ECOSYSTEM THINKING – A KEY SKILL FOR THE STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING COACH

Abstract

Strength and Conditioning has become a mainstream feature of most elite sports performance programmes, and consequently employment as a strength and conditioning coach is now a well-established career track in many countries. Accompanying this growth has been a tsunami in the amount of research publications into the field, and a plethora of formal and informal educational opportunities in the field. Given this it would be logical to think that we have developed a deep understanding of what makes for a truly effective strength and conditioning coach, yet dig under the surface and it is clear that many fundamental questions remain largely unanswered suggesting that our understanding of strength and conditioning is far from complete. For example, some great programmes that use the very best evidence-based practice fail, yet other that are far less sophisticated succeed? In the reductionist world of theoretical strength and conditioning, where the quality of the programme is the only variable investigated, these anomalies should not occur. However, S&C is ultimately an applied discipline and never occurs in a vacuum, instead the programme is but one variable to be considered and multiple factors will ultimately affect the success of a programme. This article presents a novel approach to viewing S&C application in situ: that of the training ecosystem, where the relationship between multiple and multi-variate factors ultimately determines the overall success of any training programme.