#047 - Paid vs. Unpaid Internships Within the Strength and Conditioning Industry

In this episode of the Decoding Excellence Show, I'm discussing the polarizing topic of strength and conditioning programs, across the country, offering paid vs. unpaid internships in the field and industry. There is merit on both sides of the conversation and I attempt to paint the picture and detail the different perspectives from both camps.

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Key Takeaways

• Paid versus unpaid internships in strength and conditioning is a polarizing topic, and there is merit on both sides of the conversation.
• The episode lays out the perspectives from both camps rather than taking one side.

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Episode Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. While we strive for accuracy, some words or phrases may be misheard.

[00:00:00] Sport science, strength and conditioning, high performance coaching, welcome to the Decoding Excellence Show. I created the Matrix. I've been waiting for you. Hey everybody, it is Adam. I want to remind you of one thing, rather than spamming this show with herbal tea advertisements or you know performance technology companies coming on trying to sell their latest gizmos, I have opted not to have an advertisement over the last, probably 20 shows or so, 20, 25 shows, and the

[00:01:00] Reason I do this is because rather than trying to sell you something, all I would like for you to do, if you support the show, if you're a fan of the Decoding Excellence Show, maybe some of the interviews that we've had in the past, some of the monologues that we're having some of the Monday Minute episodes, rather than trying to sell you something, please head over to AdamRinger.com 4-slash newsletter. About once a month, I'll send you an email and it will be chocked full of really interesting things, research articles, fascinating things I found online,

[00:01:29] Books I'm reading, podcasts that I've enjoyed, articles that I'm writing, things and people that I'm interviewing and exploring, I think you're going to get a lot out of it. I promise I won't spam you and it will be something that will deliver a lot of value to your day. Check it out at AdamRinger.com 4-slash newsletter. Here we go. Welcome to the Decoding Excellence Show and boy, the intro of this one probably doesn't need much of an opener. If you've been online via social media, aren't Twitter. Over the last maybe 24 hours, 48 hours, you probably saw the storm and the

[00:02:08] Controversy that was reported on via my good friend Brett Bartholomew and his interview with Mike Boyle and the discussion surrounding paying interns. Alan Bishop from University of Houston jumped in on that gave some incredible insights and feedback to that and then the cascade of comments have occurred and everybody has an opinion on this. I think it's a polarizing topic within our field, within the industry, within strength and conditioning and I thought rather than trying to have my comments be in a 280 character tweet, we would just dedicate a small clip of this show

[00:02:52] Towards the commentary around should interns in strength and conditioning be paid. So let's get into the conversation. Should interns be paid within strength and conditioning? I think there's merit on both sides of the argument. I'll try not to go immediately straight down the straight and narrow. I'll try to give some view points from both perspectives here. Obviously let's just lay out sort of the groundwork for this conversation. Number one, we are as a strength conditioning professional, right? Somebody that has experience in the field.

[00:03:27] If we want to look at this as an apprenticeship sort of model where we are leveraging our experience, our credibility, our opportunity in the sharing of those qualities and the education of those experiences with another individual, i.e. Their apprenticeship model, then perhaps there is merit to not paying interns, right? To actually have an educational curriculum and an experiential based curriculum and opportunity to really enrich their opportunity and their skill set to upskill them in the trade that is strength and conditioning, right? So that is perhaps one sort of very small

[00:04:12] Glimpse or window into this debate, if we will. The other side of the coin, if you read any of the Twitter comments and the threads that many, many people weighed in on, was that, you know, these people could go and work at a Chick-fil-A or doing manual maintenance or manual work and make way more money than what we're paying, right? That every person that does any type of labor should be getting paid. And I have opinions on both, not that. And let me say this caveat, right? These are Adam Ringler's opinions. They don't represent anybody or any entities or organizations or

