Ian King

There is a better way – Part 4:The simple things that can change the way athlete’s view themselves (and perform)

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Little Johnny (or Julia) goes to mid-week training. The coach raises the ‘mistakes that cost them’ the last game. During training, the coach says:

‘Let’s go through the whole training session without dropping the ball. I don’t want to see any dropped ball!’

Little Johnny’s (or Julia’s) sub-conscious mind repeats the key words:

‘….dropped ball.’

Little Johnny’s (or Julia’s) body complies – the ball is dropped. More than once.

Little Johnny (or Julia) feels bad. One of their team-mates comes up and gives them a verbal ‘spray’:

‘Stop dropping the ball, you clumsy idiot!’

Little Johnny (or Julia) drops his/her head, feeling ashamed. Should a clumsy idiot like himself or herself even be out there, they wonder?

The coach hears this negative reinforcement and sees the exchange, but chooses to pretend they didn’t. After all, perhaps this will help them achieve their agenda?

The drill continues. More dropped ball. The coach tries screams and threats. No success – the ball is still being dropped.

So the coach introduces his ‘ace in the pack’ to solve the problem. Push-ups.

‘…you drop the ball during training, you do 10 pushups.’

Little Jonny (or Julia) drops the ball. The coach yells. Little Jonny (or Julia) does their push-ups.

The coach then raises the level of difficulty of the drill. Little Jonny (or Julia) feels there is no way they could do this! After all, they couldn’t do the simple version. They drop the ball again.

Frustrated by their ‘ace in the pack’ coaching strategy, the coach pulls out the ‘Joker in the pack’ strategy. Elimination. If you drop the ball, you are out of the drill. Little Jonny (or Julia) drops the ball soon after and is one of the first eliminated. They get the least time in technical rehearsal and the longest time on the sidelines reflecting on their failings.

At the end of training the coach says:

‘Its no wonder we lose games when we train like this!’

Little Johnny (or Julia) feels more of a loser now. Should they even bother with the next game?

It’s game day. Little Johnny (or Julia) is not feeling very confident. One of their team-mates comes up and gives them a verbal ‘spray’:

‘Stop dropping the f****** ball, you f****** useless idiot!’

[Yes, language like this occurs in teenage sports…at least in Australia…]

Little Johnny (or Julia) drop their head, feeling so small. Should a ‘f****** useless idiot’ like themself even be on the field?

The coach hears and sees this negative reinforcement – profanity included- but chooses to pretend they didn’t. After all, perhaps this will help them achieve their agenda?

[Yes, turning the blind eye by coaches to internal negative abuse is common in teenage sports, including, as I have seen, in ‘church schools’…]

Little Johnny (or Julia) drops the ball…again. The crowd groans in disappointment. The coach screams in anguish. The parents put it on the top of their ‘to be talked about list’ for after the game.

Little Johnny (or Julia) is feeling really bad about themself. They are looking for a rock to crawl under and hide.

In the team de-brief following the game the coach brings attention to it saying words to the effect ‘We’ve got to learn to hang onto that ball!’, and raves on for a few minutes about the mistakes that cost them the game. The coach concludes the huddle with:

‘Its no wonder we lose games when we play like this!’

Could Little Jonny (or Julia) is feel worse? Surely they will be safe in the refuge of family.

Little Johnny (or Julia) gets into the car for the drive home with the parents, and very quickly the conversation is brought to a discussion of the importance of catching the ball, of not letting the team down.

This is only making Little Johnny (or Julia) feel worse…

Little Johnny (or Julia) goes to mid-week training. The coach raises the ‘mistakes that cost them’ the last game. During training, the coach says:

…and the cycle is played over again….

Soon after Little Jonny (or Julia) wants to quit that sport.

Soon after that Little Jonny (or Julia) want to stop all sports.

Why would they want to play on? They only feel worse about themselves as a result of playing…..

Sound familiar? If you are not sure, ask a young athlete if they can relate to this story…

No, nothing above is embellished or fantasy. It’s real, and its happening just like this – and worse….(including the reference to ‘church schools’….)

In addition to social and physical rational for sports involvement there is the emotional and or psychological justifications. However these are only relevant if they are producing the key outcomes for the athlete.

