What Are the Roles of the Coach?
Athletics hold an important place in our society. The coach is at the center of this important place in athletics. The coach’s position carries a great deal of responsibility and has a powerful influence on the athletes with whom they deal. The roles of the coach are diverse in that the coach must wear many hats in performing his/her duties. This article will briefly share some of the roles the coach must play in athletics. These roles will differ with the various levels in which one coaches, whether it is at the youth, high school, or college age group.

Here are some more of the roles that coaches play in part two of this article.

The Role of the Coach as a Planner
The coach must have the ability to analyze and plan every minute spent on the field, the track, the court, or in the pool. Every effective coach must have definite aims and objectives and meet the needs of each player on the team. Effective planning is the ability to transfer your plans to practices and games. Successful coaches should never depend on trial and error. The coach must be able to make yearly plans, off season plans, pre season plans, season plans, practice plans, game plans, meetings, trips, scouting, budgets, clinics, and workshops. Coaches have a saying, “If you fail to plan, you should plan to fail.”

We’re back with some more interesting findings that came out of the most recent American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) national conference that I attended in Nashville, TN. Every year sports medicine physicians, athletic trainers, strength coaches, exercise physiologists, and other disciplines related to sports medicine meet to present the latest research, to discuss current treatment guidelines, and to exchange a wealth of information.

This past week I attended the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) national conference in Nashville, TN. Every year sports medicine physicians, athletic trainers, strength coaches, exercise physiologists, and other disciplines related to sports medicine meet to present the latest research, to discuss current treatment guidelines, and to exchange a wealth of information. In this article series I would like to share some important information that I learned at the national ACSM conference.

“In my reading over the past year I had come across suggestions that maybe taking sodium bicarbonate or sodium citrate could help performance during racing events. I understand that increased intramuscular hydrogen ion concentration can impair performance by messing with ATP production and competing with the calcium ion binding sites messing with contractile process. I also understand from my reading that by boosting the blood buffering capacity could increase time to exhaustion during these high intensity racing sprint intervals. What do you think?”