Categoriessport training Strength Training

Why College Athletes Should Not Include Olympic Lifting In Their Programs

It’s not lost on me that the title of this particular blog post may ruffle a few feathers out there. There are many coaches and facilities in the world who implement the OLY lifts with their athletes and find great success with this approach.

Conversely, there are also many coaches and facilities in the world who d0 not use the OLY lifts1 and as a result have been blacklisted from S&C Twitter get resounding results as well.

What follows is one coach’s (Syracuse, NY based strength & conditioning coach Ricky Kompf) opinion with a solid rationale for why he falls into the latter category above.

I hope you give it a read.

Copyright: arseniipalivoda

Why College Athletes Shouldn’t Use Olympic Lifts

First off I want to start this article off by saying Olympic lifts can be a great way to develop power.

(step away from the pitchforks, please)

This is in no way shape or form is a diatribe trying to bash Olympic lifts as a group of exercises. They are a tool and just like any tool in the weight room, they have their time and place.

And that time and place should not be in the college weight room as a main means of training power in their respective sport.

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I see it every year, athletes who we have been working with for years in high school finally gain some respectable competency in the weight-room and reach the point where they can play their sport at the next level.

Their collegiate strength coach sends them their summer training program and there it is:

  • Hang cleans
  • Snatches
  • Power cleans
  • 6 AM lifts

A little piece of me dies inside and I have to fight the urge not to go how and yell at my cats.

How can you except an athlete who you have never trained with or seen workout in person to execute the Olympic lifts correctly and effectively without your watchful eye?  It then becomes our job to teach these lifts to the athletes which I’m happy to do, but it undoubtably takes away from the training due to the time and energy restraints it puts on our training.

To make things worse, when these athlete head off to college, train with these exercises as their key performance indicators and main source of power training, 9 times out of 10 they come back to our gym the next year weaker and many times slower.

Weak man tries to lift heavy dumbbell, wants to be strong and fit, does exercises regularly, dressed

I cannot fully contribute these exercises to the outcome, this is simply an observation I’ve noticed for years.

Here’s why I believe these lifts should not be apart of a college athlete’s training program and are actually causing a decrease in performance.

1. Competing Demands

The Olympic lifts are highly technical.

College athletes are arguably at the peak for their sport’s performance (or at least very close to it). That means the demand of skill in their sport takes up a large portion of their training…

…and rightfully so.

They are trying to reach mastery in their craft.

They are not Olympic weight lifters. They are team sport athletes and should be treated as such.

Learning and training with the Olympic lifts takes a high level of skill, skill that is learned through years and years of training and working at it. By spending the time required to be proficient at these exercises you will be taking away from the motor learning time and energy that could be used in their sport.

Basketball players holding basketball in court

You can only master so much at one time from a motor learning perspective and choosing a highly technical form of exercise during collegiate years will only take away from this mastery.

2. They Won’t Be Good Enough For It To Be Effective

The Olympic lifts do a great job of enhancing powerful triple extension, but you don’t reach peak power until you reach about 80% of you max in an Olympic lift.

For the bulk of collegiate aged athletes who have little experience training with the OLY lifts, they likely won’t truly reach this level for a number of years because of how long it takes to master the skill.

(ideally, one would have started at the age of twelve with a PVC stick and ample time…not at 18 with USC at home next week).

I’d rather utilize an exercise like the Trap Bar Jump, which has a much lower learning curve yet yields comparable peak power production in a matter of minutes (not years).

This way I can develop strength, power and speed with as little amount of time as possible. As a result, the athlete can spend more energy on their sport while still experiencing the benefits of a strength & conditioning program.

 

An argument can be made that you could, over the course of the four years, systematically teach a college athlete how to perfect the Olympic lifts in order to reap their benefit.

However, in my experience most (not all) collegiate strength coaches incorporate these lifts using max loads and testing them as a key performance indicator right away.

This is not ideal if you ask me.

Some strength coaches do a great job and implement the OLY lifts responsibly, but I’d still argue that teaching these lifts over the course of four years is a drain on athletes’ time, energy and resources.