So ask your self as a coach – by engaging in sports with me as the coach/with their coach, do the athletes:

  1. …Feel better about themselves? (Self-esteem)

  2. …Believe they are capable of even greater things? (Self-confidence)

Changing the way an athlete feels about himself or herself and achieving the purported benefits of sport relating to how an individual feels about themselves can be a simple looking out for and changing the way that athletes, coaches and parents speak to the athlete.

Note:

For those athletes and coaches who are concerned about the direction of training and want to believe there is a better way – congratulations. There is a better way. We have spend the last four decades discovering better ways to train, and we teach these better ways when we work with athletes or coaches. The KSI Coaching Program aims to provide you with the tools to train athletes and others in their highest and best interests, with no interest in what the dominant trend is or will be in the future. Learn more about KSI Coach Education here https://kingsports.net/courses/

 

Ian King

Huddle #27 – Meet Coach Rick Vredenbregt

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Ian King

Coaching in the Fakebook era

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If you are a physical preparation coach (strength coach, S&C coach, Personal trainer – call it what you want) who is looking to start, build or advance your career, then you are going to have to make a decision. Do you prioritize creating a perception of your competence; or do you prioritize actual competence?

There are going to significant implications to the path you choose, that will affect you for better or worse, for life.

Some of the most common concerns and frustrations of physical preparation coaches include:

  • How do I get more clients?
  • How do I retain my clients?
  • How do I get a better quality of clients?
  • How do I get clients who respect me enough to turn up and pay me?
  • Will I be able to raise my income in the years to come?
  • Will I have an income in the years to come?

In the Information Age you have a choice, as evidenced by role models you have in the industry. You can create the perception of your competence (a more appropriate adjective would be your ‘greatness’) and create and raise income that way. Or you can development your competence. Which one do you do? Which one have you done? What is the difference?

These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this article.

The Information Age is described as beginning in 1989, however the social media internet age is a post-2000 phenomenon (e.g. Facebook commenced in 2004)

The ‘internet era’ has been associated with the rise of social media and opportunities to create a ‘fake’ perception of who you are. Is the creation a perception that is different than the reality deceptive? In my opinion, absolutely. However this article is not a moral debate. This is purely a discussion about the impact on your career, economically and otherwise.

Now this doesn’t mean that fake in the physical preparation industry began in 2000. My first major exposure to fake was in the late 1980s, when a North American coach regaled his Australian seminar audience with the way he strength trained Ben Johnson to becoming the fastest man in the world. Only problem was, for those who dug deep enough, according to Ben’s coach (the late Charlie Francis) the two had never met!

No, fake didn’t begin with the post-2000 Internet era. It just exploded then! Now anyone familiar with Internet dating sites and similar platforms to embellish on will tell you that faking it is common. Again, this is of no relevance to this article. What we are focused on is the impact on your career.

The fact that there is no shortage of faked ‘cyber-coaches’ is a reality today. The concern I have for you is that intentionally or otherwise, there is a risk you are going to copy or embrace these values. Is this a problem? I will give my answer to that question as the article unfolds.

The greatest example of Internet fake I witnessed was in at the start of the rise of the fakebook era. In the early 2000s a young entrant to the North American physical preparation industry was emailing me frequently with reference to themselves as an ‘up and coming strength coach’.

…I am a (hopefully) up and coming strength coach…

…It would help establish me as the hot up and coming coach that I am fast becoming…

I just didn’t understand what they meant. After all, they had very limited experience in training individual athletes, never been hired by a team, and could not attract an athlete. Put simply, he was struggling to find work, particularly in the area of athlete preparation, which was a goal of theirs.

I have read “So you want…” thoroughly. While I agree with your statements it is easier for you with an established record to attract new clients than it is for an “outsider” like me to break in. The reason I’m asking is to see where my weaknesses are – what is holding me back in other words as I’m failing to identify it somehow. I don’t think it is qualifications – I have a bundle…

…I’d like to move out of the personal training field and train athletes exclusively but bills need to be paid.

I was confused – he didn’t have many clients, none of whom to my knowledge were athletes, and by his own admission struggled to attract athlete clients. So how was he going to become a ‘hot’ strength coach? And how long would it take?

