Takano Athletics

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.!.!.!

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.”

As if anyone even knew what a weightlifting coach looked like since there was no You Tube in those days and precious little weightlifting being telecast.  The second statement was just another way of saying, “You don’t have large biceps.”

Anyway getting back to Pasquale.  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.

I have to assume that we have someone in Pasquale who has never been a weightlifter, may never have actually seen a weightlifting competition and probably has little or no contact with the weightlifting community.

What is a little frightening is that there may be more Pasquales out there and that this may be just an indication of where we are going in our society as far as the development of educational guidance and participatory  leadership is perceived.  Pasquale thinks that you never have to be involved in a sport to coach it.  You only have to take courses or go to a school and get a certification and that that is how you acquire the expertise to lead other people in this endeavor.

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.

The specific designation of the competence of an individual within a given field has been  driven out of a necessity to communicate that level of proficiency to people who are not deeply familiar with that field.  Everyone that has attained a certain amount of proficiency knows the ability levels of other players in their field of endeavor.  The designations are for the people who are not a part of the community.

Furthermore we are in a litigious society so there is a need to have some sort of stamp of approval that guarantees  a certain minimal level of competency.

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.

I had a long, but undistinguished career as a lifter, and I don’t think I really felt like I knew what I was doing until I’d coached about 200 weightlifters.  I had a good grasp of the art and science of coaching after about the 400th.  I continued to learn more as my career has progressed to probably exceed 1,000 lifters.   The fact that I was a biology major in college is certain a valuable part of the mix.

I present this information not to extol my own virtues, but to exemplify the amount of work, dedication and passion that goes into becoming a sound weightlifting coach.  It far exceeds what you can learn in a four year college major, a weekend certification, or preparing for a qualifying exam.