I’d Recommend the Following Exercises Instead:

Trap Bar Jumps

 

Trap Bar High Pulls

 

Trap Bar Speed Pulls

 

Sumo Speed Pulls

 

Band Resisted Speed Pulls

 

Dynamic Effort Box Squats

 

3. Power Is Plane Specific

Team sport is rarely played in the same plane of motion as the Olympic lifts.

When developing power that transfers over to your sport it’s better to do it in the same or similar planes of movement and joint angles that you’ll see in your sport to have the most transfer.

Using sprints, jumps and throws are great ways to bridge the gap and usually are better options than the Olympic lifts.

Here’s some exercises that can train speed and power with great transfer to sport:

10 Yard Sprints

 

Max Velocity Sprints

 

Partner Chase Drills

 

Rotational Med Ball Toss

 

Skater Variations

 

Broad Jump Variations

 

Overhead Med Ball Throws

 

Box Jumps

 

4. Other Variations & Methods

Other variations and methods that have a great effect on power training and can be taught quickly include the use of accommodating resistance with bands and chains as well as contrast training.

Accommodating resistance allows you to accelerate through a full range of motion because the resistance increases as you get into joint angles that can handle greater loads. This allows you to train power at all joint angles in a lift.

In addition to that the use of bands provides a unique training stimulus in which the eccentric portion of the lift is accelerated forcing a great amount deceleration training as well as a high-level reversal strength by using the stretch shortening cycle.

There’re a couple examples of this is the exercises listed above.

Contrast training is a method to peak speed and power production in which you use a heavy compound movement like a squat or deadlift and go right into an explosive expression of speed and power like a sprint, jump or throw.

Note from TG: I posted about contrast sets recently HERE.

The heavy lift provides an activation of higher threshold motor units that will transfer into a more explosive athletic movement.

Here’s some examples of contrast training.

Pre-Season Football Contrast Set

 

Back Squat —-> Box Jump

 

Banded Bulgarian Split Squat —-> Half Kneeling Sprint

 

About the Author

Ricky Kompf is the owner of Kompf Training Systems located in Syracuse New York.  His facility provides semi-private training for predominantly high-school and college level athletes with individualized programming.
You can find Ricky on Instagram HERE.
Categoriespersonal training

5 Reasons You Aren’t Getting the Results You Want in the Gym

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Syracuse, NY based personal trainer/strength coach, Ricky Kompf2

If you lift weights as your main mode of exercise you’re bound to experience ruts that can be frustrating, and there are many factors to consider. 

Ricky weighs in (<— see what I just did there?) on several things to consider on why you may not be seeing the fruits of your labor.

Enjoy!

Copyright: pressmaster / 123RF Stock Photo

5 Reasons You Aren’t Getting the Results You Want

This is a constant battle everyone interested in getting fitter or healthier deals with: You start working out a lot, you get a lot of initial gains in your strength, speed, power, endurance and overall performance, and you think “Wow this is awesome!”

You continue to work out the same way and over time you stop getting results. Or, at the very least, progress takes a major nose dive.

You’ve hit a plateau.

This is one of the hardest things to overcome. Many people give up, stop being as motivated, and try to work harder, but crash and burn, leaving a bad taste in their mouth because they aren’t getting the gains they were before.

Sound like you?

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Let’s be clear with one thing, reaching peak performance is a marathon not a sprint.

To get past sticking points in your program it will require you to look at your daily actions much more deeply. It will force you to painfully analyze the things you’re really not good at.  As long as you can approach this with an open mind of getting better you’ll be able to push through your plateaus.

What follows are the top 5 things I’ve found to be the leading reasons why most people fail at attaining the results they want. Read them over, ponder, let them marinate, and then let’s get to work.

1. You’re Training Too Hard

Believe it or not, there is a such thing as training too hard.

Not that it will always result in “overtraining” but it can and absolutely will result in diminishing rate of returns in the gym.

At a micro level your body can only recover from so much stress on a daily basis and if you consistently go above that threshold every day you’re not going to recover and become stronger. The stronger you become the more likely this can happen.

It’s called the Law of Supercompensation and it helps you to achieve the results that you want.

When you first workout your body becomes weaker, and after you eat, sleep and give you body time to recover you become stronger as an adaption to prevent damage to the body.