The answers appeared a few years later, with references in writing to his:

…stable of Olympic and national level athletes…

Now I was really confused, because he didn’t have the goods to attract real athletes. Then I got it. The new definition of a ‘strength coach’ was not like the old one, where you actually trained athletes. The post 2000 version of ‘strength coach’ was where you created the perception online that you trained athletes. No experience needed. At least not in training athletes. Some experience in marketing was very helpful. And a personal propensity for deceit.

Now the faking was not limited to this.[1]

Bottom line, there was not need to go through the decades of experience and thinking that created the content of these dozen or so original artifacts. The only competence required was the ability hit the Control C and Control V buttons (cut and paste). And of course possessing the personal traits to disregard professional courtesy, copyright laws, ethics, commitments etc.

So this is where the industry is. You don’t need experience if you are willing to fake it. But where does faking it take you?

There is two main types of marketing – conventional sales marketing, and referral based marketing.

Conventional marketing requires you to continuously create a new product or service, write sales copy, create databases, stay connected with your database, and blast to them frequently.

Referral based marketing involves you impacting your clients so much they are compelled to tell their family and friends, and as a result of the strength of their advocating you have more clients.

Which one is better? Let’s use the word different, rather than better. The marketing based approach require continual marketing. Lets take the typical e-book of the post 2000 era. It ran out of pulling power pretty quickly, typically because it was rubbish content slapped together and marketed beyond its value. Ever counted the number of e-commerce products some of the more prolific marketers in our industry have created? Some of them, if stacked up, would exceed the height of your ceiling.

The advantage of sales based marketing, especially of products, is the potential for leverage. The disadvantage is that even if your initial sales are great, they will decline very quickly over time, and you need to keep marketing. And you need to continually adapt to the marketing platforms, and how to compete in new marketing spaces.

Referral based marketing is driven out of high competence. You pay nothing for marketing, you do no marketing, and you attract an endless supply of clients. Now it may not be as leveraged as selling a product, but you don’t have to keep reinventing yourself in marketing, and no-one can take competence away from you. You have it for life.

Now we need to make one more distinction. We have talked about marketing and the challenge of having to always market yourself and new products, learning new platforms in new marketing environments. But we need to categorize between marketing with honesty, and deceit based marketing.

Deceit based marketing is where knowingly mislead your market. For example in the case study above, this ‘ambitious’ yet inexperienced ‘coach’ was asked in seminar (recorded and sold in DVD) where the attendee could learn more about the (very familiar!) bodyweight exercises they had just been taught in that 2003 Las Vegas seminar. To which they chose to respond:

Q. …[from the audience] Where can I find all these exercises?

A Only through personal contact [with me]. Firstly, write them all down, and then you have some. And second of all, it is in the ‘Martial Arts’ book…..

Now they could have been honest and listed any of the dozen or so resources they had learnt these unique bodyweight exercises from.[2] However perhaps the attraction of the ability to create the perception of competence won over. Perhaps the post-2000 era culture was reflected?

So what are the implications of deceit based marketing?

Firstly, internet or no-internet, a person’s reputation is still a currency of value.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. —Warren Buffett[3]

Not only are you going to need to reinvent new products and new marketing material and delivery methods, you are going to need to re-invent your reputation – if you can.

There have been two significant economic phenomenons in the last two decades that speak volumes to the risks of selling perception.

Firstly, the dotcom bubble bursting early 2000s. Many of these earlier technology companies had share values was in excess of their tangible values, and this discrepancy contributed to a market crash.

The second was the Sub-Prime loan crisis in the US between about 2006 and 2008. There were too many financial instruments of no value being sold as if they had value, and this crashed the housing market in the US, threatened the entire US economy, and many other economies around the world.

Did some people make money initially from selling perception in both these examples? Absolutely! Did it end well? Not at all.

Personally, I would not recommend this path. I have seen the short-term benefits for some, however the medium long-term consequences await. For those who believe in any form of universal laws, these consequences are unavoidable and inevitable.

