Is the UKSCA fit for purpose? Reflections on 3 years as UKSCA Chairman

The UKSCA is often criticised by strength and conditioning coaches in the UK. Part of the problem is that barring the annual AGM, members and non-members rarely get an opportunity to get a candid take on what is going on in the organisation, what is working and what isn’t from someone “within”. Chris Bishop stood down as Chairman after 4 years in the organisation (3 as Chair) in 2021 and we wanted to ask him about his reflections on those 3 years for this week’s Sportsmith Six.

When reflecting on your time as UKSCA Chair, did you and the organisation achieve what you wanted to achieve?

Yes and no. As is often the case with things at an organisational level, progress can be a slow burner (and that’s fine), but it’s important to mention straight off the bat that any and all perceived achievements were always a big team effort. There’s a long list of people involved who deserve some serious gratitude!

During my time with the association, we often tried to break down projects and initiatives into short and long term goals.

Whilst there was no strict definition, anything short term typically focused on the upcoming 12 months or less, and would be prioritised within the context of the association’s overarching strategy for that time. A few of these that we focused on were: 1) revitalising CPD opportunities in the form of regular regional workshops, 2) creation of an information package for employers surrounding the legalities, complexities and UKSCA’s stance on internships, 3) the creation of a UKSCA directory of universities which offer S&C degrees, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, and 4) enhanced communication strategies with the membership.

Longer term projects were largely centred around an agreed partnership with the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA). It was agreed that we would jointly try to develop “Professional Standards” for different job roles in S&C and generally aim to further enhance the overall professionalism of the sector (as outlined in a Memorandum of in 2018).

With the help of a great many people, we were able to write and create two sets of standards: Strength and Conditioning Trainer and Graduate Strength and Conditioning Coach. The S&C Trainer was developed as a vocational qualification, born from the Foundations in S&C workshop that the UKSCA currently runs. The Graduate S&C Coach standards exist for universities or organisations to map their content to, enabling an endorsement of knowledge and skills that participants will meet on their degree or qualification. Specifically, it has been felt by many members that an early-career S&C qualification (S&C Trainer) would help our profession, given that first time pass rates for the accreditation are quite low, especially for the practical components. Furthermore, with notable chunks of the S&C Trainer qualification emphasising the importance of coaching and requiring this as part of the assessment process, the creation of these professional standards and the qualification itself, represent a great achievement by the UKSCA.

Importantly though, and remembering the bigger picture at the time, it was agreed that at least one set of professional standards was required as part of the criteria for UKSCA to be able to offer its accredited members chartered status.

I think many are aware of how important the chartership project was to me personally, but we never quite managed to get it to a point where it could be run as a pilot by the time I stepped down. There are a lot of moving parts to a project like that, so it’s probable that I didn’t have a realistic timeframe relating to its achievement. However, it’s good to see that an email went out to members in 2022 asking them to sign up if they had an interest in being part of the pilot project. Things appear to be moving forward with the final stages of this project.

Gaining Chartered status was a big aim of yours as Chair. What is the benefit of this to S&C coaches and are we any closer to that being secured? 

Great question and one that members often asked at the time. To address part two of your question, it seems that the pilot project for chartership is up and running now, so yes, it looks like the UKSCA is closer to achieving this.

As for the benefits (as I understand it), the goal of getting a profession “chartered” is to showcase that practitioners have reached a high level of expertise, above and beyond the initial competencies that are required. Put simply, and in the case of what is trying to be developed for S&C coaches, it’s a process that evidences that competencies have been met, but also uses specific examples to show how a practitioner’s experiential learning has evolved over time, ultimately resulting in a more experienced, better and safer coach.

If this can be achieved, the athlete ultimately gets a better qualified professional, so it is they who should be prioritised in our desire to achieve this. Given our role as support staff, this thought process seems logical and hard to argue with.

Second, having S&C coaches operating at a higher level of practice (with supporting evidence to prove it) raises the bar for the overarching standard of the profession as a whole. In turn, we’d all hope that this would lead to a number of perceived benefits for coaches, some of which were outlined in this article. As a summary, these benefits could potentially include:

1. Increased job opportunities. The UKSCA surveyed the membership in 2019 and the three most common themes were: 1) supporting the chartership, 2) wanting more job opportunities, 3) wanting enhanced CPD options. Whilst jobs wouldn’t automatically start appearing as a result of having chartered status, knowing what it represents in the UK as a process and how it is valued in other professions, it seems logical to assume that further enhancing the professionalisation of our sector would open up more opportunities for our members.
2. Linked to the first point, it may also help others value our profession more highly than they currently do. Chartered status isn’t offered to professions lightly, and with the notion of “being chartered” meaning something significant in the UK, it stands to reason that others would see S&C and the UKSCA in an even more positive light. Conceptually, as well, when we value a service or material item to a higher degree, we are more likely to pay more for it. Thus, if this can be achieved, I think an increase in salaries is not an unreasonable expectation.
3. As was agreed with CIMSPA at the time, chartered status would also provide a “protected title” for S&C (and I hope this still holds true). This benefit seems a little more self-indulgent than the others. However, we need only go on any social media platform, to see how many people are calling themselves S&C coaches, many of whom probably do not have the desired coaching experience, expertise or education to match. Therefore, if we are to remain true to the idea of furthering our profession and prioritising the athlete first, ensuring the UKSCA has an appropriate register of chartered S&C professionals can’t be a bad thing for athletes and employers.

Salaries, salary banding and internships are areas that members and non-members see other accrediting bodies across the world at least trying to address and help with. Is there a reason that the UKSCA didn’t tackle this as aggressively as others during your tenure?

