Athletic trainers specialize in preventing, caring for, evaluating, managing, and rehabilitating injury and illness in athletic and physically active populations. Athletic trainers work as part of a collaborative inter-professional health care team, including physicians and other health care professionals.
Coaches provide instruction to athletes on correct techniques that are required to play a certain sport as well as guide an athlete through their athletic career. They inform and critique athlete performance through their knowledge of the sport in addition to providing emotional support and guidance to their athletes.
Exercise physiologists specialize in increasing or maintaining personal health through analyzing a patient’s physical health and developing personalized exercise prescriptions. They use stress testing and other evaluation tools to gather data about their patient’s health in order to create an exercise prescriptions to fit the patient’s health care needs and athletic performance goals.
Fitness/ Personal Trainers work with groups or individual clients to help clients achieve personal fitness goals through exercise. Fitness instructors lead group workouts that include a wide range of activities (yoga, Pilates, kickboxing) to help clients achieve or maintain their fitness goals. Personal trainers work one-on-one with clients to create individual training plans that target client specific fitness goals (losing weight, gaining muscle mass, maintaining cardiovascular health).
A sports dietitian/nutritionist counsels and educates teams or individual athletes about the impact of nutrition on their athletic performance and overall health. They create and monitor customized programs that help their clients achieve their overall health goals which includes nutrition plans that are based on fitness goals.
Sports psychologists use their psychology skills to help athletes excel in their sport by focusing on the athlete’s overall wellness, social impacts that the sport has on the athlete, and systematic issues in the sports organization. Sports psychologists usually work with athletes on performance, conflict resolution, coping, skills, motivation, recovery, and team building.
Strength and conditioning specialists are professionals who apply scientific knowledge to train athletes for the primary goal of improving athletic performance. They conduct sport-specific testing sessions, design and implement safe and effective strength training and conditioning programs and provide guidance regarding nutrition and injury prevention.
HSHP Dean's Office
320 Smiddy Hall
8:00 am - 5:00 pm, Monday - Friday