Your body literally adapts so you don’t die.

As you continue to ramp up the stimulus of training your body needs more time to recover, or it needs to optimize its ability to recover.

If you fail to allow either to happen the body will stop recovering to baseline and you’ll be in a constant state of fatigue.

Fatigue will mask your true fitness level.

Going into the weeds on this topic with a simple blog post is impossible, but the idea here is to champion RECOVERY. Your results in the gym are directly proportional to how well you allow yourself to recover.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can sit here and wax poetic on the importance of sleep, proper hydration, and ensuring ample calories to support your training but…

…zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Boring.

NOTE: All there are THE most important factors to consider when discussing recovery. I just know most people tend to black out or lose interest when anyone starts to discuss topics.

One of the best ways to ensure ample recovery and to prevent plateaus in the gym is to “lean into” the ebbs and flows of training volume. Some days/weeks should be hard, some days/weeks should be easy, some days/weeks should be right in the middle (what I like to call Goldilocks days), and then, yes, some days should absolutely make you hate your fucking life.

Here’s an excellent video via Chad Wesley Smith of Juggernaut Training outlining the concept:

 

2. You’re Not Training Hard Enough

This seems to be an obvious one but it’s very common for someone to get stuck into a routine doing the same thing every time they go to the gym, operate at the same level of intensity, and do the same weights every…single…day.

Your body is very good at adapting to what you do on a regular basis and if you continue to do the same thing day in and day out your body will become so efficient at it that, not only will you stop seeing results, but you actually may begin to regress.

Your body needs novel stimuli that it’s not used to, and you need to change the intensity of your workouts on a regular basis.

If you program calls for you to perform an exercise for eight repetitions and when you’re done you could have completed eight more, you’re not training hard enough…

…and you’re likely seeing sub-optimal results.

I always like to tell people you should leave 1-2 reps in the tank after each set. This tends to be a nice compromise because

  • You’ll ensure good technique with each rep.
  • You’ll still be lifting an appreciable amount of weight in order to elicit an adaptive response from the body
  • And lastly, to piggy back from above, you’ll ensure ample recovery between workouts

Figuring out how much weight you should be using can be a bit of a quagmire.

THIS post from Tony should help those of you who need a little direction.

3. You Have Too Many Daily Stressors

Your body recognizes all stressors as the same thing, and when you have too many stressors – good or bad – it will influence your recovery and results.

These stressors can include: working out, a lack of sleep, fighting ninjas, financial stress, friends and significant other, sick kid, your boss is an asshole, and everything and anything in between.

If it feels like the stress is piling up chances are you won’t be recovering very well either.

Maybe taking a day or two off from working out is what’s needed. However, I recognize that for a lot of people heading to the gym on a daily basis IS stress relief. To that end, maybe something like a Bloop, Bloop, Bloop workout is in the cards?

Meditation is lovely idea.

Or, I don’t know, maybe try some yoga.

Try Neghar Fonooni’s Wildfire Yoga (I.e., yoga for meatheads) which provides a plethora of quick 10-20 minutes “yoga flows” that’ll help declutter your mind but also loosen up that pesky piriformis that’s been nagging you for years.

The idea is that you don’t always need go full-boar, DEFCON 1, OMG-this-workout-was-so-awesome-I-can’t-feel-the-right-side-of-my-face.

If daily stress is high, temper your workouts accordingly.

4. You Need to Change the Focus of Your Program

Many people fall victim to this.

Humans are creature of habit and if something worked in the past, it stands to reason it’ll work today, tomorrow, next week, next year, next decade, you get the idea.

Whether it’s strength training, being a cardio bunny, or going on a bodybuilder body part split…

…everything works until it doesn’t work.

The answer to your past problems – when overdone – will be the source of your new issues. 

This is why having a basic understanding of periodization and focusing on different qualities of strength and fitness at different times is so important.

This means taking time to have phases where your main focus is strength, or Hypertrophy, or endurance, or power/speed, or just having better movement.

Change the focus of your program so you can be well rounded and avoid plateaus.

Progress feeds more progress.

5. Do More of What You Suck At

Stop always doing what you’re good at or what you’re familiar with.

