How to Become a Strength and Conditioning Coach: McKeefery

Based on Episode 40 of the Just Fly Performance Podcast, a conversation between host Joel Smith and strength and conditioning coach Ron McKeefery, author of “CEO Strength Coach.”

If you want to know how to become a strength and conditioning coach who actually survives in the field, Ron McKeefery’s answer starts somewhere most exercise science degrees never go: the difference between being credentialed and being qualified. McKeefery, author of the book “CEO Strength Coach,” has spent two decades moving between college and professional sport, from the Kansas City Royals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a ten-year run at the University of South Florida, Army Special Forces, the University of Tennessee, and the Cincinnati Bengals. His core message on this episode is blunt: the sets and reps are the easy part, and the coaches who last are the ones who treat the job as a career to be built, not a certification to be collected.

Key Takeaways

• Credentialed is not the same as qualified. A degree and a CSCS get you in the door. The intangibles and a genuine point of difference get you hired and keep you employed.
• Decide early what you are willing to sacrifice. McKeefery asks his interns whether they have both feet in or just a toe. A partial commitment does not last in this field.
• Be three people at once. A durable career means being a great technician, a great manager of time and people, and an entrepreneur with more than one stream of income.
• Treat the weight room as a laboratory for life. Mental toughness, culture, and buy-in matter as much as programming, and the coach’s first job is still to do no harm.
• Lead with passion, not emotion. The advice McKeefery would give his 25-year-old self: you can demand accountability without losing the athlete.

Credentialed is not the same as qualified

Ask McKeefery what he looks for when he hires, and he draws a hard line between the letters after your name and your ability to do the job. The degree and the certification are the entry fee, not the qualification.

There’s a big difference between being qualified and being credentialed. The certification and the degree, that just gets you in the door.

Past the door, he wants intangibles and what he calls a unique selling proposition, the thing that separates you from every other applicant who also works hard and relates well to athletes. Those, he points out, are prerequisites, not differentiators. He even runs a four-part personality framework (lion, otter, beaver, retriever) when he builds a staff, hiring to cover his own weaknesses rather than cloning himself.

You’ve got to be credentialed. You have to have the intangibles. But now I’m looking for experience working with the sports that I’m looking for, and then if I lost an otter, I’m replacing an otter. If I lost a lion, I’m going to replace a lion.

The practical takeaway for a coach trying to break in: the certification is table stakes. Advanced skills that a staff actually lacks, whether that is kettlebell training, technology, an athletic training background, or nutrition, are what make you worth hiring.

Decide early what you are willing to sacrifice

McKeefery is candid that ambition alone does not carry a coaching career. Everyone entering the field wants the elite athletes and the big jobs, and at some point the price of those jobs comes due.

As a young coach, you end up having to make a decision at some point as to what you’re willing to sacrifice to be able to attain your goals. Do you have both feet in, or do you have just a toe in? If you just have a toe or a foot, you’re not going to make it. Usually you have to be all in.

He speaks from experience. He spent three and a half years living away from his family, a stint that started as six months, and ultimately left a job he loved so he could be home for his kids’ high school years. His point is not that everyone should make the same choice, but that the choice is real, and that the coaches who drift into it without deciding tend to be the ones who burn out. Know the cost before you chase the goal.

Be a technician, a manager, and an entrepreneur

The organizing idea of McKeefery’s book is that a coach has to develop in three directions at once, and that most never get past the first.

Within your career, you have to be essentially three things. You have to be a great technician. You have to also be a great manager of time, people, and resources, and you have to be an entrepreneur.

The technician part, sets and reps and programming, is where he says most coaches spend their entire career. The manager and entrepreneur parts are what carry you through the transitions the profession guarantees, and they are also the insurance policy against its biggest occupational hazard.

It’s not if, it’s when you’re going to get fired in this field. You have to be able to support your family, and if you don’t have skill sets to sustain that or multiple streams of income, that’s where entrepreneurship comes in.

For McKeefery, that meant writing a book, starting a podcast, and building an online presence, all of which grew out of the lowest point in his career. The lesson for a coach mapping out how to become a strength and conditioning coach for the long haul: build the second and third skill sets before you need them, because by the time you need them it is usually too late.

