Raise the Standard of Coaching (Opinion)
Your coaches might be incompetent, and it is time to raise the standard.
If you own an Affiliate and your “coaches” do not have the CrossFit Level 1 Certificate it is my opinion that, you are destroying the collective reputation of CrossFit. If you call your business a “CrossFit box” and you have put people in front of your members who have not passed the Level 1 test, then you are playing into the reason CrossFit gets a bad rap.
As affiliate owners, it is our job to hold the standard high. This is challenging, I know that first hand. At the start, you are doing everything, running classes, cleaning, administration, programming, personal training, paying bills, billing members, and everything else that goes with running an Affiliate. It can all seem overwhelming at times, and you may feel desperate to hire some help. You want to hire a coach but you don’t have anyone with the CrossFit Level 1 Certificate. So you find someone with the right qualities. This is where many are making the mistake of taking that individual and slapping the title “Coach” on their backs.
I too struggled in the beginning, but I knew that I wanted my box to set a higher standard. I wanted to hire Coaches with the qualities and the qualifications that would make us stand out. I was able to hold off on hiring anyone until the right person with a CrossFit Level 1 Certificate could begin the process of shadowing me. Any Affiliate owner worth their salt, knows that the Level 1 Seminar and test isn’t enough, but it should be a requirement before beginning the process of training up a coach to run classes.
That season was extremely challenging and many times I felt like I was drowning in all the work that I had to do. But I reminded myself of one simple truth, no one had made me open an affiliate. This was my decision and it was now my responsibility to my members, and to the CrossFit community as a whole, to provide world-class fitness. If I was now in a situation that I didn’t like, I needed to fix it and I needed to do it the right way. Cheating my members and throwing someone into the role of “coach” without a minimum of the CrossFit Level 1 Certificate, would have been a mistake.
It took time. But the outcome was that I had a coach who had been mentored under me. They had the right qualifications and a working knowledge of CrossFit. I knew that when I wasn’t at my box, the classes were being coached to the standard I had set from the beginning. My members were in good hands.
I have personally trained up and mentored 8 coaches over the span of 7 years owning a CrossFit Affiliate. Four of which, still coach at my box, CrossFit Pegasus. And the work of having good coaches doesn’t end there either. I must continually challenge my coaches and develop them, along with myself. We all need further education and continued mentorship. I firmly believe that you can never stand still if you are in the business of fitness and health. You must keep working and wanting the best for your members.
CrossFit HQ has made many courses available across the globe. Even where I am in Europe, there are plenty of opportunities for people to take their first CrossFit Level 1 Certificate Course. And this is even in the midst of the current global crisis we are facing. Having “good people” in the role of a coach isn’t good enough. The Level 1 is there for a reason, it makes sure that at least on a very basic level, a person has some knowledge on the topic of fitness.
Do yourself, your members, and the CrossFit community a favour, don’t hire unqualified individuals and call them coaches. It corrupts what we are all working so hard to achieve, which is excellence. Greg Glassman said from the beginning that if we pursue the highest level of service and product possible, money will come. So let’s all do that, starting with only hiring qualified coaches who at the minimum have the CrossFit Level 1 Certificate.