If you write your own programs you’ll inevitably lean towards those exercises you’re comfortable with and good at. If you’ve always had a straight bar deadlift and a barbell back squat in your program, I have news for you…

…you don’t need either of them to be strong and get awesome results.

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The body doesn’t know what a deadlift or a squat is.

All that happens is a stimulus and an adaptation to the stimulus.

If the stimulus is the same all the time, the adaptation will be less and less significant. Change your variations, go from a straight bar deadlift to a trap bar deadlift, use specialty bars, use accommodating resistance with bands and chains, use eccentrics and isometrics in your training.

 

There’re so many things you can change or tweak in your program; the options are endless!

Here’s a list of things you can change to create a different stimulus and continue to allow your body to make adaptation:

  1. Use eccentric and isometrics to limit mechanical stress and master movement of your lifts
  2. Use chains and bands to overload the top of your lifts, mimic the strength curve, and teach acceleration in your lifts
  3. Use specialty bars to change the lift slightly and work on weaknesses
  4. Change your rest periods
  5. Use unilateral exercises as your main lift (ie, Bulgarian split squats, reverse lunges, single arm presses, etc)

About the Author

Ricky Kompf is the head coach/owner of Kompf Training Systems where we work primarily with team sport athletes like baseball, football, lacrosse and basketball.

He’s also a Head Trainer for a corporation for Bankers Heath Care.

You can give him a follow on Instagram HERE.

You can check him out on Twitter HERE.

CategoriesExercises You Should Be Doing

Best Articles of the Year 2019: Guest Posts

The week between Christmas and New Year’s I like to highlight a select number of articles featured on my site during the past 365 days.

First up were the the articles that resonated with you, the reader, as defined by analytics and what piqued your interest…HERE.

Next up were the articles that resonated with me and filled my writer’s love tank…HERE.

Today I’d like to direct your attention to the best GUEST POSTS of 2019.

Copyright: serpiandco / 123RF Stock Photo

Best Articles of  2019: Guest Posts

The State of Corrective Fitness 2019 – Kevin Mullins

This was FOUR part series DC based personal trainer, Kevin Mullins, wrote for the site that, if I were to be honest, is very much a Ken Burns’esque masterpiece.

Intro – The State of Corrective Fitness

Part I – Correcting the Shoulders

Part II – Correcting the Lower Back and Hips

Part III – Correcting the Knees and Ankles

Individualizing Your Squat Stance – Sam Spinelli

Not everyone is meant to squat the same way or utilize the same variations. Here’s how to figure that shit out (my words, not Sam’s).

The Road to Recovery is Paved With More Training –  Michael Gregory

“Just rest” just isn’t going to cut it for most people.

What Makes an Athlete Fast? – Ricky Kompf

HINT: It’s not endless agility ladders drills and weekend speed camps.

The Lost Art of Adult Play – Shane McLean

As we grow older our fitness tends to get more and more robotic in nature. We sit in machines, performing endless, mindless repetitions, all while perusing our smart phones.

Shane showcases some ways to be less of a health/fitness zombie.

CategoriesMotivational personal training

Community is the Change You Need: A Call to Action For All Fitness Professionals

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Syracuse, NY based strength coach, Ricky Kompf. Ricky interned at Cressey Sports Performance when I was still a coach there and has been doing a superb job building a reputation as a “go to” coach in the Central NY area.

Today he discusses the importance of community and how building one can make all the difference in the world with your clients/athletes and fitness business in general.

Enjoy.

Copyright: ammentorp / 123RF Stock Photo

 

Community is the Change You Need

I consider myself a pretty mindful and deep guy. Over the years of working with people I find myself delving deeper and deeper into psychology based reading and realizing what I read to be valuable and applicable to my job as a coach.

Many times that little gold nugget of knowledge in a book on psychology is even more powerful than the knowledge bombs I find in strength and conditioning text books.

I would like to share an experience with you that was pretty excruciating yet gave me quite the breakthrough.

This moment not only gave me confirmation that I am doing the work I was set out to do and I am fulfilling my purpose in life, but also gave me a realization that there are more people out there that NEED our help as fitness professionals but don’t necessarily WANT our help.

