Disclaimer: This blog/article is not about being humble or putting your time in getting coaching experience, though those are good and necessary things. It’s specifically about something else that I feel is one of many variables in the equation of success. And that very specific thing is Serving/Benefiting Others.

It goes without saying that we don’t just wake up strength and conditioning experts one morning. A necessary process must play itself out first. We’ve all read the book Outliers, where bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell articulates the 10,000 hour rule to becoming an expert in anything.

However I’d like to discuss the particulars of those 10,000 hours. Eric Cressey would be the first to tell you that those hours have to come from several different avenues – not just “live” coaching. Personally, I think you need 10,000 hours of:

1. Training/Coaching Others

2. Training/Coaching Yourself

3. Educating Others

4. Educating Yourself

Notice what I did NOT mention. There is no mention in the list above of any kind of selfless acts of service. There also isn’t any mention of doing things entirely to benefit someone else beside oneself. Yet, any strength and conditioning expert we all look up to can point to times in their lives when they either worked for someone else or occupied a role that required them to serve someone, something, or someplace higher up the priority list. This is because doing acts of service to benefit someone else is a VERY necessary process. This can come in the form of a collegiate coaching staff where the hierarchy goes from intern to graduate assistant to assistant to the head coach. Even still, the head strength and conditioning coach is accountable to the athletic director who is further accountable to the institution. The same thing goes for a private training facility. The flow of benefitting others goes from intern to staff to owner.

In some capacity, everyone in our field will perform a task at some point to serve or benefit others. It’s inevitable! The important question is do you do it willingly with joy or grudgingly with hate? In reality we may be somewhere in between, but I’d urge you to daily commit to falling on the positive side of fence. If you’re an intern, do you smile and gladly move to action when asked to mop the floor? Do you willingly clean up the weightroom after hours? Do you take the initiative and change the facility trash or do you wait until it’s overflowing so you can be told to do it? Do you vacuum or fill the water bottle fridge up without any grief? I’m sure many of the young people reading this have similar experiences as me. As an intern, I personally have mopped and vacuumed the entire Cressey Performance facility.

Last summer I did the same at Mike Boyle Strength & Conditioning and before that College of the Holy Cross. . . and on and on and on.  You get my point, though.

If you are already an assistant coach in a collegiate setting do you try and usurp authority of the head coach by pushing your own training philosophies? Do you get upset when you are the one who gets asked to come in and supervise the 6AM football lift, which is supposed to be the head coach’s team? Do you just do your job and go home without having a personal commitment to the institution for which you work?

If you are on staff at a private training facility do you cringe when you’re asked to take on some additional forms of responsibility, like intern education or facility scheduling? Do you try and avoid interactions with the facility owner for fear of him/her asking you to do something else? Do you just do your job and go home without having any kind of personal investment in the business for which your work?

The wise person will accept this message. You don’t always have to be the beneficiary of your actions. It’s necessary and unavoidable to help others. It is part of the process to pursuing strength and conditioning greatness! Learn to enjoy the process!

Sam Leahey can be reached at sam.leahey@gmail.com.