So if you choose this path, the focus on prioritizing the perception of your competence, you have been forewarned. The risk is yours. If you are following this path without really realizing it – and this would be easy to do considering the spotlight shone on the ‘success’ of many other fakebook like ‘hero’s’ in this industry, it may be time to pause and reflect.

By now my preference for developing competence may be clear. This does not mean I discourage marketing. You just don’t need to do it to achieve the first $250,000 per year.

I provide my definition of competence.

Competence is measured by your ability to earn a six figure annual service income through attracting, retaining an endless demand from referral based business with A-class clients, paying your triple figures per hour, clients happy to work with you as you travel the globe on holiday for around three months of the year or so. And to do so in the absence of any marketing, or any symbiotic relationship or association with a magazine, commercial company, gymnasium, school, or sporting team or organisation.–Ian King

Now the only criticism of this form of income I accept is that it is not leveraged. The solution is when you are charging three figures per hour, you only need to do up to 20 hours a week of billable hours for your first $100,000. Leaving many hours in the week to more leveraged income streams. Or when you are able to charge $200/hr, do only 10-15 hours a week for the first $100,000-$150,000 per annum. Beats the hell out of waiting for you to make your fortune out of your electronic products, or wondering why you are working for nothing to pay the trainers in your personal training studio.

Is this a pipe dream or ‘deceit-based’ marketing? No, this is what graduates of our KSI Coaching Program do and receive. It’s real. It’s what we teach.

The challenge is first embracing this possibility. If you think it’s too good to be true, move on. If you don’t like the idea of having this sort of income and being relatively unknown, instead attracted to the perception of being ‘famous’ and ‘popular’ in your industry – move on.

And if the thought of starting at Level 1, akin to donning the white belt in a new martial art discipline, is beyond the scope of your ego, move on.

However, if you are attracted to developing competence to the level that results in living the life as described in my definition of competence, keep reading. If you believe you can achieve this level of competence without our help, we say good on you and can we watch and study your progress. And for those who are attracted to our guidance in achieving this definition of competence – get started here. https://kingsports.net/courses/

Life is full of choices!

——

[1] This coach took the ‘How to Write’ and ‘Get Buffed!™ books and produced a knock off claimed to be a ‘bible’. They took the contents of the ‘Foundations of Physical Preparation’ book and liberally sprinkled it through a series of e-books about martial arts, the contents of a strength training program for an Asian team sport and turned it into an e-book about macro-cycles; and liberally sprinkled them all between a series of books and e-books about after-burning, warping speed, shape-shifting, new rules and female body shaping etc etc. Then there were the articles…

[2] Some of the sources the presenter could have shared when questioned:

Twelve Weeks of Pain, King, I., 1999, T-mag.com

Strength Specialization Series (video/dvd) (1998)

How to Write Strength Training Programs (book), 1998

Get Buffed! I (book), 1999

How To Teach Strength Training Exercises (book), 2000

How to Teach Strength Training Exercises (DVD), 2000

Get Buffed! II (book), 2002

Ian King’s Guide to Control Drills, 2002

And other places….

[3] https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/reputation

Ian King

Huddle #26 – Meet the KSI Coaches

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Ian King

A financial reality check for physical preparation coaches

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Irrespective of the motivations that drew you into this industry, there’s a probability that at some point in time you are going to reflect upon the low incomes that constitute most roles in this industry. Put simply this is one of the lower paying ‘professions’. Not totally surprising considering one of the more popular roles within the industry, that of a personal trainer, is the current go to for anyone who is not sure what they want to do with their life, or a waiting for a break in another industry.

Physical preparation coaches who work as gym instructors[1] or personal trainers[2] typically earn below the poverty levels, between $20,000 to $40,000 per year. Physical preparation coaches working with athletes as ‘strength and conditioning coaches’ typically earn $30,000 to $50,000 per year[3] at the college level. Some can earn $75,000 to $150,000 a year in the professional sports ranks.[4] A few earn higher.

Where does this place the physical preparation profession relative to the rest of the work force in developed countries such as America, Europe and Australia? Here’s a statistic from the United States.

