Chances you have an internship program if you are in the team setting. The biggest question is what are you or the people interning getting from this experience?
We all have interned in one way or another. We have all experienced the challenges of proving ourselves when we are unproven. We have all gone through the hardships of moving across the country, living in less-than-ideal circumstances, getting paid nothing, doing the worst possible jobs, and hoping with every cell in our body we get something positive from our efforts.
Think about the best-case scenario for an intern, what is it? Leverage your own experiences for a second. Did you have the delusion of being offered a job following the internship or during it? Did you hope to get a recommendation or reference for another job that takes you to the next step in your career? Did you hope to learn discernible skills in becoming a strength and conditioning coach?
What is the best-case scenario for staff taking on the intern? Is everything listed above in reverse? Chances are, you are probably not thinking about how to leverage the asset of a hyper-motivated, very enthusiastic, and willing staff member who may be relatively ‘green’ compared to the rest of your staff. Your interns are something we can leverage but that might not be the biggest restriction to getting something from your interns. There is probably a better chance you resent the person who is volunteering.
Resentment is a funny thing to say when someone is volunteering for you. Think of any other situation where someone is volunteering to with something and ask if they are perceived the same way as S&C? In the situation where you resent your interns, you might be better off simply not having them. Or learn a system where you can get formidable employees working for you when they are unpaid with the hope when they are paid they are more of an asset.
Having a curriculum is tough. You get such wide ends of the spectrum when you have an open internship. You might have volunteers with master’s degrees interning at the same time as an undergrad. You could make stricter criteria, but we all know that when you limit your pool to such a degree you limit your chances of getting anyone worthwhile. You could have a very generic simple curriculum that almost insults your interns and at the same time accomplishes nothing for your future coaching staff.
Here is my advice. Start with the idea that you are going to hire everyone you bring on as an intern. You will have a much better idea of where to start and what to work on thinking they are going to be employees. You will have an actual reason to train and develop your staff. You will be more likely to connect with them and show you are appreciative of their commitment. You will have a rolodex of future coaches you can tap into when someone leaves. You are conditioning yourself to maximize on the time spent training, educating, molding, mentoring, and giving opportunities to.
You will also learn that you don’t need to focus on what you are doing, but on how and why you are doing it. If you have a good program, what you do is obvious. If you have a good program, how you do it makes all the difference. If you have a good program, why you do it is really important. Spending time on what will always lead to frustration. Time is better spent on how and why with young coaches.
Why you do anything makes all the difference in finding genuinely good strength coaches. When you hear ‘I want to help but only want to work with elite-level athletes’ that is a contradicting statement. Or ‘I want to be closer to home but I am 3000 miles away interning’ again is a contradicting statement. ‘I want to work in another setting (pro, college, high school, private) but I am volunteering here (not what they want to do)’ is again contradicting. Your internship should match their ultimate goal. Find contradictions with whys, it saves a ton of time for both the intern and the S&C staff.
How you do it comes down to having standards. If you have no objective standards of what is good or bad in terms of coaching, technique, or code of conduct you cannot give feedback to your staff as well as interns. Your interns will be good at what they can objectively understand. If there is no actual standard, they will be forming their conclusion on what is good. You have to set a standard long before they do, only then you can decide if they uphold that standard and be a future coach on your staff. This has to be uniform and agreed upon amounts
Keep it simple here, I have taken care of this for you. Get my book How to Become a Strength Coach, get them on my curriculum pH Curriculum, and let me take the burden of developing your future staff. It’s a lot on everyone to take time and develop future staff. You must have an idea of who is your next coach, but it is a huge commitment. I have developed hundreds of high-caliber coaches over the last 20 years. I know what you are up against and I can take the burden of time and systems off your hands.
If you want to set up a time to talk about how to leverage both resources with your staff and future staff, fill out the survey on this page.