It’s something I’ve had on my mind for a while. There was some fairly furious debate on twitter in the New Year and it gives the distinct impression of battle lines being drawn. So, what’s the difference between a strength and conditioning coach and a personal trainer? I get this a lot when I tell people what I do “so, you’re kind of like a personal trainer right?”

Am I? I coach athletes as well as general population. Some people use that as a dividing line. But I know plenty of other S&C coaches who “do personal training” too, you know, to pay the bills. It’s like a dirty word, something they’re ashamed of. I enjoy it, it’s great for my coaching (so many different movement patterns to work on and cue) and very rewarding to see people attain their goals be that becoming pain free or completing a 10k for the first time.

So are S&C coaches just better than personal trainers? There are plenty of personal trainers helping their athletes (or clients) lose weight, get fitter, feel better about themselves and enjoy longer life and are very good at it. They have to motivate people who aren’t very motivated, provide encouragement to and engage with people who have very low self esteem and body image difficulties as S&C coaches have to. I’m sure there are poor personal trainers about as I’m sure there are bad S&C coaches too. Given the size of the market for personal training, PTs are certainly are better than S&Cs at marketing.

Qualifications? Plenty of personal trainers have sport science degrees. Plenty don’t. The same in S&C. The majority of PTs will have a REPS qualification, I haven’t done one so I’m not in a place to comment on the quality. S&C has undergrad and postgrad degrees and an industry qualification designed to provide a level of quality assurance. Not all coaches have any of them, plenty of coaches don’t have a UKSCA accreditation and criticise the qualification. As far as I can see, there’s not a lot else that’s available to separate the two professions.

Lots of PTs say they’re strength and conditioning coaches and what’s to stop them? If the field itself doesn’t take the qualification seriously, then why should anyone else? This should be the seal of approval to give peace of mind to athletes and general population that the person they’re hiring is of a certain standard and that they remain there. There’s a reaccreditation process to ensure that people update their skill sets and continue to develop knowledge and experience, simply remaining accredited should mean that the coach at least remains at a certain standard.

I’m really getting into the Heineken cup this season. Even the pool stages this year have seen some amazingly competitive games, tight finishes, upsets and some seriously easy on the eye rugby. One issue seems to have been highlighted though and that’s the limited success of English teams in the competition.

Firstly, I don’t have a lot of statistics in front of me, or the inclination towards digging around for them and I do recognise that English teams have had some success with Wasps, Leicester and Northampton all reaching the finals in the last 5 years. So, my conclusions are based on this season and only Saracens making it through from the 12 team Aviva premiership, 2 making it from the 14 team top 14 and 5 through from the Rabodirect pro 12. It’s a numbers game.

Essentially the pro 12 is a miniature Heineken cup. There are 4 teams from Ireland, 4 from Wales, 2 from Scotland and 2 from Italy. Their national team squads are divided up between either 4 or 2 teams with a sprinkling of foreign and other homegrown talent. In England, the best players are spread between 12 teams and in France, between 14. This is a substantial dilution. The French teams have no salary cap and can supplement this dilution with world class foreign talent, the premiership clubs struggle in this regard.

The rabo direct teams all train and play with more international standard players day in and day out than any of the English clubs and play against higher quality players. This also serves to accelerate the development of any younger players in the squads. The conveyor belt of talent from Munster and Leinster are demonstrative of this and this undoubtedly will impact upon the national teams. The England squad has been picked from 7 different English teams (1 other from France and 1 in Wales), the Ireland squad from has been picked from 3 teams (1 other from Wales, 1 from Connacht in the extended squad), with limited time together as a squad, this will surely too have an effect.

I’ve been impressed so far with Stuart Lancaster and the decisions he has been making. Is this England’s bright new dawn? I fear not. I used to enjoy the regional matches, I can’t see England competing until a structure like that is introduced and I certainly don’t see blowing the salary cap as a sustainable way forward.

After the UKSEM conference a couple of weeks ago, I came away with a fairly large reading list. One of those books on the list was Matthew Syed’s Bounce which I was given by a friend to get into. I started this yesterday and it started me thinking, raising lots of questions mainly. Syed, I think is quite safe to day, is into the 10,000 hour rule. This was an area that came under the microscope at the conference with Ross Tucker covering his issues with the research leading to this ‘theory’ during his talk. In the opening of Bounce, Syed is quite fluent in his arguments expounding the 10,000 hour rule while I know many other coaches are very dismissive of it.

I think, if forced into either camp I would have put myself in the second, but this is what got me thinking. It’s all very well, discussing the amount of hours deliberate practice someone needs or the use and success of talent transfer schemes (which I have definitely talked about) or indeed issues with the original research. The fact is, in order to get good at something, you have to do more of it. As a general rule, those who practice more and better at whatever activity, get better at that activity. The more I drove while learning, the better I got. The more I played the piano, the better I got. The more I weightlift, the better I get. Simple.

The reason talent transfer probably works is because of some similarity between sports and those who make the successful transfer are excellent and intelligent athletes. They will likely have spent a lot of time practicing at being an athlete, in whatever sport, and developed good lunge, squat, brace, push, pull, run and jump patterning. No desk jockeys have and will ever transfer to become a top sportsperson. They will also have good cognitive abilities to learn the technical aspects of the new sport. Even then, talent transfer isn’t consistent, look at rugby league players crossing to union. OK Jason Robinson, Chris Ashton, Mat Rogers and maybe Lote Tuquiri have done well, but what about Iestyn Harris, Chev Walker and Andy Farrell, maybe they didn’t have enough practice at the skills or there was a poor transfer strategy.

In any case, I personally think it’s a pointless argument. Genetics are important, significantly in particular sports like rowing and horse racing where being tall or short are important. We see athletes who adapt more and quicker physiologically than others too, maybe that’s another important genetic aspect. But then, practice is important. I don’t think it’s too much of a push to hypothesize a trend towards those who practice more at rowing, among the tall guys, make better rowers.

So what does it actually matter if it takes 10,000 or 6,000 hours? If we could identify the types of people who only take 6,000 hours do we only select them to coach as it takes less time? (And how would we identify those people? By genetics? Now there would be irony!) Of course we don’t, people will take however long it takes. It’s the coach’s job to make sure they get there at all.