You're Hired

By Nick Grantham

Fed up of struggling to break into the Strength and Conditioning profession? Is working at your local gym not good enough anymore? Do you want to establish yourself as a Strength and Conditioning coach?

If you feel like you are banging your head against a brick wall or struggling to get a foothold, then this book is for you. You’re in the right place.

‘You're Hired: An Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Strength and Conditioning Coach’ is going to tackle the biggest problem faced by aspiring Strength and Conditioning coaches, breaking into the profession and forging a successful career.

Nick is making no money from the sales of this book, donating 75% to Marie Curie Cancer Care and 25% direct to the UKSCA's Richard Holmes Memorial Fund.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781291705768

Nick Grantham

Through his work as a Performance Enhancement Specialist working in high performance sport, Nick Grantham has gained a reputation for excellence working with scores of Olympic athletes. He has over 15 years' experience in the development of high performance fitness and sport science service delivery to Commonwealth, European, World and Olympic medallists. Nick has also written for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maxim, Four Four Two, Fighting Fit, Peak Performance as well as a monthly column in Sports Injury Bulletin.

Book preview

revealChapter 1

Never bring a knife to a gunfight

If you only go away with one thing from this book, if you only hold one thing at the forefront of your mind, it's this one - never bring a knife to a gunfight.

Let me elaborate.

It's high noon…

At the moment, the Strength and Conditioning profession is a gunfight. There are those out there who are fully loaded, ready to go into battle. Unfortunately, you're rocking up with a little kitchen knife right now! I know who my money is on to win the gunfight!

The Strength and Conditioning profession is difficult to break into because the profession has moved on so much in the last ten years. Ten years ago there wasn't even a professional Strength and Conditioning body in the UK.

Strength and Conditioning has now exploded in the UK and we are seeing an increasing number of Undergraduate and Postgraduate Strength and Conditioning qualifications becoming established. It's a tough old world out there… and it's only going to get tougher, which is probably why you're sat here reading this book wanting to find out how to get in there.

Follow me…

Never bring a knife to a gunfight.

Write it down, pin it on the wall, put it in your head, hold that thought and keep that with you as you read this book. Never again should you turn up to an interview, put a letter out to a coach, send an email to a contact or pick up the phone unprepared.

Read this book, work through the tasks and ditch that knife for a gun! Once you've read this book you'll have the benefit of fifteen years worth of me ballsing it up, making mistakes and finding out the hard way. You too will be fully loaded.

You Deserve Nothing…

Let's kick off with one of the most effective reality checks that I've come across. I like to call this the 'Usual Suspects' task, after the classic poster for the film of the same name.

I want you to place yourself on a scale of 0-10.

Zero means, basically, you couldn't get any worse!

Five means you are bang average!

Ten means everything you do is amazing – you're a true innovator and leader in Strength and Conditioning.

Think about yourself as a Strength and Conditioning Coach. Right now, where would you put yourself on that scale?

Take some time to think about it. If it helps, imagine other coaches and think where they would place themselves and where you would fit in. Make a decision, think about it and then if you need to change your mind RUN AROUND! (That's probably lost on anyone under the age of 35 but if you're old enough to remember Run Around with Mike Reid you'll know what I'm talking about!)

Make a note of where you have placed yourself.

Scale of 1-10

Do you want to change your mind?

Remember to think about your colleagues and the coaches you aspire to be like. Where would they put themselves?

I'll help you out and give you a gauge to work from. I would place myself around an eight.

So now you may be thinking, Bloody hell, well if Nick's putting himself as an eight, I'm going to go, five, because…

So, for half a million pounds, where do you measure up on the scale? Final answer?

Perfect Ten Task

Now I want you to answer these questions.

Perfect 10-1Perfect 10-2Perfect 10-3Perfect 10-4Perfect 10-5Perfect 10-6

Your answers to the questions provide you with a great starting point to work from as you develop as a coach. The 'Perfect Ten' task provides you with clues that will help you become a great coach and drastically improve your chances of breaking into the strength and conditioning profession.

Keep you answers in mind as you work through the rest of the book.

We will come back to this task but first, the road is going to get a bit bumpy and I want you to refer back to this exercise when you are ready to throw the book away because the next chapter has just upset you!

I want, I want, I want

Have you ever seen children out with their parents in the shops? Typical conversations go like this, I want….I want…I want… It's not really a conversation, more of a list of demands!

Many of today's aspiring Strength and Conditioning coaches are in danger of sounding like a three-year-old in Toys R Us. It's not really their fault. I think they've been led to believe that there is a pot of gold waiting at the end of a three-year course. When a job working with a professional team doesn't magically materialise, they start to feel a little hard done-by.

Universities are doing a pretty average job (at best), in my opinion, of preparing graduates for the realities of getting a job in what is a fiercely competitive profession. Graduates are getting a sugar-coated version and some are even being mis-sold a dream that might not necessarily be true.

I don't want to be the voice of doom but basically, if you are a graduate with a degree, a Sports Science Degree, Strength and Conditioning Degree, Post Graduate qualification, you're walking into a tough gunfight.

Graduate

If you want to become a good Strength and Conditioning coach, if you want to be the Strength and Conditioning coach that gets the job in a Premier League football club, that gets the job with a National Governing Body, you have to be great, you have to rise above the rest and you have got to stand out!

Establish

What you want to make sure of is that you don't end up one of these guys.

I could've done that! I should've gone on that workshop! I would've gone to that conference. If only I'd have done that…

quote1d I could've done