Becoming a starting strength coach

[Nick Klemetson]

Tom wrote a pretty detailed article on the subject The Path to the Starting Strength Coach Credential | Tom Campitelli


-Read the book
-do the program correctly
- read the book a couple more times (and read PPST 3)
- hone your coaching skills by getting other people strong
- go to the seminar and don't be an asshole
- if youre good enough to pass the platform exam, get a bunch of Adderall, camp out in a coffee shop and hopefully pass your written

This is exactly how I did it, but I skipped the Adderall and camped out in my recliner with my laptop. In addition, I also read the majority of Rip's Q&A backlog, watched every platform video, interview, and lecture I could find, and watched hundreds of form check videos. It's no substitute for in-person coaching, but it lets you train your Coaching Eye (in a limited way) when you're not in the gym.

[Peter Nathan]

I got my first job as a personal trainer in 1979 in NYC at One to One Fitness. It was the second personal training gym in the city after Sports Training Inst. I went on to be the fitness director at the no longer exstant McBurney YMCA. After spending time working in cardiovascular and orthopedic rehab I opened my first gym in 1990. I attended Rip's Crossfit Barbell seminar in 2009 and his Starting Strength Seminar a year later. So I guess it took me about 30 years to become a SSC.

[Tom Campitelli]

For those of us who aren't coaches and don't work in the fitness industry in any capacity, how could we best go about coaching people?

Get your squat up to something well above the people around you. When they ask what you are doing, offer to help them.

[CJ Gotcher]

Did you get another certification in order to coach a wide range of people? Were you being paid, or did you wrangle whoever you could and volunteered your time?

I've only been exposed to lifting through SS, and it does seem that all other credentials are crap, and I'm wondering if one didn't have an SS credential, and no other initials after your name, how would one get people to let a person take their money in exchange for coaching? Does a person get one of the meaningless crap credentials just so others will take her seriously?

For those of us who aren't coaches and don't work in the fitness industry in any capacity, how could we best go about coaching people? I've helped a few people in the gym, showing them how to squat, how to set up in the DL, how to structure their WO, etc, but this is just basically helping people who've asked for some tips and hardly constitutes 'coaching'.

Certification to begin training is something of a crap-shoot. I have a few, and I'd say this: tailor your certifications. If you want to train people to develop more coaching skill in the barbell lifts, first identify places in your community that allow/offer that kind of training. The YMCA, powerlifting gyms, World's, an SS Gym, or a CrossFit box in your area might have openings to fill that role. Hell, there may even be a big-box that works, but I personally found it didn't work out. Getting a 'starter-cert' to open a few doors may be an okay strategy (I got the CSCS), but I found that the places that care about it in my area didn't allow for the kind of training/coaching I wanted to do (that alone says something, doesn't it?).

If these don't play out, you may have to coach for free, taking an internship or volunteering to coach interested associates- this was my case. After my first SS seminar, I was working as support staff with a SEAL team on the East coast. I (non-creepily) watched other lifters squat/dead/bench and thought to myself in real-time "What would I say here? In how few words could I say it?" Since I was OFP during the team gym workouts, a couple of people came up to me asking about my training and asked for help. Before long, I had 4 or 5 victims (whoops... trainees) to routinely work on the key lifts with. On top of that, my wife acquiesced to being a dummy for the basic teaching progression, and I would routinely review my own technique videos (cell phone camera), this forum's video reviews, and videos of professionals lifting online to bounce off the model.

Would being a professional coach be a lot more helpful? Hell yeah, and if I could have, I'd have done it in a heartbeat. But you learn what you can with what you've got.

[Ericsquats]

I sprung from the womb conversant in anatomy and possessed of a keen eye for hip drive. All kidding aside, I am not entirely sure when I would set my start date. I ordered the first version of Starting Strength back in the summer of 2006. I became a Starting Strength Coach in Feb 2010. However, do you count my time teaching karate in college that also contributed to being able to see and cue movement?

So maybe 2-3 from what you said if that's safe to say. Of course I'd consider the Karate teaching as a huge experience since a good coach needs to know how to communicate.

[Eric Shugars]

I interned under Beau my entire senior year of an Ex. Phys degree before passing the SS cert. I may have been able to do it quicker had I not initially learned everything incorrectly in school before coming to WS&C.

[Ericsquats]

The better question isn't how long it took particular coaches, but how long it would take someone from a variety of starting points to be ready to test for the SSC with confidence they can pass.

Of course it depends if that's what you mean and I'm sure implying what information someone should know to estimate how long it would take them personally can't be taken from the other SS coach's path but it sure as hell helps to make a good guess. If 100 coaches took about 2 years after buying the book to getting certified then 2 years is a good guess. Sure correlation is not causation but it still helps.
You're right though that if one coach went through 4 years of biology in college before picking up the book versus someone buying the book out of high school they will have very different starting points and advantages resulting in differing lengths of time.

[Ericsquats]

As Tom mentioned I am a fairly recent SCC. I will give you some background, as I agree with Wolf that this all likely depends on your starting point. Someone who has been coaching, has a background in several key areas, like anatomy, physiology, and physics will likely have a fairly quick prep time. This was not where I came from. :-)

I have no previous background in coaching, although I do have extensive experience in teaching, and I am confident that this has been very helpful. If I can explain things to middle schoolers, I can figure out how to explain the SS models to clients. I have experience in yelling loudly, being assertive when giving directions, communicating with an order of instruction, evaluating quickly and decisively, and in paying attention to how instruction/evaluation is being received and acted on.