That experience was of course while serving for jury duty…

I was in a room filled with 375 random people who live in Central New York waiting to hear if they have to sit in on trial or not. Whatever picture you have in your head right now… Trust me it was worse than that.

People were pissed, impatient and probably a little hungry.

It’s pretty safe to say no one wanted to be there.

I know I didn’t want to be there, but there was no point in stressing over something I couldn’t control. So I practiced some diaphragmatic breathing while sitting in a room for 8 hours waiting to hear my fate.

It was then that I started to look around the room and become the silent observer. This was the perfect sample size of what society around me is like. Many were overweight, seemed slightly depressed, poor posture, and just looked a little run down. I actually counted in the room how many people seemed like they were in pretty good shape.

I could count them all on my hands.

It was then that the lady in charge asked a very important question, “If you have a medical condition that could affect your ability to serve as a jury please come up front.”

Half the room stood up and walked/limped to the front.

That’s right…there were just as much people sitting down as there were people in line waiting to tell this lady about their illness. That was well over 150 people! I’ll factor in that some people were just trying to get out of jury duty but still!

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That’s when I realized something, something that really speaks to our society as a whole.

We live in a nation where it is the minority to be healthy and not have issues with your health.

We are fat and depressed; we rely on the drugs of pharmaceutical industries to keep us just barely going. All the while we are living with this belief that this is the norm. We look to the people around us and see that they’re unhealthy and it gives us unconscious confirmation that it is okay to be unhealthy as well.

To me the words healthy and happy are prerequisites to each other.

You have to be healthy to be happy and you have to be happy to be healthy.

The more and more people I come in contact with and work with, I realize it’s not the great physique they’re after or the even the edge on the competition. Even if they really think it is.

It’s happiness.

It’s the feeling you get when you’re in control of your health, the quality of life you have, and most of all control over your own destiny.

As a fitness professional remember you’re not just delivering results, you’re delivering happiness.

Like the feeling you get when you witness two kittens snuggling. That kind of happiness.

So you may ask yourself, I’m a fitness professional but how do we get all these people who either don’t want our help or can’t afford our help to change and become healthier?

It all starts with community.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “you are the average of the 5 people you hang around with most?” The people you hang around with will influence every decision you make.

Well How Do You Use This Information?

As strength coach’s or personal trainers you may notice that you’ve build a mini community around you. These communities of clients are like minded people, they want to become healthier and support each other.

If you’re really good at what you do they even hangout with each other outside of the gym!

That’s your change right there.

You may have even noticed that most of your clients now are word of mouth based, which means people are talking about you outside of the gym and sending business your way.

The more you double down on your community and focus on building a support group of people, the more likely you will make an impact on your community’s health as a whole.

This may even be indirectly.

The larger the community you make the more of an impact you will have. This is also why I think one-on-one training can be detrimental to your business if your goal is to influence as many people as possible.

Community is the secret sauce to your goals.

Mark Fisher Fitness: the epitome of how to build a lasting fitness community.

Community gives people permission to change; or, more to the point, “nudges” people to change.

Having a community of like-minded individuals who implement a healthier lifestyle and share common goals is often the key determining factor that help others change their behavior.

Look at your clientele base now:

  • Do they hangout with each other?
  • Do they communicate on social media?
  • Do you show them off on your social media?

And how excited are they to tell people about what you’ve done for them?

If you’ve never thought to consider these questions, or worse, the answers are a resounding cricket chirp, then I’d recommend getting your butt in gear.

As a fitness professional, you are the mayor in your “health conscious” community. Exercise is a vehicle for a life well lived.

…. Mic Drop.

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Actionable Takeaways

  1. Create a Facebook group that brings all your clients together to support each other and give information to them regularly. Hold special 10-15 minute Live Events that inform them and keep them engaged in the journey. Highlight THEIR videos and exercise accomplishments.
  2. Use your Instagram account to show off how badass your athletes and clients are. Everyone loves recognition.
  3. Plan out events to do as a group that brings people together outside of the gym. This could be Spartan races, 5k’s, team dinners, book and movie clubs, even mass text messages can go a long way.
  4. If you have athletes, go to their games! They worked so hard for you, and they will love to see your support.

