A Day in the Life of a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist

joellim6
Oct 30, 2017
3 min read

Being a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) entails a lot more than just conducting strength training exercises.

We spent a day with one of our CSCS graduates, Amirudin Jamal, who is also a Gym Manager at Anytime Fitness, to understand what he does on a daily basis. Amir has been the gym manager of their Kallang Wave Mall outlet for 2 years, and also works with high performance athletes to design and implement training programmes to improve their performance. Here is what his typical day looks like:

8.30 am

Amir starts his day by preparing his meals for the day. A typical meal would consist of a 300-gramme grilled chicken breast, ¾ cups of rice and a cup of broccoli.

9.00 am

Breakfast and family time. Amir spends time with his family members, catching up on the things that they’ve been up to and enjoying a nice wholesome breakfast with them before they each start their day. He usually works late into the evening so he spends his mornings with the family before heading off to work.

12.00 noon

Amir arrives at Anytime Fitness and begins his daily routine of checking the CCTV cameras, performs equipment checks on everything in the gym and does the necessary maintenance work required.

1.00 pm

His first client arrives for training. He conducts the session by explaining the various exercises and demonstrating the movements. This way, his client understands the purpose behind the exercises and is able to execute the movements with proper form to prevent injuries.

2.00 pm

Amir has a quick lunch to keep him fuelled for his busy afternoons.

2.30 pm As the gym manager, Amir conducts regular meetings with his staff in order to get updates from them about their daily operations. This time is also spent doing various forms of staff development training including topics like sales, communication and exercises. He incorporates both theory and practical aspects in these sessions to ensure that his staff fully understand the topics being taught.

4.00 pm

This is when Amir gets to do his own training. Being a CSCS, it is also important to look and act like one. He keeps his discipline by doing daily exercises to keep himself in shape and also try out new movements and exercises to see if they can be incorporated into the training programmes for his clients.

5.00 pm Amir completes the administrative work that needs to be done. Being a manager means that there is lots of paperwork to be done. Apart from that, he also does his telemarketing and sets up appointments with current and potential clients in order to grow the business.

6.30 pm Another client comes in for training. Using his skills as a CSCS, he conducts his session using the various tools and experience he has to effectively assess and train his client.

8.00 pm Amir does his daily rounds, walking around the gym and talks to various gym users. He tries to build rapport with the members, striking up conversations with them, sometimes even spotting for them. He does this in order to understand the members better and also shares training information with them to help them improve their training as well as try to learn a thing or two from them as well. Being a CSCS is about constantly learning and improving your skills and knowledge, in order to be more effective.

9.00 pm Amir does his final round of checks and ends his day, ready to head home and get his rest for the day ahead.

Amir’s typical day is spent doing many things. He also works with many athletes over various sports, including soccer, boxing, tennis and athletics, sharing his expertise and working with them to improve their performance. Aside from the practical hands-on aspects of designing exercise programmes, being successful at the job also requires many business and administrative tasks required to keep things in order.

Interested in becoming a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist? Sign up for our NSCA CSCS course today!