5 Tips: How to Become a Weightlifting Coach

Bob Takano responds to questions on Yahoo Answers.

Yesterday I happened upon a query on Yahoo in which someone named Pasquale asked how to become an olympic weightlifting coach.  These were his/her specific questions:

How to become an olympic weightlifting coach?

Do you have to go to school (college)?

If so what colleges offer them (if any)

Do you have to get a certification? If so how?

extremely curious!!!! want to know how to become one.!.!.!

Now aside from the overuse of exclamation points, this person asks some basic questions that Bob was delighted he even knew to ask. 

It was interesting to me became it wasn’t very long ago that no one even knew that weightlifters were coached.  On some social occasions I’d end up in a group of non weightlifters, and I’d really try not to bring up my weightlifting activities because it would end up in frustrating conversations.  Someone, however, would know that I was a coach and introduce me to strangers as a weightlifting coach.  I would usually get one of two things (or both) said to me.

“How much do you bench?” (This one is losing popularity)

OR

“You don’t look like a weightlifting coach.”

Sadly, I’ve gotten the same far too often.  But, Youtube has made serious strides in making our sport accessible to the public.

Coach Takano continues.

One person (wsguy198) responded, “My guess is to become an Olympic weightlifter first.  Just a hunch”

Now wsguy198 was probably being a wise guy, but he was right.  Pasquale knows nothing about the coaching education program or the protocol for classifying coaches by proficiency levels developed by USA Weightlifting, the national governing body for the sport.  He would know about these things if he were a member of the organization and had competed in sanctioned competitions.

Dan John has said that if you want to coach something, you had better know how to do it. (Or, something to that effect.)   You don’t have to be great at it.  There are always genetic limitations.  And people who are serious about coaching tend to have personality traits that are the exact opposite of the personality traits most needed in a top-level athlete, and that often holds back their ultimate progress.

But, none of that changes the fact that a coach had better be able to practice what they preach.  We all have had an out of shape P.E. teacher who couldn’t jog a lap if his life depended on it.  Hardly inspiring.

Learn the lifts, compete, and suffer the way your athletes are being asked to suffer.  They don’t need to look up to you as the greatest weightlifter who has ever lived.  But, they do want to know that you understand their pain from experience.  You may never be a national champion, but you’ll know what it’s like to stand on the platform in front of 3 judges with red-button trigger-fingers. 

To the Pasquales of the world, there were weightlifting coaches before there ever was an organization to annoint them or recognize them.  For thousands of years humans have immersed themselves in activities that they were passionate about and committed to and developed enough mastery and expertise to be considered experts, and teachers and mentors.

Indeed.  I coached for a year before I ever got certified.  By the time I went through the certification process, it was a simple formality.  I had been competing for a few years, coaching for 1, and was fully comfortable with moving a new beginner and preparing them for their first contest.  

USA Weightlifting has levels of certification, the first one being for club coaches who are involved in training primarily beginners and intermediate weightlifters. As you move through, and your athletes improve, you become eligible for higher level certifications.

What I find strange, though, was the idea of using the certification process (primarily) as a “learning” process.  That is, a lot of the people going through the weekend long seminar that you must go through to get certified, were totally knew to the lifts!!  Crazy. 

I saw it as a test.  And like all tests, I’m far more comfortable taking it when the information has become trivial to me.  You can only learn so much in a single weekend.

Over the last number of years, as coach of the PDX Weightlifting club, I’ve learned a lot about things that work with both beginners and intermediates, and things that don’t work.  In training intermediates, I’ve had to go through a number of years of writing yearly periodized  programs to find out what has and hasn’t worked in both the short term and the long term. 

For beginners, I’m now confident that I can teach ANYONE (without a physical disability) to do a passable power clean and power snatch in under 1 hour.  Period.   Sure, they’ll need lots of work to become truly efficient.  But, the foundations are laid quickly, and they can begin the work without a plethora of bad habits.

But, this is only possible because I have spent a number years at it.  And I’m new, relatively speaking.  I’ve got a long way to go to become a national level coach.  That will, itself, take even more years and more work. 

So, I must say to Pasquale that there is a path to becoming a weightlifting coach.  It begins by becoming a weightlifter and accepting the addiction to the sport that will carry you through the drudgery involved in developing any kind of mastery of any endeavor.  The early stages of the development will involve some formal education or courses or clinics, but above all it involves a great deal of coaching and entering your athletes in competition to see how they perform against others.  There is no other metric of any significance.  But first you must become involved with the sport.

Bob Takano has been around a while.  Times have changed, and for weightlifting, I’d say they have changed for the better.  But, some things haven’t.  You’ve got to actually do something to know how to do something. 

Coach Takano answered most of the above questions, but didn’t do so in a very explicit way. So, I will:

Answers

1. How to become an olympic weightlifting coach?
2. Do you have to go to school (college)?
3. If so what colleges offer them (if any)
4. Do you have to get a certification? If so how?

1. See my outline below for a path to that goal. But, basically, start by competing, then trick your spouse into competing so you can coach them.

2. No.  There are no higher-ed requirements officially.  But, I would certainly recommend that you get a degree in something “science-ish”. I have a degree in Mathematics, and am getting a masters in Math with a focus in mathematical biology.  It may sound like it isn’t relevant, but it is.  Science and math training makes you smarter the way that strength training makes you stronger.  The more attuned to complexity you are, the better a coach you will become.  Olympic weightlifting isn’t rocket science, but it is biology and chemistry and physics. 

3. If you want a specific exercise science degree, there are tons of schools that offer them.  Here in Oregon, Oregon State University has a program. And Portland State has a Masters in Public Health with an physical exercise focus.  Your state probably has many similar programs.  But, when in doubt, just pick a science that you like, and learn whatever you can.  I promise you can find a way to make it improve your coaching.

4.  Yes.  At some point you do need to be certified.  You can’t run an official USAW registered club if you don’t have a certification through USAW. 

If I was going to outline a linear path for you if you’d like to coach a weightlifting club, I’d say do the following:

5 Tips for the Weightlifting Coach

1. Start competing as a weightlifter (fully accepting that you’re going to get your butt kicked)
2. Try to become as technically proficient as you can be, and take careful notes of how HARD that is, and what things you found to be the hardest.  You have to understand what your athletes are going through. 
3. Start coaching the instant you can find a Guinna pig to coach.  There is a long tradition in weightlifting of early coaches tricking their spouses into competing.  Mike Burgener famously has coached all of his kids.  Friends and family are a great resource for your early experiments into what might work, and what doesn’t.  Learn by teaching.
4. Read everything you can get your hands on, not just about Oly lifting, but about strength and conditioning in general, and biology, chemistry, and physics.  Olympic Lifters are athletes, not just weightlifters.
5. Get certified once you’ve actually learned something.  That way the certification is meaningful. 

 

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