Tough question, but one that is spoken about a lot. I think the issues of internships and salaries come under the same umbrella. However, I also think the UKSCA tackled the internship issue separately between 2016-2020 (and did so pretty well).

As the employer intern pack shows, we wrote a brief article outlining remuneration suggestions for different types of internships, an article from Joel Brannigan that discusses some of the more intricate issues of how internships should work, and the results from the first “State of the Nation” survey. Further, the board also published an editorial article in 2019 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that tried to provide a supportive stance for members who are striving to gain employment in the S&C profession.

Additionally, the association also stopped advertising internship roles that asked for qualified practitioners for no pay. If employers couldn’t get funding for these roles, we pushed them to be advertised as student placements instead.

Consequently, and although anecdotal, I noticed a genuine change in how some roles were advertised after some of this work.

When it comes to salary bands, I think most people know the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association have published a document about this. It should be noted, though, that the employment regulations in Australia are very different to the UK, and there is more centralised control over factors that we don’t have here.

I was often asked why the UKSCA didn’t do the same thing and think it was right that this was never really attempted. In 2018, we published an article in the UKSCA journal, outlining what a potential career pathway might look like for S&C in the UK. It outlines different UKSCA membership categories, but in reality, all of these would need to be up and running for a set period of time to showcase any real meaning around expected or suggested salary guidelines. Likewise, if the UKSCA had published a suggested salary document and those suggestions didn’t align to the association’s new(ish) membership categories, then that would have been even more confusing than doing nothing!

It’s probably an even more pertinent question now, given the cost of living crisis that everyone is facing, but I do think that if it can’t be done realistically and accurately, then maybe it shouldn’t be done at all. Moving forward, rather than having salary bands per se, having suggested minimum salary expectations for different membership categories might be a little easier for the UKSCA to achieve.

You mentioned above about the very publicly known low pass rate for the UKSCA accreditation. Is the accreditation process something that you still think is fit for purpose and is this something that was discussed while you were Chair?

This has come up a lot in recent years and my overarching opinion is yes, it is fit for purpose based on what it is supposed to achieve. However, I think the last part of that statement is key and is where most of the confusion lies.

A simple analogy might be useful here: taking a driving test. When someone takes their driving test, it’s fair to say that they probably haven’t accrued enough time behind the wheel to be considered an experienced driver. However, the test is not trying to determine this; rather, whether they are safe (to themselves and others) to go out in a car by themselves. I think the accreditation is just that. It’s not trying to determine how much expertise a coach has, but whether a coach has: a) the expected knowledge of underpinning theory (multiple choice assessment), b) an ability to put that theory into context by working with an athlete (case study), c) an ability to demonstrate and show understanding of some of the more complex movements in the weight room (weightlifting assessment), and d) an ability to coach the person in front of you using key modalities of training for sport performance (plyometrics, linear and change of direction speed).

Collectively, this process provides a level of confidence that the practitioner is safe to go out and practice either independently or as part of a team.

I do acknowledge that the accreditation process isn’t perfect, because it lacks context around some things, e.g., working with different populations, having to manipulate training on the fly when an athlete picks up an injury, or having to work alongside different people who may not have the same beliefs or philosophies as you do. However, no assessment process is perfect and some of these more intricate issues are discussed during viva components of accreditation days by the assessors. That provides additional context on how coaches might adapt their coaching to an alternative population or specific challenging situation.

An additional overlooked factor is that some people attempt the accreditation before they are ready. The most common reason is that they haven’t had enough opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills in an applied context. Additionally, some have definitely attempted the accreditation without undertaking the related workshops, and probably don’t have enough of an understanding about the process itself.

At the 2022 annual conference, the UKSCA ran open sessions on the different assessment elements in an attempt to “demystify” what goes on and better prepare those who want to successfully gain their accreditation.

To summarise, then, yes, I do think the accreditation is fit for purpose if we accept that it is trying to determine whether coaches are safe to go out and practice.

In your opinion, what does the future of the organisation look like and are there any areas that still need attention?

The S&C Trainer qualification provides S&C practitioners in the UK an entry qualification to the profession. This is especially important given foundational knowledge has the widest spread amongst early career practitioners, so this establishes an appropriate base level of knowledge and competence for those pursuing a genuine career in this profession.

With the chartership project moving forward, I would like to think that the future of the UKSCA is continued professionalisation, which would be expected as we (hopefully) become a chartered profession. While only a guess, I would imagine that there would be an increase in the amount of quality assurance procedures that accompany this change in membership structure. Accredited coaches are already required to be first aid trained, but I could see that chartered coaches might be required to take compulsory modules on related aspects of being a practitioner, e.g., safeguarding for youth athletes.

A more formalised mentorship process might be something that the association could consider. This would provide a structured framework for the development of early career coaches, while enabling experienced ones to “give back” to the field and association. This also would help foster regular communication within the membership that might not happen otherwise, helping to create a community more in-tune with each other.

What are the biggest mistakes you see young practitioners/clinicians make and what advice would you give them to help?

One of the biggest mistakes is early career coaches not going out and getting enough coaching experience.

I can only speak from my experiences at Middlesex University, but I reckon we probably advertise somewhere between 20-30 placement, paid internship or job roles for our MSc students each academic year. For those students who are not working, it amazes me that some do not want to make the effort to gain experience in the sector. I acknowledge that not all opportunities will align to someone’s schedule, but with the volume of options we put out each year, there is a wide range of time commitments on offer, e.g., a couple hours coaching 1-2 evenings per week, or 2-3 days of 4-5 hours, to near full-time opportunities.

For those students or coaches that this may apply to, I would encourage you to be a little more adventurous in trying to gain experience initially. Remember, if you really don’t like it or it doesn’t work out, then stop!

But perhaps the worst thing would be to simply not try at all?