Internships: how these should work in strength and conditioning
Joel Brannigan
Strength and conditioning (S&C) has seen a marked increase in popularity over the last 10–15 years, leading to vastly increased numbers of salaried roles. Consequently, with an ever growing pool of coaches, the demand for employment opportunities has also grown significantly, and this in turn has led to a huge increase in the number of ‘internships’ within teams and organisations. S&C now represents, therefore, a very competitive recruitment field where potential employees are willing to consider taking on internships in the hope that they will nudge ahead of the pack with a greater bank of ‘hands on’ experience and contact networks. With such an increase in the number of internships, it seems timely to look at how these are managed. Historically, within the S&C profession, there has been little governance of the structure, expectations and standardisation of these internships. This lack of governance has led to a situation whereby the role/function of an internship has been open to broad interpretation.