[00:05:04] Institutions, opinion or stance on any of this. Literally just an opinion for me, right? It's not backed by legal, it's not backed by an organization, I'm not vouching and saying this is our official stance, right? These are just some of my initial thoughts on the conversation. As I am a strengthening professional, I should be able to, hopefully, weigh in on some matters that are related to our industry. So, where my opinion comes in on this is that, look, you know, I am a product and don't get me wrong, I'm a product of going the traditional internship route, right? For me,

[00:05:41] And I probably share this on the Decoding Excellence Show quite a bit, that I did a two-year internship non-paid where I was assisting and working within the Olympic Strengthening Department at Michigan State University. And some of it was, I think, in the first year I was doing that was very limited hours. So, it was 10 to 15 hours a week. So, I think it was maybe like three or so days a week where I would work anywhere from three to four hours a day, typically in the afternoons, right? And that worked out with my junior year class schedule, right? Come towards my senior year,

[00:06:19] I was probably closer to working sort of like a part-time job. I think I was working closer to 15 to 20 hours of an internship. I think I upped the days that I was working. I think I was working Monday through Friday and I think somewhere in the vicinity of, you know, three and a half to four hours a day. And again, I balanced that around my classes. And I also worked at that time as a graphic designer for a small business in East Lansing, Michigan. So, I did some graphic design work and then I also, you know, obviously did my undergraduate coursework academically and then I would

[00:06:59] Assist from a strength conditioning perspective in our, you know, Olympic sports division at Michigan State. So, I understand and one of the comments that I read online is like, look, you know, what happens by sort of not paying people, and I totally can relate to this in some respects is that by not paying fair wages for internship hours for internship opportunities, you alienate an entire sector of a socioeconomic demographic that may not be able to be in a position to be able to afford working for free, right? And I would say that I certainly had to work a different job to be

[00:07:46] Able to afford not only academically at Michigan State. I'm cost of living at Michigan State. And this was obviously earlier in, you know, we're talking a decade ago, so cost of living and academics and tuition was much cheaper back throughout those days. But even with that said, I still held a part-time graphic design position, web design position. So, I understand the merit of doing that, right? I also look at the other side of the equation and said that by any means that strength conditioning department did not have to offer an internship program at all. And, you know,

[00:08:28] I look at my time working within the strength conditioning department as an incredible opportunity for me to learn from some of the world's best. And by that, I am completely humbled and grateful of those years of not getting paid because what I did get paid in is an opportunity to work and to learn and to ask questions and to get access to some of the very brightest minds, right? So, I look at it like, you know, if I was a writer and I wanted to go into, you know, authoring books or for whatever reason, if I could have an opportunity to sit alongside Malcolm

[00:09:14] Gladwell or Robert Green or any prolific author for that extent and be able to learn about their strategies and their tactics behind writing and publishing books. If I could be able to sit down and pick Stephen King's brain about why he's writing a particular chapter or pose prose in one particular fashion or another, I would look at that as a world-class opportunity to learn. Yes, I might be doing some editing along the side. Yes, I might be making sure from an office standpoint, everything is positioned the way you want, but that's not,

[00:09:56] I'm learning the trade, I'm learning the craftsmanship that goes into becoming a world-class author and I look at that as what a tremendous opportunity for me to learn. And there's value in that. And I recognize that I might not be financially paid, but I'm from an experience standpoint from a skill set standpoint. I'm getting something that money cannot buy, which is access to learning the craftsmanship and the trade of authorship in that standpoint or writing, right? And I look at my time at Michigan State University in the very similar vein. I came in,

[00:10:34] I was an undergraduate student. I was just enrolling in essentially kinesiology, exercise, science, sports, science, and I looked at it as like, I, outside of my own fascination and reading books and reading articles and reading research about strengthening initiative and have any tangible actionable skills, you know, an experience in program design or exes and o's or coaching or any of this. So, you know, the fact that I could work alongside a professional who could do that and could teach me those things was tremendous. It gave me the applied side

