keep that in mind whenever I see pro guys train. They’re light years better than me at their sport on their worst day than I ever was on the best day of my life. There’s more to sports than how much you can squat, or whether or not you’re pushing Prowlers, and it’s something that we, as coaches, all need to be mindful of.
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The Angry Coach is the strength coach, and also a positional coach, for a successful high school football program. Since 2001, an impressive number of his players have gone on to play college football, including several at the Division I and I-AA levels and two who have played professionally in the NFL. The Angry Coach has also worked with athletes at the college and professional levels in a variety of disciplines, including football, track and field, baseball, basketball, lacrosse, rowing and mixed martial arts (MMA). For professional reasons, the Angry Coach will not be using his real identity.
View The Angry Coach’s Training Log 
Great post. Not only do they like bad mouthing and talking down abor guys who don’t need to know what they are doing, they also love to turn around and take all the credit if that player has a good season.
In reality, that player probably didn’t need you and your training was the icing on the cake so to speak.
This then makes them in turn start trying to get more and more creative, putting the athlete at greater risk, as they forget that their #1 goal is to just keep them healthy.