One of the reasons that I love the field of collegiate athletics is the competitive nature of the business.  As a whole, our athletic department is competing to be superior to the other eight in the Big Sky Conference.  This competitiveness permeates all the way from administration and staff, to the coaches, and finally to teams and individual athletes.  Although I don’t know many of the other strength coaches in the Big Sky personally, I feel like every day I train my athletes, I am competing against them to do a better job getting my athletes prepared to win conference championships.  This extreme level of competitiveness drives me to find out what steps I need to take to make me a better coach for my athletes.

Just like countless other coaches in this industry, I have sacrificed in order to improve at my craft.  I have moved across the country twice, interned for little to no money, and am working on completing my Master’s degree.  I did not make all of these sacrifices in hopes of being a mediocre coach.  One resounding piece of advice I have received from strength & conditioning coaches across the country is that attending seminars and conferences is a sacrifice you MUST make to get better in this industry.  And often times, the money you spend to attend these conferences comes back to you in the long run, because of the ideas and knowledge you gain from the experience and the people you meet.  Since I started actually earning a paycheck for strength & conditioning, I have managed to attend my share of seminars and have met many outstanding coaches.  However, I still must operate within the financial confines of a married man who just purchased a home, works with hundreds of athletes, and all while still being a student.  And there are times when I get to the end of the month and realize I barely have enough money to support my wife and me, let alone spend money on continuing education.

With all that being said, I absolutely love my job and in no way will I let my financial situation dictate what kind of coach I am going to become.  At this point in my career I know I cannot attend every conference and seminar that I would want to, but at the same time, I want to be getting better every single day at what I do.  The good news is there are plenty of other ways to continue to grow as a coach in lieu of only going to conferences (coming from the guy who just attended two in less than a month). Here are some suggestions on how to get better on a budget:

1. Subscribe to free newsletters

Mike Boyle, Brijesh Patel (SB Coaches College), Mike Robertson, Eric Cressey, Adam Feit (YSCCa), Rob Taylor (SMARTER Team Training).  These are only a few of the names in our industry who provide a FREE newsletter just for registering through their respective websites.  These newsletters are often packed full of useful information that could help even the best strength coaches get better at what they do.  Often times the newsletters contain video content, articles, and interviews.  There are no excuses not to be signed up for these.  As an aside, I actually won a copy of Functional Strength Coach 3.0 by being on Mike Boyle’s mailing list.  All I had to do was make a video to explain why I was deserving of the product.  It turned out to be a savings of almost $200 and it took me 10 minutes to make the video!  Being proactive will pay off!

2. Email / phone correspondence

Although these are more informal ways to connect with coaches and other professionals, sometimes it allows you the opportunity to contact someone who is extremely far away from you that you may not meet otherwise.  But be patient; these coaches are just as busy as you are, and are not necessarily going to call you back soon, if at all.  Don’t take it personally.  Remember that there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people trying to contact these coaches as well.  However, if you are patient and send a couple of emails or leave a confident detailed messages about why you want to talk to them, sometimes you’ll get lucky and get to communicate with some really great coaches.  The knowledge I have gained about being a better coach from these interactions is probably more than I got out of my entire undergrad experience.  Many of the people I talk to in the strength and conditioning profession are solely through email or phone contact, and I have never met them in person.  Use peers as a resource and don’t be afraid of ego!

3. Visit free informational websites / blogs / podcasts

Similar to newsletters, fitness websites are great places to access tremendous content for no cost.  There are too many good ones to list, but my personal favorites would be sbcoachescollege.com, t-muscle.com, ericcressey.com, robertsontrainingsystems.com, and elitefts.com.  One thing I really like from these sites, aside from their great content, is that often times they have a recommended resources page, which is really helpful when selecting books and products for purchase.

Along these same lines, try to visit as many collegiate strength & conditioning websites as possible.  The NSCA’s website has a pretty comprehensive list of universities who have strength & conditioning pages.  Many of their websites include staff philosophies, nutritional information, and exercise demonstrations.  Again, invaluable information that can make you better at what you do.

As for blogs, again there are too many good ones to list, but I really like all the guys of Cressey Performance (Tony Gentilcore, Brian St. Pierre, & Eric Cressey), Mike Robertson, Dan John, Diesel Crew, Nate Green, Alwyn Cosgrove, and Luka Hocevar to name several.  Blogs are great because the content is updated frequently and is usually entertaining to read.

