As a strength coach you need to balance the risk:reward with the athletes that you are working with. The goal should be to keep athletes as healthy as possible while improving their performance – but health has to come before performance. Our hierarchy should be;

Prevent Injuries Caused by Training 

If you are doing things in the weight room that leave you athletes in pain or worse injured, you are defeating the purpose of training. Athletes train to perform better at their sport and help to prevent sport related injuries. Getting hurt in the weight room is completely ass backwards.

Prevent Injuries in Competition

I don’t care who you are, whether you have the “perfect” program or something terrible, injuries in competition are going to happen. But, I am a firm believer that a good strength coach will generally have healthier teams…and even though some people may argue, a healthy athlete is always better then an injured athlete..seems like common sense.

Improve Performance 

Finally, improve performance. Build those faster athletes. Build those more powerful athletes. Give them the conditioning to play the entire game at full speed. Do it all. But it’s third on the list.

The point is this; if you get out of order, you have key players out missing games. Key players missing the games mean the team is less likely to win. Teams that aren’t winning much have staff turnover, and your left looking for a job. I don’t know about you, but I like having a paycheck.