ollie
July 30, 2010, 6:45am
107
Thanks for the compliment.
It always comes down to misinformation. I’ve long since made it clear that, in my judgment, incompetency far eclipses competency in this industry.
Whether it’s at the level of the Olympians, collegiate sports, high school sports, and on down to grade school PE, I know that the majority of preparatory training is misinformed and often reckless and damaging to the athletes.
Our monstrously varied and rich talent pool in CONUS allows various athletes and sport teams to achieve high results even in the case of incompetent coaching.
While it’s difficult to exclude our own subjective feelings on what truly characterizes coaching qualification, I feel that there are enough ‘in the know’ individuals who have been influenced by leaders such as Charlie who possess the skill set to not only do an excellent job with their athletes, but also to recognize the phonies. This is irrelevant, however, because it’s the higher ups (AD’s and head sport coaches) who are doing the hiring.
I’m optimistic of the state of affairs experiencing improvement, however.
I, for one, have been fortunate to be presented with interview opportunities with bigger and bigger publications. I’ve had two with Muscle and Fitness (the first one was featured in the on-line version of the mag: Article and Just yesterday Buddy and I spoke with a senior writer for ‘The Sporting News’ who was doing a piece on Dion.
I ended up have a two hour talk with the writer and at the end of it he stated that, his words, “I’ve never had a discussion like that with a strength coach”.
It’s only a matter of time.
I agree that it’s only a matter of time. I believe there is a movement bubbling under to establish a system of checks and balances or a way of calling people out.
This may be going off on a tangent, but I’ve held the belief that the internet has also played a role in that it’s allowed coaches to create the illusion of being at a much higher level than they really are, all for the purpose of moving product.