"S&C coaches should be getting paid millions."
A mentor of mine used to tell me this frequently.
After hours of combing through data and mapping plans with pen and paper, trying to balance the team environment with the targeted stimulus many athletes needed, I'd look to him for guidance and confirmation. He'd shake his head, smile, and advocate for the work we do as performance coaches.
He was only half-kidding about the "millions" – more of a nod to the education, repetition, and savvy each coach accumulates over the course of their career.
Looking back, I think he was pointing at something bigger.
Across the industry, the lines between disciplines continue to blur. Performance coaches are being asked to wear more hats than ever before.
Today's strength and conditioning coach might be responsible for:
Performance theory and application
Proficiency in movement fundamentals, Olympic lifts, speed, multidirectional concepts, and sport-specific tasks
Program design within facility and logistical constraints
Exercise modification in big group environments
Data collection across multiple modalities
Data analysis and reporting
Relationship management with athletes and sport coaches
Effective collaboration with ATs and other athlete stakeholders
Building culture and accountability
And all of that happens within a very specific context – team culture, expectations, and coaching philosophy.
Most coaches aren't managing a single team, either. They're supporting multiple rosters, each with unique schedules, demands, challenges, and coaching influence.
And how about the bigger environment? The school or institution has its own systems, procedures, and priorities that you might not have had a hand in creating.
When you step back and look at it objectively, the challenge becomes obvious: the modern S&C coach possesses more knowledge, more tools, and more information than ever before – but rarely more time.
That's the bottleneck.
The issue isn't a lack of capability. It's the gap between capability and feasibility.
Many coaches have a full toolbox with their hands tied behind their back.
As a result, we often default to "keep it simple," in spite of knowing it's likely not the best solution. Simplicity is great as a choice, but not as a strategy coaches are forced into.
At the same time, the amount of information available to us continues to grow. Monitoring systems. Force plates. Internal and external load metrics. Velocity tracking. Wellness questionnaires.
These tools are incredibly valuable, but every new stream of information creates new responsibilities.
Collect it.
Communicate it.
Turn it into action.
Every step requires its own journey – education, systems development, implementation, and ultimately impact on training.
In high-volume environments, that responsibility almost always lands on the performance staff (or single coach!).
I never felt this more than when transitioning from DIII to DI.
The heart of the job felt the same – great planning with coaching staffs, great relationships with students, and great sessions that foster physical and emotional growth.
But everything surrounding those moments expanded.
150 athletes across 5 teams:
"Geoff – make sure we're using all of our testing modalities regularly."
"Are we reporting that information?"
"How is it getting to athletes and coaches?"
"How is it impacting our decision making?"
"Are you able to handle these return-to-play cases in lift?"
Those expectations are the ideals that every program should strive for. The challenge is that they all compete for the same finite resources: time, attention, and staffing.
The coaches who thrive in these environments are the ones who build systems. They find ways to organize information, prioritize what matters, and consistently deliver a meaningful training product despite the chaos.
Because at the end of the day, athlete development is still the mission. That's why most of us got into this profession. The challenge is making sure all of the supporting responsibilities don't pull us too far away from the athlete themselves.
The profession isn't suffering from an information problem anymore.
Most coaches have access to more data, technology, and educational resources than ever before. The challenge isn't finding information – it's deciding what matters and turning it into action.
We've reached the information stage. Now comes targeted action. This is where athletes benefit exponentially.
Information has become abundant. Impact remains scarce.
After 15 years coaching in college environments – and now spending every day talking shop with coaches across the country – I'll be the first to tell you there's no formula or single method for maximizing impact.
But with the field trending so heavily toward data monitoring and informed decision-making, it's critical to have a model and operating system as flexible as the modern coach.
In this blog series, we'll dive into the systems and principles that can help performance coaches do exactly that – from building a performance model, to defining meaningful testing strategies, to improving communication and creating objective accountability.
The goal isn't to do less.
It's to increase bandwidth and decrease the gap between capability and feasibility.
And hey, who knows – maybe one day the millions will follow.
