If you want to work with athletes as a part of a sports activities drugs staff, you may contemplate a profession as an authorized athletic coach (ATC). As an allied well being skilled, an ATC has totally different expertise and duties from these of a private coach. Their training focuses on the medical elements of bodily coaching and athletic actions.
An ATC works with docs and different allied well being personnel to forestall damage, present emergency care, help in prognosis, and supply therapeutic interventions and rehabilitation for athletic accidents. In addition they work with non-athletes to advertise wellness and participation in wholesome bodily actions. The settings the place they work embody secondary faculties, schools, sports activities drugs clinics, {and professional} sports activities packages.
Training
To develop into an authorized athletic coach, you will need to first full a university athletic coaching program that’s accredited by the Fee on Accreditation of Athletic Coaching Training (CAATE) and procure a bachelor’s diploma or an entry-level grasp’s diploma. Nonetheless, that is in transition and the Nationwide Athletic Trainers’ Affiliation says {that a} grasp’s diploma will likely be required sooner or later. Licensed packages are discovered at a whole lot of schools and universities throughout the U.S.
The topics you’ll examine in your faculty program have a medical focus. They embody anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, train physiology, athletic coaching, vitamin. stopping damage, assessing accidents, therapeutic modalities, first support, emergency care, psychosocial methods, and healthcare administration. You might also do a scientific rotation with an athletic staff.
Certification and Licensure
When you graduate from an accredited program, you’ll be able to sit for the certification examination carried out by the Board of Certification for the Athletic Coach. The take a look at just isn’t solely of information, but in addition in your means to use it, make selections, and carry out acceptable actions. The examination covers quite a lot of subjects throughout the 5 domains of athletic coaching:
- Prevention of athletic accidents and selling wellness
- Recognition, analysis, and prognosis of athletic accidents
- Rapid care and emergency care of athletic accidents
- Therapeutic interventions, rehabilitation, and reconditioning of athletic accidents
- Healthcare administration {and professional} duty
As soon as athletic trainers cross the certification examination proving expertise and information inside every of the 5 domains, they will use the designation ATC.
Earlier than you follow, you will need to make sure you acquire a state license or cross the opposite regulatory necessities for the state the place you’ll work. You could get persevering with training credit and recertify periodically.
Typical Day
The everyday day for an authorized athletic coach varies with the extent of athletic competitors, employment setting (conventional, scientific, industrial, company) and different institutional necessities.
In case you are working in an athletic setting, you could start earlier than follow, making use of preventative measures resembling tape, wraps, and braces for the athletes. Throughout follow, you’d be energetic in evaluating accidents and sending athletes to the physician or following standing orders to deal with minor accidents.
Your expertise embody prevention, recognition, and rehabilitation of sports activities accidents. Whether or not these happen throughout follow or competitors, you develop a therapy program below the supervision of a licensed doctor. As soon as an athlete is injured, you’re employed with the participant, their household, and the medical staff to speak when and the way they will return to follow and competitors.
Outdoors of an athletic setting, an ATC may match in a clinic, hospital, or enterprise and supply wellness companies, guide remedy, and sickness prevention teaching and educating.