[00:11:16] Of the academic side of what I was living in the classroom. And for that, again, like I said, I'm super grateful. But, you know, like, look, what I have liked to be paid, absolutely, who wouldn't want financial compensation in any extent. So, I totally understand that side of the argument of saying, look, I'm coming in. I'm working a part-time job for you. I'm facilitating program or coaching. I'm helping your program. I'm helping to clean and maintain the weight room and to, you know, stock the fridges and to get everything ready. I'm doing labor for you. Shouldn't

[00:11:52] I be paid? And for that, I would say I would love to financially get paid, right? That puts food on the table as an undergraduate student. I could, you know, buy groceries and things like that. I could lessen the burden that I've had to, you know, acquire student debt to be able to afford going to college. And the cost of living around that, I wouldn't be paying student debt well into my 30s like I am now. But at the same time, I wholeheartedly believe I wouldn't be where I'm at right now had I've not got that opportunity. Because I can tell you that the experiences and the

[00:12:30] Education that I learned from an applied standpoint from the people and the coaches that I interacted with during my internship allowed me to become the coach I am today. It gave me the opportunity to try to fail to learn and then to succeed from those opportunities and from those experiences. I have literally lifelong friendships that I have established from my time of being an intern, people that I still talk to nearly on a daily basis. And that is something that I will never take for granted. And I think that we very much don't put a valuation, a price tag on what

[00:13:09] Those experiences and what those opportunities come through. So yeah, I think there's a financial aspect to any sort of labor job, anything that we do. But we need to also consider what are the other intangibles. What are the other things that we have a very hard time monetizing or putting a valuation on that actually delivers a lot of value? So things like education, things like opportunities, things like experiences, leveraging professional networks. I look at my time and this is something that I try to pass on to our interns as well is that this is not just an internship program where you

[00:13:50] Said in turn coming into the program, deliver labor, and I deliver nothing, right? I deliver experience or an opportunity cause. That's not the way that we look at this. I look at this as an apprenticeship, a mentorship model in that my role is to really help you progress through the career of becoming a strength conditioning professional. My job, my responsibility to you is to make sure that you're equipped with the education both professionally and from a career orientation to be able to succeed in the long run. And that goes well beyond just periodization,

[00:14:30] Strengthening conditioning program, program design, how to coach, how to not coach, personality type, things like that. It goes into really taking a wholehearted investment in the person of who they are, their family, their dynamics, where they're at in their life, and all the considerations that you make when people are exploring for the first time how to navigate through a job interview and a career and what to do along the way. And that I still have interns, even very early on in my coaching career when I created the first internship program of my

[00:15:07] Professional capacity, my professional career, I still have those same interns calling me, years, years later, literally at this point, a decade later, and asking some very simple questions about when they're at a fork in the road, and they need to make a decision what would I do. And I think that's the difference between a traditional internship where you pick up coffee and you stock papers and you do things to an organization management structure that doesn't care about set intern, versus the type of intern internships that we have in strength conditioning.

[00:15:46] Because maybe really what's the problem and what's the debate is not over the internship. Maybe it's the vernacular, the language, and the label that we put on it. Because from an outsider looking at an internship, perhaps if you're a marketing major or you're in a different industry, you look at that and you say, man, yeah, absolutely. These guys should get paid, right? Strength conditioning interns should be paid. But if you're within the inside of it, I look at it and say, man, we are paying. We're not paying financially. We're paying

[00:16:17] By the investment in the person in the soul, in the person that is setting themselves up to be in this career. And we are walking along the journey with you through mentorship and professional development and guidance that I put a little bit of myself from a personal investment in every single one of our interns as they succeed or they fail in this career. And that, you know, there's successes I win with them and there are failures I lose with them. And that's different than some of the internships that I think we have in different industries. And I think that is

[00:16:57] Something that a lot of people, outsiders of the field, and maybe some of them that are on the fringe don't necessarily either understand or agree with or have differences to, but I just look at my experiences and look, the end is one in this case, me. But it also is probably over the course of a decade and more doing this, probably 40 to 50 interns that I've personally, you know, have taken an investment in. And I look at that and I say, man, you know, like this is out of their experiences and some have continued to go on and stay within the strengthening industry

