If you want to become a sports coach, the first step is deciding how you are going to get started.
Below are three ideas of how you can get into sports coaching and some advantages and disadvantages to each method.
Whether you work full-time and are looking for something to do at the evenings/weekends or you desire to become a top-level sports coach, this article offers advice and information on how to move forward.
Volunteering Volunteering is the quickest method to get into sports coaching.
Once you have your CRB checks, most local sports teams will snatch you up with the prospect of getting a helper.
It is simple as approaching a local sports team (you can find these on most council websites if you search "local sports clubs" and your area into Google) and mention that you want to get some experience with coaching and ask if they have space for you to help out.
Most sports teams will want to check your paperwork first and more than likely, if you have no previous coaching experience you will be observing the first few coaching sessions.
This may sound boring but trust me in that this is where you learn the most about the coaching techniques.
After a few weeks, you might be starting to take the warm ups and might even be helping the manager decide the formation for the next football match.
If you have no experience in sports coaching, volunteering enables you to get vital experience and allows you time to decide if coaching really is for you before you pay £200+ on a coaching course.
Along with this, you learn more about the game and if the hours are not fitting for you, you have no pressure to attend (apart from maybe your teammates relying on you).
The downside to volunteering is of course, no pay (hence volunteering), the club may not pay for your travel and you will have to be supervised by the team coach (if you have no coaching qualifications).
If you are not in it for the money, volunteering has a massive impact with little drawbacks.
Just don't expect to ring up a premier league club and be able to turn up to coach their development teams; even those volunteers have high level coaching qualifications.
Coaching Programmes Some top sports clubs run a coaching development programme in which candidates apply for a place and depending on which programme, either the club pay for none, some or all of your coaching qualifications.
Along with this, these courses normally include some sort of academic qualification and offer you a team whom you are expected to coach.
The majority of these courses are for either college or university students who want to continue their education but also want to work within sport.
These coaching programmes provide you with an opportunity to progress towards the top tier of the coaching structure as you are learning on the job however they are very rare and clubs may only offer this to one or two places a year.
More than likely you will have to pay to join the programme but could pay off in the long term.
Independently complete a National Governing Body coaching course.
This is a very common way to get into coaching.
Most National Governing Bodies arrange and run their own coaching courses and to coach in that sport, you need to have a certain coaching certificate.
For example, if you want to become a football coach, you must have a level 1 certificate in coaching football, once you have this, you can then work as an assistant coach at a football club.
To become a club coach or more, you have to complete the correct coaching award in that sport.
This method ensures that you are qualified to coach however by completing the courses does not mean you will have a job immediately.
You will then need to search for coaching jobs or complete the methods above.
You can find this information on the National Governing Bodies websites.
The next step is to decide which method you are going to follow and to get started.
Good luck!