Based on the Internal Revenue Service’s 2010-2014 database below, here’s how much the top Americans make: [5]

Top 1%: $380,354

Top 5%: $159,619

Top 10%: $113,799

Top 25%: $67,280

Top 50%: >$33,048

If we were to make a median income in physical preparation, I believe it would be below $33,000 US/year. In other words, the majority of physical preparation coaches are in the bottom 50% of income earners.

For those who plan to make a life long career, and in particular for those who plan to or do support a family, there’s a real challenge with income.

I have sensed a belief or perception with physical preparation that being a physical preparation coach means you need to forgo financial success, because we are little more than a community service. Granted the recent history of this industry has been volunteer-based, but those days are gone.

You don’t have to remain poor because you chose to be involved in physical preparation as a coach![6]

Yes, the average incomes within the industry are a factor dragging the sector. However another factor holding back incomes in this industry is the lack of financial education.

Based on the responses I have received from physical preparation coaches (personal trainers, strength coaches, strength and conditioning coaches etc.) to a ‘financial health’ questionnaire I have developed it really clear that some clarification would benefit those in the industry.

I appreciate that it all comes back to definitions and it’s not appropriate to use the right and wrong approach to how a person defines themself, what they do or what they have. So I will provide the definitions I subscribe to in each point. I also appreciate the sensitive nature of money and the ego, so I am going to be as gentle as I can.

Here are at seven things about your financial position that I believe deserve ‘attention’

1.  You don’t own a business!

One of the questions in the survey where the answers really shocked me were how many physical preparation respondents ticked yes, they have business. Now from where I sit I am going to assume they are self-employed, and or have a trading name or entity, and that gives them the belief they have a business. (Yes, I appreciate that the small minority actually do own a business, and we will touch upon that shortly)

I thought like that once. Until I was exposed to some simple but powerful concepts that helped me understand that being self-employed is not being a business owner.

Firstly lets look at it from the perspective of Robert Kiyoski’s cashflow quadrant. On the left hand side of the quadrant you find the employee (E) and self-employed (SE). What they have in common is they both sell their time. On the right hand side of the quadrant you the business owner (B) and the investor (L). What they have in common is they have leverage. The business owner typically leverages off other peoples time (OPT) (e.g. services) and or the sale of products, and the investor typically leverages off money, including other peoples money (OPM). I will discuss what ‘leverage’ is shortly.

Now before you talk yourself into the possibility that what you do places you on the right hand side of the quadrant not the left, I want to introduce a second perspective on the definition of ‘business’, one I learnt from Brad Sugars.

A business is a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you.—Brad Sugars

The key word is without you. You are not at work and you are making money. You can potentially receive income whilst you sleep from efforts other than your own (ironically another question in the financial survey where the typical answers give were the catalyst for this article!) . And yes, I understand some of you ‘have trainers’ and believe this describes you – give me time, I will address that.

So unfortunately, based on the definitions I rely upon, you don’t have a business!

2.  You don’t have leverage

Leverage is typically used to describe the phenomenon of achieving a greater result than the effort put in. When used to describe income, leverage is one of three types of income – earned, leveraged and passive.

Earned income occurs when you sell your time for money. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid, and once you have done the hour and been paid, there is no more money for that effort. This is what the majority of physical preparation coaches do. They don’t have leverage.

Their income is limited to the hours they can work, and is non-existent if they don’t or can’t work or if the client does a no-show.

Leveraged income can be defined as doing something once and getting paid for it over and over again. Minorities within the industry have leveraged income and the methods typically used to achieve leverage warrant further discussion. Suffice to say, how many physical preparation coaches do you know retired early and living permanently on the beach in Hawaii or similar because of their success in leveraged income?

Bottom line – without leverage, your ability to substantially increase your income is very limited, and your ability to have time freedom nearly non-existent.

Leverage is the reason some people become rich and others do not become rich.–Robert Kiyosaki

3. Your income does not rise faster than the rate of inflation

One of the biggest financial challenges we all face is the impact of inflation or rising cost of living on the value of our dollar. Is your income rising faster than the rate of inflation.

This is tougher for the relatively younger person in the workforce to answer as they have not been around long enough to assess the tradeoff between the increase in cost of living and increases in their earnings. More experienced physical preparation coaches are in a far better position to comment on this.