The mother of all free content comes from free podcasts.  The two that I listen to are from Robertson Training Systems and the FitCast.  Again, outstanding content and you get to listen to the opinions of some of the best professionals in our business.

Finally there are some relatively inexpensive pay websites (strengthcoach.com, sportsrehabexpert.com, bighousepower.com, myfittube.com) that have extremely excellent reputations and are run by very qualified coaches (personally I have only used strengthcoach.com).  Some of these sites also include open forums where you can get advice and talk shop with some of the greatest coaches in the world, which is worth the price of membership itself!

4. Taking advantage of social networking sites

I’m about as against wasting my time with social networking sites as the next coach, but some of these sites are great in terms of accessing helpful information.  One that I just joined, Strength Performance Network, is like facebook for coaches, and has a ton of great video content, as well as a chat area to talk with other professionals.  Then there is always facebook, but often times I have found it better to join fan pages promoting a coach’s facility or company rather than being their personal facebook friend, because the site is still intended for uniting “friends” rather than strangers with agendas.  Just be forewarned that facebook seems to be more about promotion rather than learning, but it is still a pretty decent way to get in contact with coaches.

5. Earning continuing education from classes

If you are like me and certified through the NSCA, you are expected to earn 6.0 CEUs by December 31, 2011.  5.5 of those CEUs can come from course work.  According to the NSCA, you can earn .3 CEUs per hour for a quarter class, and .5 CEUs per hour for a semester class, with a maximum of 2.0 CEUs per class.  If you work at a college, you should be able to take classes at a highly discounted rate.  At Eastern Washington University, I pay five dollars for up to 10 credits!  Not only are you earning continuing education units by taking classes, you are hopefully gaining a ton of knowledge from the experience.  I prefer taking advanced anatomy, biomechanics, or computer classes. All of these will definitely make you better at what you do and give you some sympathy for what your student athletes endure on a weekly basis!

And I can hear a collective moaning from the post-graduate group about taking classes again.  But the bottom line is that it doesn’t hurt to be challenged every once in a while, and we typically have pretty open schedules during the middle of the day when these classes are being offered.  Homework definitely is not fun, but how many hours a night do you waste watching American Idol and Dancing with the Stars?  Suck it up.

6. Checking out books from the library

I typically purchase one or two books a month from Amazon that relate to strength and conditioning, and another one for personal enrichment.  However, the other day when I was in our library looking for some research for my thesis, I found they had a copy of one of the books I was going to buy later that month (Mechanical Low Back Pain).  From now on, I always check in our school and local library for books that I want to purchase before buying online in hopes of saving a few bucks.  Why buy when you can read them for free.

7. Attend clinics & seminars regionally

Try to find out what is regionally when planning to attend seminars.  If it is local, you can save money on traveling funds and meals.   And typically if you contact the people hosting the event, they can sometimes provide you with contact information from other people attending the clinic.  That way, you might be able to find someone to split the cost of a room, as well be able to get to spend some extra time with a fitness professional you would otherwise only see at the conference.

8. Convince administration to help with conference costs

As stated previously, nothing beats attending a large conference or seminar in terms of meeting new people and learning a ton of great stuff. It has been my experience that in the university setting, the beginning of the school year is typically when the administration is willing to be more flexible with spending.  Budgets have been replenished and there is a renewed sense of resources and commitment to the advancement of the department (at least for the first couple weeks).  In my opinion, this is the best time to approach an AD about money to budget towards attending conferences.  Let them know exactly why it is important that you attend the seminar, how it will make your athletes better, provide a detailed list of costs and how you plan to incur some of the expenses through department fundraisers or out of your own pocket, and then cross your fingers that they agree to help.  If you strike out here, at least you know then what you’re dealing with in terms of how much money you need to save in order to get to the conference.  And don’t be discouraged to attend.  Often times if you let the administrators know that you will be attending anyway, they will understand how important it is to your staff and may help you the next time you plan to attend a seminar or conference.  You can also use other coaches as a resource for additional funds.  A little money from each athletic team could help to get you to a conference.

This is by no means an exhaustive list on how to get better in the field of strength and conditioning on a budget, but hopefully there are a few things you can take away from this article to not only save you some money, but to also motivate you to get better at what you do.  Coming from the background of a competitive athlete, I always want to be the best at what I do, and am motivated to do what it takes to get better.  But if I can save some money in the process, it can’t hurt.  Hopefully this helps some people who are in the same boat as me.