You?ve come a long way

Last Thursday New York Times sports page had a feature article entitled- “Two Teams Made Tough, One Drill at a Time.”It is an article about the two head football strength coaches for the teams playing for the BCS national Championship, University of Florida and University of Oklahoma. On several levels I thought this article was a major breakthrough. Reading it I could help help but to reflect back on all the fighting, meeting and convincing that needsed to be done to to arrive at this point. Twenty years ago there were still teams without strength and conditioning coaches. The article gives recognition to the role that strength and conditioning played in these two teams success. It served to underscore that the strength and conditioning coach is only as good as the support he or she receives from the head coach. In this case it was unqualified support. The salaries these two guys received is great, for one it was over $300,000 and the other over $200,000. That’s a long way from the $30,000 to $40,000 most people in the field are making. I hope the exposure they are getting raises the compensation standard across the field. One key point that I think many people may miss in reading the article is that the strength and conditioning coaching has more contact with the players throughout the year than any other coach, so the potential for influencing behavior and changing attitudes as wells the obvious physical component is huge. If the strength and conditioning coach knows his stuff and has the backing of the coach the contribution can be the difference.
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Vern Gambetta

Director at Gambetta Sports Training Systems

Vern is the Director of Gambetta Sports Training Systems. He has been the a conditioning coach for several MLS teams as well as the conditioning consultant to the US Men's World Cup Soccer team. Vern is the former Director of Conditioning for the Chicago White Sox and New York Mets. He has lectured and conducted clinics in Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe and has authored six books and over one hundred articles related to coaching and sport performance in a variety of sports. He has a BA in teaching with a coaching minor and an MA in Education with an emphasis in physical education from Stanford University.