---
title: The Markers of a Great Strength Coach
description: A great strength and conditioning coach can personalize and individualize their approach to each athlete. Here's the top tool for doing just that.
image: https://blog.insidetracker.com/hubfs/crossfit-coach-box-jumps.jpg
---

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# The Markers of a Great Strength Coach

By [Jimmy Kennedy, Senior Scientist, CF-L1](https://blog.insidetracker.com/author/jimmy-kennedy-cf-l1), November 17, 2021

 ![How to be a great CrossFit coach](https://blog.insidetracker.com/hs-fs/hubfs/crossfit-coach-box-jumps.jpg?width=2121&name=crossfit-coach-box-jumps.jpg)

The world of sports performance is becoming increasingly scientific. Wearable technology, sleep tracking, and cutting-edge recovery techniques have made training programs more data-driven than ever. And while it's easy to blindly apply these new resources to the masses, a marker of a great strength and conditioning coach is the ability to personalize and individualize their approach to each of their athletes. Of course, doing so can be challenging – it's hard to know exactly what each athlete needs. But with the help of blood biomarker tracking and personalized recommendations, these answers can be reached more easily than ever.

[![Schedule a live demo of the InsideTracker platform](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/419889/4d2bdfaa-e091-459f-927d-77bbb7dc36ea.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/419889/4d2bdfaa-e091-459f-927d-77bbb7dc36ea)![Coach dashboard athlete nutrition plan](https://blog.insidetracker.com/hs-fs/hubfs/coach-dashboard-foods.png?width=1600&name=coach-dashboard-foods.png)

# **Personalized nutrition for optimizing athletes' performance**

As a strength and conditioning coach, you know that the physical training program you prescribe is only one piece of building better athletes. A detailed nutrition plan, for example, is just as important as exercises and rep schemes. But nowadays, there's an overwhelming amount of information everywhere you look, and it can be hard to decipher what's best for athletes of varying calibers. Well, just as every athlete requires personalized training to maximize their potential, so goes for their nutrition.

With InsideTracker, you and your athlete will receive personalized feedback on nutrition, how it's currently affecting his or her performance, and actionable guidance for improvements. At first, it might not be obvious that biomarkers like **[blood glucose](https://blog.insidetracker.com/how-to-improve-your-mind-and-body-with-insidetracker)**, **[LDL cholesterol](https://blog.insidetracker.com/does-total-cholesterol-number-even-matter)** or **triglycerides** would be vital to increased strength and performance. But the truth is, suboptimal levels of these biomarkers can limit what the body can do, including physical output. ![Coach dashboard athlete blood biomarkers](https://blog.insidetracker.com/hs-fs/hubfs/coach-dashboard-profile.png?width=1600&name=coach-dashboard-profile.png)

# **How to know which supplements your athletes need**

Picture the food pyramid, with the most abundant foods at the base and the limited ones at the top. Well, supplementation sits atop of the sports nutrition pyramid—it should be done in moderation and with intention. But often times, people (including strength coaches!) are quick to take or recommend [supplements](https://blog.insidetracker.com/supplement-solutions-for-functional-fitness), even without proof of benefit or necessity. 

But think about a car—we rely on the lights on our dashboard to tell us what needs attention or tuning-up. How could we possibly know what needed to be fixed if the lights didn't work? There would be a whole lot of guess work. The same logic applies to your body! It's difficult to know which areas of our diet are lacking without the appropriate data.

Tracking biomarkers like**[vitamin D](https://blog.insidetracker.com/why-athletes-should-pay-attention-to-vitamin-d)**, **magnesium**, and [electrolytes](https://blog.insidetracker.com/hydration-sodium-potassium-and-exercise-what-you) such as **sodium **and **potassium** allows you to see *exactly *what your athlete is deficient in. Then, using these values, InsideTracker can recommend the right supplement regimen and dosage to get their body back on track.![Coach dashboard team summary analytics](https://blog.insidetracker.com/hs-fs/hubfs/coach-dashboard-analytics.png?width=1600&name=coach-dashboard-analytics.png)

# **Push your athletes to the limit—but not past it**

One of the most valuable applications of InsideTracker is the prevention of [overtraining](https://blog.insidetracker.com/couldnt-bounce-back-after-wod-overtraining). There's a fine line between pushing your athlete to get the most out of a workout and *over*working them, both short-term and long-term. By looking at key biomarkers in the blood, you can know where that threshold lies, and what output you should expect from your athletes.

For example, we know that 12-48 hours after intense training sessions, elevated levels of **[creatine kinase (CK)](https://blog.insidetracker.com/are-you-over-training)** and [liver enzymes](https://blog.insidetracker.com/muscle-damange-to-blame-for-elevated-liver-enzymes) **ALT** and **AST** will be detected in the blood. These are often critical markers of muscle damage and signal that the body needs to recover. Now, these are *acute* markers, as they spike rather quickly after training. Assessing markers like [**testosterone**](https://blog.insidetracker.com/can-vitamin-d-restore-low-testosterone-levels), **free testosterone** and **[sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG)](https://blog.insidetracker.com/testosterone-action-versus-testosterone-levels-why-shbg-matters)**, on the other hand, will provide a longer-term look into how an athlete is handling a training cycle. If the intensity is too high, you could expect to see elevated levels of SHBG—which almost always coincide with below-optimal levels of free testosterone.![Coach dashboard team summary targets](https://blog.insidetracker.com/hs-fs/hubfs/coach-dashboard-box-team.png?width=1600&name=coach-dashboard-box-team.png)

# **Help your athletes stay mentally tough all season long**

As a strength and conditioning coach, you know that a tough mid-season competition or even that one off-season training session can take not only a physical toll on your players, but also a *mental* one. More often than not, the body can take push further than the mind can, so preventing mental burnout is incredibly important.

You can analyze emotional stress in your athlete by tracking their **[cortisol](https://blog.insidetracker.com/stress-guide-to-causes-and-cures)** levels. This is especially important in conjunction with testosterone levels—high cortisol combined with low T is the trademark signal for overtraining and a lack of adequate recovery. InsideTracker provides a unique tool to track and prevent this: the **testosterone to cortisol ratio**. This provides a single, easy-to-interpret value that compares an athlete's testosterone and cortisol levels—the perfect way to keep track of [overtraining](https://blog.insidetracker.com/couldnt-bounce-back-after-wod-overtraining) and recovery.

So if you want to gain some “inside” knowledge to set your athletes up for success, InsideTracker needs to be in your tool box. Whether it’s at the end of a season or before spring training, our personalized recommendations will have your athletes optimized both on and off the field, all season long.

 

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### Some other blog posts we think you'll love:

- [Can Vitamin D Restore Low Testosterone Levels?](https://blog.insidetracker.com/can-vitamin-d-restore-low-testosterone-levels)
- [How We Define Your Optimized Zones of Health and Performance](https://blog.insidetracker.com/how-we-define-your-optimized-zones-health-and-performance)
- [These Elite Athletes of the CrossFit Games Fuel Their Performance with InsideTracker](https://blog.insidetracker.com/these-elite-crossfit-games-athletes-fuel-their-performance-with-insidetracker)
- [Is Inflammation Affecting Your Training and Recovery?](https://blog.insidetracker.com/inflammation-affecting-your-training-and-recovery)

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###### By Michelle Darian, MS, MPH, RD, April 21, 2021

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###### By Shalane Flanagan, April 9, 2021

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###### By Tianna Bartoletta, April 5, 2021

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