About the Author

Richard Kompf, BS, CSCS

Strength and conditioning coach and Internship supervisor for Scollo Strength and Performance. Located inside of Pacific Health Club, based just outside of Syracuse, NY. Specializing in explosive athletes and general population clientele.

Categoriesfitness business personal training

0 to 50 Clients: Four Lessons I Learned

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Syracuse, NY based coach and personal trainer, Ricky Kompf. He covers a topic I believe every up and coming fitness professional can commiserate with, but more importantly learn from:

How to get more clients.

Enjoy.

Copyright: ammentorp / 123RF Stock Photo

 

0 to 50 Clients: Four Lessons I Learned

Even though I have been working as a trainer for a little over four years this past year and a half I have completely engorged myself in the lifestyle and business mindset of a trainer.

I write this article to share some of the lessons I have learned while building my own personal training career and business.

I have come out of this period of my life with a whole new perspective on what works and what doesn’t in this industry and let me tell you something….it is hard!

Plain and simple, the fitness industry can be one of the most challenging fields to start a career in.

While it may be very challenging in the beginning the lessons and rewards that you encounter makes the difficulties of this field very much worth it. What I wish to share with you are four lessons I have learned growing from 0 clients on day one to 50 plus active clients now.

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Lesson 1: Priority Number One is Gaining Experience

Gaining experience and knowledge while in the company of very good and successful trainers in the industry will teach you to stay humble and always continue to educate yourself and develop your craft as a trainer and coach. If you want to be the best, be around the best and study their behaviors to bring into your own practice.

That experience will pay for itself.

For my first two and a half years as a trainer I was training out of college gyms in the student section as well as various commercial gyms.

I had no long-term clients, but knew the experience gained along the way would help me forge full-steam a head down the road.

It was only after finishing my internship at Cressey Sports Performance a year and a half ago that I felt comfortable taking money from people to let me train them.

With experience comes confidence.

At the end of the day if your clients don’t trust your knowledge and experience as a trainer you won’t be able to bring results to them.

Additionally, with experience comes knowledge, and with knowledge comes confidence in yourself, and that is the foundation in which you should start your journey to building your training business and brand.

Have confidence in yourself to deliver an amazing service.

Lesson 2: Over Deliver

I can’t stress this enough; to this day with the 50 plus clients I have to manage I am always searching for ways to over deliver to them.

One thing that I heard Eric Cressey say in a Podcast as well as many other fitness professionals is:

“They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Remember that we are in the service industry and what sets you apart from the competition is the quality of your service.

Your clients should be saying “I can’t believe I only pay this much for this training” more than “I can’t believe how expensive this is!”

Some easy things you can start doing right now are giving free consultations and assessments, without trying to push your services on them. Look at it as you trying to work on your assessment process and how you deliver information that is helpful for that person.

I have done well over 200 assessments in the past year and a half. Probably less than half signed up for training. That being said, I have a great assessment process that I have created and it is very rare now that someone doesn’t sign up.

Go overtime.

If you’re training someone and you know you have some extra time at the end before you have to start your next client or group, spend more time with them.

They will appreciate the extra work you give them and will be more likely to refer someone to you.

Even now that I have my clients and groups pretty much back to back, I give them extra work to do at the end.

Follow up with them outside their training sessions.

Text or call your people, ask them how they’re feeling. Talk to them about their goals outside of the two or three hours out of the week in which you see them. This will show them that you care and that you’re invested in their journey.

Lesson 3: Don’t Waste Your Time (Right Away) Trying To Brand Yourself.

To this day I still don’t have a website.

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After a year and a half of building my reputation only now am I considering making a website. And even then it’s mainly to communicate with my current clients, giving them information more effectively, in addition to allowing potential clients to see what I’m about and have to offer before signing up.

At my current job one thing we preach to our clients and athletes is that we’re not for everyone.

That being said in the beginning when you first start out, guess what….you are for everyone.

Don’t try to brand yourself as the athlete guy or the basketball guy or the fat loss guy. Train as many different people as you can so you can find your strengths and to find out what/who you really enjoy working with.