[00:17:40] And make a living and have a family because of it. And I look at that, I'm looking right now, I'm looking right at my home, right. And I can look at, you know, just some of the smallest things from the coffee that I'm drinking to the fridge that's across my kitchen to all of the the items that I have in my house. And look, it's modest. It's very, very modest, right. Nobody gets into coaching to be handsomely well paid, right. And I know Brett will probably take offense to that. Look, we, we don't like to be super well compensated and paid, right. And I think we deserve it.

[00:18:20] And there's champions within our field that is raising the tides for all of us. But as an aside, I look at all of this and strengthening conditioning has afforded me this opportunity to acquire these things, to raise a family, to put a roof over our heads, right, to do afford the education that my children are getting. All of because I've had people take a chance on me as an intern when I was a frallicking young, uh, literally first year junior at Michigan State University that walked in an office and said, Hey, I'd like to be a director of strength conditioning one day. And that same

[00:19:02] Individual said, you have no clue what it's about. But you know what? I'll give you an opportunity to show up tomorrow at 6 a.m. And if you're willing to work, I'm willing to help teach you. And because of that, I now look, you know, a decade plus later and say, wow, I'm afforded this lifestyle and all of these things and a wonderful family because of somebody taking a chance and offering me an opportunity with no expectations of being paid, right, just an opportunity to learn from somebody that I considered an expert in the industry who's willing to invest in me if I could just only demonstrate hard work

[00:19:42] And, uh, and an affinity to do a good job and to pay attention and execute some of the wishes that they were looking for from a strengthening and conditioning perspective. And for me, I am completely humbled by that. And yeah, would it been great to be paid absolutely at that time, right? I would have loved to have extra pocket cash so I could go out and probably make bad decisions as a undergraduate, right? But like at the same token, you know, if you're willing to play the long game and you're willing to, as Mike Boyle said in that, you know, um, art of coaching podcasts with

[00:20:19] Brett, if you're willing to play the long game and look, I know he worked three times and he bartended Mike did, right? I worked graphic design. I did side hustle jobs on the side of designing logos and working remotely to try to afford, you know, my wife at that time, shoot, it would have been my girlfriend, my wife now, it, my girlfriend back then worked to help support me as I sold her this pipe dream that, you know, I'm going to be a strengthening coach one day. And while she was taking college courses that she would work in a veterinary clinic, I get it. Not everybody has

[00:20:55] That opportunity to do those things, right? To have a support structure to help them. Um, and I'm super grateful for it. But at the same time, I've had interns that would jump on a city bus and drive or ride a light rail. And in an hour in the morning from downtown into into the city so that they could be at the weight room at 6 a.m., and they would bust their tail throughout the day and then leave in the afternoon, leave early as we're wrapping up maybe our last team or last two teams so they could get back and do their night gig. Like, it's not easy. And it should be easy.

[00:21:32] And I want it to be easier for all of us. Should we be paying interns? Like, could we afford it? If, if we could, we would, I think. And that's, and don't get me wrong. That's a whole another conversation that I have yet to go down. I wanted to go down and I'm glad that my rant, my tyrannical rant has led me to this, right? But if we think that the field is scarce already, right? That it's hard enough to get strengthening positions in the collegiate landscape. Then imagine if we could no longer offer educational based or experiential based internships

[00:22:14] That they only had to be financial, the field would become incredibly even more competitive and the positions even more scarce. It is a saturated job market, right? And that's something here from rugby strength coach has talked about a lot on Twitter and Instagram and elsewhere is that this is an industry that for what it's worth as you start to look across the landscape from coast to coast, from west coast to east coast, that positions are not being added to the collegiate realm, right? Just financially or from a compensation standpoint, from a division of human resources,

