What is your opinion of online or distance education masters degrees in human kinetics/kinesiology? Do you know of any good distance education programs? I want to further my education, but I already have a good full time training job and client base that I don’t want to leave to do a master’s degree at one of the local universities.

To be honest, I’m not too fond of the online master’s degrees in THIS field. Exercise Science really is a hands-on discipline; a large portion of the master’s degree should be about experiencing things. When I look back at my time at the University of Connecticut, I’d say that about 90% of what I took away (which was a lot) was experience-based between strength and conditioning and the human performance laboratory – not to mention just interacting with labmates, fellow coaches, and the faculty – while only about 10% was classroom-based.

Are you close enough to any universities to go part-time over an extended period of time? You have to look at this as an INVESTMENT, not an expense.

With all that said, there are a lot of great coaches out there who don’t have Master’s degrees – but they’ve picked up the slack with tons of reading, building huge networks, and interning under other coaches who have gone before them. So, at the very least, put yourself on academic quarantine as often as possible to get some reading done, and seek out those who are doing what you’d like to do – and doing it well.

Eric Cressey

Why the general off-season is the “meat and potatoes” of the training year, and how to make the most of it.