For example, I know my strengths are in female and male youth athletes, and adult groups.

This doesn’t mean I don’t train collegiate level athletes or have any one-on-one clients.

I do.

However, I found in the past few years I get jazzed up and excited to train young athletes and to be a mentor towards them. So why not gravitate towards what brings me joy and fulfillment?

I encourage you to do the same – BUT YOU NEED TO TRAIN AN ECLECTIC GROUP OF PEOPLE FIRST BEFORE YOU CAN BRAND OR MARKET YOURSELF TOWARDS A UNIQUE SUBSET.

Lesson 4: Find a Place or Group of People That Will Help You Grow and Enjoy the Process.

I owe a lot of my success and accelerated progress to my boss and partner strength coach, Vinny Scollo.

He’s been an amazing mentor towards me.

Together we have created an environment in our gym that breeds great athletes and amazing results.

We build each other up when energy levels are low and challenge each other to be better coaches. I couldn’t have asked for a better boss and work environment.

If you wish to last in this field and turn it into a career, you must find or create a team that will build you up, challenge you to get better, and enjoy the process.

I have trained and worked in very bad environments with very negative co-workers and I have experienced the best environments and co-workers. An environment that will build you up is a place you want to be in for the long haul, and will make the challenging moments in your career seem not so bad.

About the Author

Richard Kompf, BS, CSCS

Strength and conditioning coach and Internship supervisor for Scollo Strength and Performance. Located inside of Pacific Health Club, based just outside of Syracuse, NY. Specializing in explosive athletes and general population clientele.

Categoriescoaching Motivational personal training

Doing Your Time: The Value of a Good Strength and Conditioning Internship

I never quite understand the infatuation some fitness professionals have with telling the world how much they’re “grinding” or hustling.” As if to imply their work ethic deserves more praise than the thousands of other coaches and trainers getting up early to, you know, go to work.

What’s more, those who continuously gloat about their grinding prowess and how “busy” they are sure do have a lot of extra time to post 37 different reminders on social media about it.

Of course, this isn’t to insinuate that people don’t actually work their butts off and have a right to brag about it. Someone like Eric Cressey or Joe Dowdell or David Dellanave or Molly Galbraith or Mike Reinold or Mike Robertson or Cassandra Forsythe or any number of fitness pros I know3 who have built a successful fitness business (and have unmatched work ethic) can do whatever the heck they want!

Here’s the kicker, though: they’re not the ones on Twitter and Instagram belaboring over the grind.

In my experience, those who do go out of their way to routinely market to the world about their hustling ways, are generally working exponentially harder to maintain the facade.

A facade that does nothing but mask what’s really going on.

He or she gets up like everyone else, trains people 4-5x per week like everyone else, and takes weekends off like everyone else.

In short: nothing special.

Nevertheless, all of this is to say that hard work – REAL hard work – does enter the conversation and matters. The fitness industry is one super saturated mess and everyone is vying for a piece of the pie.

Everyone is trying to separate themselves from the masses by worrying, first, how to market themselves or “build a brand” before gaining any experience and skills that will actually make themselves marketable.

Most often without understanding that – and please forgive the cliche – there’s a degree of “paying your dues and putting in the time” that’s involved.

“Putting in the time” is not referring to setting up twelve different social media platforms and posting videos of yourself talking to the camera about “time saving hacks” or what you had for breakfast while you’re driving down the highway.

Come on! You’re not that busy that you can’t sit down and talk without risking the lives of other drivers.

Don’t get me wrong: I understand that in today’s world part of running a successful business is staying on task with technology and understanding how to utilize it to build a brand. I’m not a hypocrite.

However, I’m referring to real work.

Real interactions with real people during real training sessions.

Basically, building real skills.

It’s a lesson many up and coming fitness pros need to understand.

It’s not sexy, but it’s what works and helps builds integrity, resiliency, and character. Annnnnd, I’m getting a bit too ranty and taking away the spotlight from today’s guest post.

Recent Cressey Sports Performance coach (and intern), Ricky Kompf, had a similar message to say on the matter. I encourage all young fitness professionals to give it a read below.

Doing Your Time: The Value of a Good Internship

Have you ever heard of the phrase….