[00:22:53] They're, you're not seeing the exponential hockey stick rise of strength conditioning positions. But what I will say is that what we are recognizing and what we're seeing is that universities from coast to coast is continuing to pump out kinesiology majors, exercise science majors, sports science majors, right? And as the pool of people that are willing to take these strength conditioning jobs continue to grow and to get more and more saturated, the positions in which they would be hired in becoming more and more scarce,

[00:23:32] There's a incredible gap between there. And then if we can only provide financial internships, I'm telling you that is the number one way of making for the landscape of strength conditioning, right? I think it would hurt the industry more than it would help the industry. And it would hurt it because at the end of the day, if I could offer four or three incredibly, educationally rich internships opportunities to candidates across the country that can come here and work and assist with our program in a part time or limited capacity and go to a night

[00:24:21] Morning job or a night job and be able to balance the two and to make it work. If I could only offer that to a paid position, those three or four per semester interns will really only go down to one. And that one intern that we would hire, I would only have to imagine would have to have so many different qualifications at that standpoint, certifications, qualifications, education, right, experiences, internships elsewhere for them, for people to take a chance, because the financial resources are not continuing to grow across our industry, across strength

[00:25:03] Conditioning to be able to provide compensation for every intern that comes into the program. So by nature, we would have to be incredibly competitive with the applicants that come into those positions. And ultimately, what I would see is that we most likely, and I'm not saying we as in any sort of affiliation or organization or institution, I say we collectively as an industry being in these positions in these leadership positions, we would have to take a very hard look at the experiences that the applying interns would have to come in at to justify the

[00:25:45] Pay. And I just think that for the people that want to start off in the industry, I look at myself, right, years and years ago, the junior student, the end of my sophomore year of going and saying, I'd love to work in this weight room, I would be denied because I would not have the experiences at that level to intern. And maybe that's okay, maybe that's what we want as an industry. Maybe me, 15 years ago, or 20 years ago, would have needed to go and work in a gym for 24-hour fitness, and then I would need to go. But then again, would somebody take a chance on a sophomore

[00:26:26] If they had to hire me? Perhaps, maybe I would have to work the front desk, and then I would have to study for a certified personal trainer degree because, you know, I could probably get that earlier before I could sit for my NSCA or my CSCCA certifications through those organizations, strengthening organizations. Perhaps I would have to take a series of roundabout jobs that are unrelated to strength conditioning to sort of ascertain enough experiences and enough education in roundabout ways so that when I did try to apply for that first paid internship,

[00:27:03] That I had enough experiences for the people that are making those decisions to say, we're going to take a chance on Adam Ringler who has some experience. But no, for me, I said, I had a very low barrier of what I needed to jump in, and I jumped through, right? Those hoops I had to jump through. And I look at our industry right now and I say, look, if we take a chance on somebody and reinvest in them educationally, we give them experiences, we give them mentorship, we check in on them, we help guide their life along their career and professional and personal

[00:27:36] Path. And we take that journey with them. And for whatever reason, strengthening conditioning didn't work out for them, right? Like, there's a very low barrier for us at that point, right? And, you know, as sad as I would be to see somebody leaving the industry, right? That hit would be very less than what would happen if we had to pay for an intern to come in considering the competitiveness of those internships. I can tell you even advertising for a sports science position, right? And again, this is one that I look and I put a lot of value on from an education

[00:28:14] Standpoint. It's not just, you know, crunch the numbers and do work for us, right? This is me taking a personal investment in a person wanting them to develop into the very best sports scientist that they can be, right? That even from an unpaid standpoint, an unpaid position and I get it, there's a lot of luxuries with living in Boulder. I love Boulder. This my very best place I have ever lived in and I would love to continue to stay here as long as I possibly can. It's beautiful and it's wonderful and it's everything I want in life, right? So knowing that those are, that there's

