Confession: I’m Not a Strength Coach

This past summer I had the opportunity to do a 3 month Internship with Ben Prentiss at Prentiss Hockey Performance in Stamford Connecticut. Ben taught me a lot and I’m extremely grateful for both his mentorship and friendship. Above all else, Ben made me realize that despite what I thought, I’m not a strength coach… I'm a personal trainer… and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Hear me out…

For the months of May, June, July, and August I didn’t see Ben train a single “General Population'' (GP) client. His daily lineup consisted of both NHL and D1 NCAA Hockey Players. There were definitely GP clients at PHP, but they mostly trained in the morning hours of 6am-9am, the rest of the day was almost exclusively athletes.

Now I’ve been to a number of gyms over the last few years and I’ve yet to come across a facility that trains as many athletes as they do at Prentiss. My guess is it’s a 90/10 split, 90% athletes, 10% general population.

I remember my first job in the industry when the owners of the gym told me that training athletes was what every trainer or strength coach gets excited about, but training general pop was what kept the lights on. Up until this summer, I thought this was the case at every gym!

I’ve been in the industry for the last 8 years… while I have definitely worked with athletes at various different levels, the number of general population clients I’ve worked with vastly outweighs the number of athletes. However, up until this summer when someone asked me what I do for a living, I would always refer to myself as a strength coach and never a personal trainer. Why did I do that?

Why did I have such a problem referring to myself as a personal trainer and insist on calling myself a strength coach? I believe it’s because anyone can go take a weekend course and call themselves a Personal Trainer, so I wanted to somehow illustrate that there is a difference between my level of skill and experience and the average personal trainer.

On the surface this doesn’t seem so bad, but subconsciously, I was associating a negative connotation with being a personal trainer. It wasn’t until interning at Prentiss and training predominantly athletes throughout the entire day that I came to the conclusion that that’s not actually what I want to do.. and that’s totally okay!

I love working with general population clients and accomplishing extraordinary things with ordinary people. Don’t get me wrong, its always fun to train a freak athlete who competes at the highest level… but I think that if you get into this industry thinking that that’s who’s going to make up the bulk of your clientele… you’re in for a rude awakening!

From a business perspective, think about how many athletes there are in your region and then think about how many regular people wanting to get in better shape there are. If you attempt to focus only on athletes, the reality is that you’re probably limiting your potential for growth. If you ask Mr. Prentiss, he’ll also tell you that training general population clients over his 26 years in the industry has made him a much better Strength Coach when it comes to his athletes! I think one of the most important practices in life is being honest and true with yourself. Do a self assessment, is your clientele mostly athletes or mostly general population? Is it possible that you train mostly General pop, but think of yourself as a strength coach, so think you’re somehow failing because you aren’t training as many athletes as you’d like to be? Are you planning on getting into the industry because you want to train high level athletes?

Some of the biggest and most successful gym businesses in the world are predominantly personal training gyms and don’t focus too much on athletic development!

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to work with athletes, but there’s also nothing wrong with not working with any. It doesn’t make you any worse at what you do or make someone else better than you.

The first step in excelling in your life and career is being honest and true with yourself!

Live Virtuously.

AB