“If you’re good at something never do it for free”?

When it comes to being good at your future career (especially in the fitness industry) the phrase should really go…

“If you’re good at something never do it for free and the road to being good at something is paved with a whole lot of free labor.”

Not as catchy but a lot more accurate.

When you begin your career in the fitness industry it’s hard to get a whole lot of hours of experience right away. Most of the time you’ll be in a situation where you are in a commercial gym and you’ll have to build up your clientele in order to get more experience.

Depending on where you are it can take a while to build up the hours you need in order to be a good coach.

With internships you have those hours right away and you’ll be able to hone your craft, become a great coach and build up confidence within yourself…all while under the mentorship of more experienced individuals.

I am a better coach now than I was seven months ago, and I owe that to my internship experience.

The value of a good internship will help you make leaps and bounds in your career as an up and coming fitness professional. Internships give you the opportunity to gain experience, be mentored by some of the top professionals in your field, work with the population you want to work with and expand your network.

I’ve been a personal trainer for two and a half years and have been lucky enough to have some influential people guide me along the way. This led me to take part in two internships that have been the greatest learning experience in my young career.

My first internship was at a successful training facility in Rockland New York called Rockland Peak Performance (RPP).

For three months I worked close to 40 hours a week with a wide variety of clientele that I had previously never been exposed to. This included youth, collegiate, and professional athletes all the way to general population clients of all ages and backgrounds.

As soon as I finished at RPP, I went directly to Massachusetts to start my second internship at Cressey Sports Performance.

For the next four months I honed my craft 32 hours a week coaching on the floor of CSP and worked alongside arguably some of the best strength and conditioning coaches in the country.

Tallying up close to 1,000 hours of experience right off the bat after graduating.

Not too shabby I’d say!

Never under estimate the value a good mentor.

The people you surround yourself with will have huge impact on who you are and who you will become as a person and a professional. When you place yourself in a situation where you are surrounded by people who are successful and good at what they do you have a better understanding as to how you can get there too.

Working with others who have a strong desire to learn and become better is a major benefit to a good internship.

A good coach’s commitment to become better may have a positive impact on you. You may find yourself picking up on the behaviors and habits they have that make them successful. I’ve always seen myself as a hard worker, but throughout my internship experience the phrase work ethic has taken on a new meaning to me. The habits I’ve developed over the past seven months have made me better and more efficient at coaching and communicating with others.

One of the least talked about advantages of pursuing an internship of your liking, is that you can choose the population you want to work with.

In the beginning of your career you have to build up your clientele…meaning you can’t choose who you want to work with; not when bills need to be paid.

By going through an internship you have the opportunity to work with the population you might want to specialize in.

Note From TG: Conversely, it opens up the possibility you may dislike it and realize what you thought you liked, you don’t. In their book, Decisive, Chip and Dan Heath calls this an “ooch,” or, a way to test one’s hypothesis or experience a small sample size.

You may in turn use that as a way to market yourself in the future.

Baseball players come to Cressey Performance because CSP is known for being the go to place to train if you are a baseball player. When you have experience with a certain population that population is more likely to pay for your services.

Finally an internship is a great networking opportunity.

Building a good network in the fitness industry gets you jobs and more clients. Knowing people who know people opens the door to where you want to be.

For example, as a previous Cressey Performance intern, you are a part of a CSP alumni intern page where job opportunities are posted regularly. This is because people in the fitness field know how good of an internship process CSP has and come to Pete and Eric asking if they know anyone good to fill a position at their facility (chances are, they do).

If you have an internship opportunity and are hesitant because it is unpaid, I highly encourage you to consider the opportunities that will open up from the experience.

If you are required to go through an internship as part of your undergraduate degree I encourage you to look at it as an investment in yourself.

Go for the internship that you will be challenged the most from.

This will give you the foundation that you need in order to become successful in this field.

About the Author

Rick Kompf is a SUNY Cortland Graduate with a degree in Kinesiology and a concentration in fitness Development. After completing his degree he went on to perform seven months of unpaid internships and is currently a Personal Trainer for Trillium Personal fitness in Syracuse New York.

Also the Founder of GainzTheoryFitness.com.