Now keep in mind we are not talking about the changes that will occur in the demands on your income if you are supporting another per

son/persons, as is the case if you were to start/or have a family.

The chart provided shows the cost of living rises in the US since 1997 – almost 30%. So what was the change in minimum wage in that time? 0%.[7] The table below that goes back to 1990. [8]

You can do your own sums on this – do you have more or less disposable income than you had 5, 10, 20 or 30 years ago? Which raises the next question for you – do your current income streams have the ability to increase your income at a rate that exceeds the rate of rise in cost of living? I suggest it does not and will not – unless of course you change.

4. You don’t have sufficient retirement savings

If you stopped work today, by circumstances or choice, could you support yourself financially for another few decades at a standard of living you would be happy with. Here are some 2016 stats relative to the US on retirement:[9]

  • One-third of Americans report they have no retirement savings.
  • 23% have less than $10,000 saved.
  • This means that 56% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement!

If you calculate a very, very basic cost of living for a single person at say $25,000 per year, and expected to live an average of twenty years in retirement, you are going to need at least $500,000 in savings, placing you in the top 13% of all Americans regarding their retirement savings currently.

If you were spending the savings you could survive at that standard of living for 20 years (not withstanding any extra medical costs – which are going to be inevitable if you live to the full term of your natural life); or you could hope to invest your 500k in an interest-bearing instrument producing 25k a year.

How many years could you support yourself in retirement on your current savings or investments?

How many years could you support yourself in retirement on your current savings or investments?

 5.  You are not immune to being replaced by a robot

Another answer to a question in my financial health questionnaire related to a person’s confidence that their income was future proofed, devoid from threat of being made redundant by robots (or other technology) or shifts in global trends such as certain labor going ‘off-shore’.

Some believe that they were immune to this. Let’s talk about technology first. If your decision making in your service is limited i.e. no high level discernment or creativity is involved, you are very replaceable by technology.

I am going to be perhaps hurtfully blunt – what most physical preparation coaches do is lacking in the high level thinking that would prevent a robot from taking their place. The only real attraction for most clients is that you are a person with a heartbeat not a robot. However that will not save any profession at risk of being replaced by robots.

6.  You’re not unique

Your lack of uniqueness means a number of things. Firstly a robot can replace you. Secondly you are just like everyone else, leaving you wondering why you can’t get standout demand for your services.

The challenge for many is to understand the concept of UMP – unique marketing position (or USP, Unique Selling Position). Dying your hair or wearing dreadlocks or flashing your guns does not make you unique in the sense of UMP. Nor does a twist in your marketing.

The kind of uniqueness I suggest pays is most effective in the physical preparation industry (in fact in most of not all service industries) is your level of competence and subsequent ability to make a massive difference in people’s lives.

This I suggest comes from the higher levels of competence, you with a focus on being the best you can be. Not being like or liked by everyone else.

Here’s the irony – most prioritize being liked by others, and to do this you need to be ‘like’ others. How do you expect to get a superior outcome if you train people like everyone else does?

My reality is that competence threatens. As my coaches progress through and up the levels of competence, their former work colleagues will turn on them. They are typically ejected from their workplace, some with the use of police called in by their previous colleagues. Certain things happen when your competence gets to a certain level. I celebrate them as signs of greatness!

When you stop being like other people, other people will stop liking you!–Darren Hardy

If you haven’t been kicked out of your former working environment, you haven’t raised your competence level to the extent that you could!

7.  You’re not an entrepreneur

Put simply and generically, you are not an entrepreneur. The most poignant use of the word ‘entrepreneur’ that I have seen in my four decade career in this industry was a young man who had recently left the security of his employment in a non-related industry to take up his long held dream of being a full time self-employed physical preparation coach.   Shortly after that live move he was diagnosed with cancer. In his online fund raising page he talked about how his life collapsed upon his diagnosis, and his lack of income and medical insurance was because he had chosen to become ‘an entrepreneur’.

No he had not become an entrepreneur. Rather, he had simply moved from the E quadrant to the S quadrant. Not that I felt it was responsible to share that with him at that time. At that, as I do with many life-impacting conclusions I reach, committed to in the future helping physical preparation coaches be forewarned and educated, before they were put in these serious situations.