The weight room as a laboratory for life

Asked whether strength coaches belong with the medical staff or the coaching staff, McKeefery lands firmly on the coaching side, and it shapes how he sees the whole job. The barbell work is a vehicle for something larger.

That’s why I love the weight room. It’s a laboratory for life. You come in and you have to have a plan and you have to work to achieve it, you’ve got to work as a team, and you’ve got to deal with success and deal with adversity.

That is where he places mental toughness, not as screaming for its own sake, but as a controlled environment where athletes rehearse effort, teamwork, and adversity. He is quick to add the limit that keeps the whole thing honest.

Our primary responsibility is to do no harm, just like a medical professional. It’s a blurry line, so it’s a tough line to see, but we’ve got to see it and we’ve got to err on the side of caution.

For a working coach, the balance is the point: the weight room can build toughness and culture, but the moment intensity crosses into harm, the coach has to have the backbone to pull it back, even against pressure from the sport staff.

How to build buy-in: the “why” meeting

Programming means little, McKeefery argues, if the athlete is not bought in, because you control only a fraction of their week. His tool for earning that buy-in is a structured one-on-one he calls a why meeting.

The way that I create buy-in the best is I do a why meeting.

In it he asks three questions: who is the most influential person in your life, what would you do if you were not playing your sport, and what is the hardest thing you have ever gone through. He then calls that influential person and makes sure their first message to the athlete is something positive. The third question is where the relationship actually turns.

You can get to a real place with athletes pretty quick when you share and you’re vulnerable and you share the toughest thing you’ve ever gone through in your life. And then they turn around and open up and share theirs. There’s walls that are broken down there.

The application is simple to copy and hard to fake: invest in the athlete as a person first, hold them accountable second. Team culture, in his telling, is the byproduct of dozens of those individual investments, not a slogan on the wall.

Passion without being emotional

The closing question of the episode, what advice he would give his 25-year-old self, produces the line McKeefery says he returns to most.

You can be passionate without being emotional. A lot of times, as young coaches especially, we want to show how passionate we are, but we give an emotional response.

He tells the story against himself: a dent in a weight room door at South Florida from a plate he once threw at an athlete who showed up five minutes late, before he knew what the athlete was dealing with. Accountability, he says, does not require losing your temper, and losing it can cost you the athlete entirely.

Those kids didn’t choose to do this for their life. We chose to do this for our life. We’ve got to put it in context of where they’re at in their lives. It’s just a piece of the pie for them.

It is the through-line of the whole conversation. The technical side of coaching is learnable and, in his words, not rocket science. The career is made or lost on the human side.

Frequently asked questions

What qualifications do you need to become a strength and conditioning coach?
A relevant degree and a certification such as the CSCS are the baseline, but McKeefery stresses that they only get you in the door. Employers then look for intangibles, hands-on apprenticeship experience, and a specific skill a staff lacks, such as advanced training in technology, an athletic training background, or nutrition.

How much do strength and conditioning coaches make?
McKeefery notes the ceiling has risen sharply for a profession only about 60 years old, with some coaches now earning well into six figures, and he references peers making over half a million dollars a year. Most jobs pay far less, which is part of why he argues coaches should build additional income streams.

Is strength and conditioning a stable career?
Not inherently. McKeefery says it is not if but when you get fired, often for reasons unrelated to your performance, such as a head coaching change. His answer is to diversify: become a manager and an entrepreneur, not only a technician, so you can weather the transitions the field guarantees.

How do you build buy-in with athletes?
McKeefery uses a “why” meeting built on three questions about the athlete’s life, then invests in the person before holding them accountable to their goals. He believes buy-in and team culture come from many individual relationships, not from motivational speeches.

About the authors

Ron McKeefery is a veteran strength and conditioning coach and the author of “CEO Strength Coach.” His career spans professional and college sport, including the Kansas City Royals, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a decade at the University of South Florida where he became head strength coach at 23, Army Special Forces, the University of Tennessee, and the Cincinnati Bengals, along with a role leading performance and coaching education. He hosts a coaching podcast focused on the professional development of strength coaches.

Joel Smith is the host of the Just Fly Performance Podcast and the founder of Just Fly Sports, a former collegiate strength and track and field coach who focuses on speed, power, and athletic development. Listen to the full episode with Ron McKeefery on Just Fly Sports.