I do not have an athletic background myself, and my studies have long been more in the Liberal Arts, the Trivium if we want to be exact, not the sciences. I attended a seminar in 2014 just to learn the lifts. I had done some CrossFit for a couple of years before this, but I went to learn all I could about strength training. I loved it, and I was discovering that I love training. I kept training (and being coached by an SSC), and then decided to attend a seminar in 2015 to take the exam. I was seeing more opportunities to coach, and I was asked for more and more help. I LOVE strength training, it has changed my life, and I was excited to coach others.

I read the books, watched videos, brushed up on anatomy, and coached some people in person in the few months before attending. I went and passed the platform exam. Then the written exam came. I did not pass that my first time. I was pretty upset, but after some reflection, I knew it was a very fair evaluation and it spurred me to be far more aggressive in preparing myself. I brushed up on a bunch of physics, studied more A/P, and coached A LOT of people. This time I made sure I was coaching a wide variety of people-those with training experience who might not just accept everything I told them, all ages, people from CF, people with no training experience, people who already moved pretty well and those who could barely squat the bar.

I also put myself in more situations where I needed to explain the SS models. I didn't go out and pick fights or anything, but I made sure I was entering into conversations about low bar/high bar squats, training vs exercising, programming, etc. I also took far more time to review videos posted so I had practice in looking for and seeing what the SSCs here commented on.

All of this coaching, talking, thinking, and studying was incredibly worth it, and failing my first exam was just what I needed. I lacked coaching experience the first time. I went back 6 months later to retake the exam and passed. By that time, I had really internalized the models, could communicate well about many of the ideas surrounding SS, and it was crystal clear to me that the old me should NOT have passed. I went into my first exam with plenty of lifting experience and understood quite a bit about SS. I went into my second exam feeling like a qualified coach, knowing as I sat in the seminar and then took the exam that I was ready for it this time.

Thank you for sharing your story on this. I'm motivated to become a starting strength coach myself without the background in physics, A/P, etc. At least not as much as I think I should have. Only AP physics in high school and an engineering class as well as the bare minimum of A/P needed to become NASM certified ( a waste of $600 so far.)

I have only been coaching myself and girlfriend through this model fairly strictly with none of that "I'm the exception to the rule." I'm hesitant to correct people at the gym on form and whatnot but confident I would know what needs to be said. I am offering as much free coaching to some people as I can for experience. Hopefully this and studying aggressively to the point where I'm able to verbatimly repeat what's said in the book as a consequence. I'll attend the seminars when I have the money and take the test as many times as necessary to pass. I'll share more detail when I become a SSC myself (;

[Ericsquats]

Tom wrote a pretty detailed article on the subject The Path to the Starting Strength Coach Credential | Tom Campitelli


-Read the book
-do the program correctly
- read the book a couple more times (and read PPST 3)
- hone your coaching skills by getting other people strong
- go to the seminar and don't be an asshole
- if youre good enough to pass the platform exam, get a bunch of Adderall, camp out in a coffee shop and hopefully pass your written

I knew about most of this and read as much as I could about the path. I'd just like to have a good guesstimate on time (which I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW it varies and depends on so much.)
Thanks for the tip on having a bunch of Adderall and coffee! I had not seen that tip yet.

[Gwyn Brookes]

I started training on my own in 2008 with the then-current editions of both books. I ran my own linear progression, joined the forum and went to a Basic Barbell Seminar in 2009. I read everything I could on the forum over the next few years. With the exception of a nine month layoff in 2010, I kept lifting, got some programming advice from both Andy Baker and Jordan Feigenbaum, got in-person coaching from Tom C and Paul Horn, and competed a couple of times.

I decided I wanted to coach in 2014 and started with my mom - used the Basic Barbell Cert to get in the door at my gym, which was atypical as most gyms want you have have one of the standard certs before they will allow you to coach people. Like Klemetson, I read all the articles and watched a ton of form check videos.

I also benefited from Rip's comment at the Basic Barbell Seminar that coaching is not the same as demonstrating! I had to spend a lot of time practicing translating movement to language. That one comment changed everything for me. I came to barbell training and coaching with an extensive background in dance and martial arts, although my dance background was geared towards performance. The most experience I had as a teacher from my dance background was as a choreographer, where you demonstrate complex movement and if your dancers don't pick it up you get other dancers :-)

I didn't start actually teaching martial arts or self defense until 2004, but by the time I started coaching my mom I had some experience there. I met Tom C in 2012 or so, and started getting some coaching from him and also attended his Strength Sundays class. I watched him coach others in that class, and stole a lot from him because I could tell he was a really really good coach. I am not sure if he knows how influential he was in my development as a coach. :-)

I had anatomy and kinesiology in college and in retrospect wish I'd taken my young brain and put it through biology and physics, but at the time I just wanted to perform. That was my real sticking point with the seminar (which I finally attended in 2015) and the test. I read some of the suggested texts prior to attending the seminar, took copious notes at it, and then went into isolation for the next two weeks to write the thing.

So in some ways I had had a lot of preparation prior to attending the 2015 certification seminar. In other ways, I just had a lot of determination and focus due to the fact that this stuff works. That made me pretty excited about learning everything I could and continuing to work on my communication and presentation of the material.