Sorry, but you are not an entrepreneur.

Conclusion

As I said at the start money is a tender topic intertwined with pride and ego. I have sought to be respectable and gentle yet at the same time straight with you. Yes, I have made generalizations. Yes, I may have upset a few. All of this is worthwhile if I have helped a few reflect upon any misguided conclusions they may have reached about their financial future.

To help you I have developed a short course providing vital much-needed entrepreneurial education. The next program starts at the beginning of next month. If you are interested, email us at question@kingsports.net.

This industry is already one of the lower earning industries in the developed world.   Continuing to operate in an environment devoid of financial education is not helping. If you truly want to become more entrepreneurial and are willing to empty your cup (figuratively speaking) this course presents a great starting point!

——-

[1] http://www.fitnesscareers.com.au/newsview/fitness-salary-guide-38

[2] http://www.fitnesscareers.com.au/newsview/fitness-salary-guide-38

[3] by Rick Suttle, Demand Media, http://work.chron.com/much-strength-conditioning-coaches-make-average-19363.html

[4] Careers in Sport, Fitness, and Exercise, By American Kinesiology Association, Human Kinetics         http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/strength-and-conditioning-coach

[5] http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-money-do-the-top-income-earners-make-percent/

[6] King, I, 2005, The Way of the Physical Preparation Coach, p. 165

[7] https://buffalogrumblings.wordpress.com/tag/minimum-wage/

[8] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts/

[9] Kirkham, E., 2016. 1 in 3 Americans have saved $0 for retirement, Gobankingrates, 14 March 2016, http://time.com/money/4258451/retirement-savings-survey/

Ian King

Technology and training

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On Dec 3 2017 it was 25 years to the day since the first text message (SMS) was successfully sent. [1] [2] The message required a computer. They could be received on a hand set mobile phone, but could not be responded to.

Twenty five years ago athletes – pro and amateur – were trained on programs that were not individualized, using crude assumptions that what they were doing would make them better, and because they for the most part typically didn’t start the strength training seriously until they were in their late teens or early twenties, the injuries that occurred towards the end of the first decade of strength training were masked by ‘retirement age’.

Twenty-five years later, post 2017, technology is moving to messaging apps such as Facebook, whatsApp, etc. Texting continues, with 800 million a month in Australia on the Vodafone network alone. [3]

Twenty-five years later, post 2017, athletes – pro and amateur – are trained on programs that….are not individualized, using crude assumptions that what they were doing would make them better.

Nothings changed? Yes, there is a change! The starting age for athletes commencing serious strength training has dropped by a decade, which means that the typical injuries caused by strength training that appear within the first decade are appearing a decade before ‘retirement’ age – and are therefore no longer masked.

And this is a problem. Not so much for the coaches with a big talent pool, because there will be someone to take the place. But for the individual athletes, whose hopes and dreams are crushed – when this situation was both predictable and preventable….

Oh, I forgot to mention – if you are really lucky, your coach might change the name on top of your program sheet!

Does this absence of masking of injuries by retirement cause any changes in the way humans act or respond? Apparently not.

There are a few additional technological impacts on physical training.

Firstly, the surgery techniques to repair damaged connective tissue has really advanced, in that the surgeries are less invasive, and the healing time is shorter. Does this mean that surgery no longer comes with further collateral damage? I suggest not.

Secondly, technological advances in measuring training. GPS units to track movement patterns, forces platforms to measure power output, timing gates for displacement speeds etc.

And thirdly advancements in equipment, positively impacting performance.

But what about program design? Is that important? Obviously not important enough for the masses to expect advancement in the ability of ‘professionals’ to provide individualization in program design, because in this regard nothings changed.

Oh, and there is one more change worth noting – the increase in incidence and severity of injuries appears to be constantly rising…..

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[1] https://news.sky.com/story/first-text-message-sender-neil-papworth-celebrates-25th-sms-anniversary-11154491

[2] http://metro.co.uk/2017/12/03/worlds-first-text-message-sent-25-years-ago-today-7127957/

[3] https://www.vodafone.com.au/red-wire/text-message-25-years