I've noticed a growing number of colleagues calling themselves Strength and Conditioning Scientists instead of Strength and Conditioning Coaches. Many of them are the same people that were more than happy to call themselves S&C Coaches 5 years ago, in fact they were S&C Coaches last year!
So why the need to change title?
Would anyone care to explain the need to differentiate? Is it simply to set themselves apart so they can charge more because they bring a laptop into the weights room? I'm at a loss and if I'm honest I think it just adds confusion into the industry. I have an undergraduate and postgraduate degree in sport science and exercise and nutrition science.
Science underpins everything that I do as a strength and conditioning coach.
Granted, I don't always produce fancy excel spreadsheets or plug all my athletes into computers and have them hop up and down on force plates, but this shouldn't downgrade what I'm doing.
To be honest, it boils my piss that coaches are often seen to be lower down on the food chain than scientists and administrators. I think calling yourself a strength and conditioning scientist doesn't help the industry at all. I'm concerned that we are starting to produce people with lots of intellectual intelligence but little practical intelligence. Great at crunching numbers but not so good at coaching and delivering results.
I don't think we need to change job titles, it's daft!
Do we really need to create a new bread of S&C Scientists or should we just crack on and get the job done?
I'm interested in everyones thoughts and comments on this...let me know.
Anyway, rant over!