[00:28:52] There's a little bit of a destination with Boulder, right? I still look at that sports science internship that we offer as an opportunity for me to invest and leverage my network and my experiences, my education and the resources that we are afforded with and we have the utmost responsibility to use here. I look at this as like, you know, even for the unpaid portion of it, we had nearly 50 resumes that came in for that internship, right? If it was a paid internship, I'm going to guess that that's going to be nearly quadruple that. We'll probably get into the

[00:29:31] Vicinity of 150 or so resumes that would come in for a sports science and paid internship. The scarcity, the competitiveness of this industry is growing and growing as more potential job applicants enter the field and the jobs aren't. The jobs are simply not growing and that is something that we need to be cognizant of and I think ultimately those that have, and this could be a blanket statement and I don't mean this by any means, but those that have had a very negative experience with internships. I would, I don't know, perhaps I would be to assume that that is more

[00:30:18] Driven because it was a transactional sort of agreement between an organization or institution and said intern, that there was a transaction of we provide you a place to work and you can leverage your experience working here in professional capacity for doing the labor that we're going to ask you to do. And I look at it from a different vantage point, from a different perspective, from a different paradigm in that I am investing in you and I am walking the journey with you to try to help in every single capacity that I possibly can professionally and personally

[00:30:58] For you to develop into the very best person and the very best strength conditioning professional that you can be and I will try to help you along the way in any capacity that I professionally can. And that is a very different agreement that's a very different mentorship model, that's a different apprenticeship model than just simply you're a strength conditioning intern. And that, that is ultimately I think some of my opinions on this, I could probably talk for 60 minutes, for 90 minutes, depending on how long I could possibly sit here and rant about these things.

[00:31:36] But it's so important because again, I've had such a professional, professional, I don't even know, I've had such a positive professional experience with my internships in my past, right. And I've had two of them, one in which I had a tremendous amount of autonomy, that's literally like you run the strength conditioning program go, it was a summer internship. And then my experiences at Michigan State and that I look at it and it's just been incredibly fruitful and it's literally directly led me to the life that I live today. And I don't think of

[00:32:21] That I would be in this position I am without having that. And I am not as an employer as a strength coach leveraging interns in our program. Like if for that internship program, immediately across America vanished overnight and we no longer had interns, would it affect the day to day that we all do in strength conditioning? I'd say yes, right. But could we get by without it? Yes. Right. Would we have to work a little bit harder? Absolutely.

[00:32:53] But I look at it as we are doing more of a disservice to our strength conditioning, our future strength conditioning. If we're really concerned with laying roots down in the industry and developing your own coaching tree, right? That grows fruitful. I look at my tree right now and I have coaches on the West Coast, in the Midwest, on the East Coast, in the Panhandle and elsewhere. And that delivers such a sense of pride and joy in knowing very similarly as I look around the room that I sit in right now and look at the life that I live that they're doing the very similar thing and

[00:33:36] Developing and living their own life through their profession that they chose. And it's been afforded because of this apprenticeship model and this mentorship model. And I think for that, it is incredible responsibility on the strength conditioning professional IE, the one that is looking for interns to make sure that the internship program delivers a sense of value both educationally and an investment and experientially for the intern so that when they leave and they enter the job field and they enter the professional world, that they are bringing along not only their own

[00:34:16] Personal and educational and experience experiences that they developed throughout the internship, but they're also bringing you along with them. And for that, I am both the supporter of paying interns, but I'm also a realist and that I recognize that it is a, in my opinion, and I put that in an asterisk because it is truly my opinion and nobody else's and I'll take ownership of it, is that that will hurt our industry more than it will help our industry because it's going to limit the potential opportunities that interns and strengthen the future strength conditioning professionals

[00:35:01] Will have to be able to do the very best things that they want to do and to pursue the path that they want to pursue within strength conditioning. Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in to this show. I hope you took something away from it. And as always, there's a number of different ways that you can support the show, right? The first thing is I have a monthly newsletter that goes out. It is located at AdamRingler.com forward slash newsletter. And like I said in the intro, it is chocked full of great articles, research papers,

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