Internships

Internship Course Description

The Beyond Strength Performance NOVA, LLC (BSP NOVA) fitness coaching internship is a twelve to sixteen-week experiential learning program directed by Todd Bumgardner, MS, CSCS, and Chris Merritt, BS Kinesiology. The program is designed to help exercise science and kinesiology students, interested in pursuing a career as a strength coach or personal trainer, develop the interpersonal, coaching, and program writing skills that accelerate their professional, as well as personal, development.

The program is divided into four modules: coaching, programming, professional expansion, and additional coaching hours. Each module contains a weekly in-service that teaches interns new, immediately applicable skills. (In-service descriptions and schedule included in the internship curriculum.) In-service instruction is combined with 15-25 weekly experiential hours during which interns get to observe the BSP NOVA staff, and get direct coaching experience with BSP NOVA clients.

Why the Beyond Strength Performance NOVA Experience is Different

The BSP NOVA internship isn’t a run of the mill experience—it’s an engaging process that helps those that desire a fruitful fitness industry career to explore their interests while also developing the practical skills that will make them successful trainers and coaches.

Interns have access to Strength Faction—an online coaching program designed and operated by Chris Merritt and Todd Bumgardner. Its purpose is to help fitness coaches improve their coaching and programming skills while also learning how to better structure their work so that they can live better lives. Apart from Strength Faction’s content, which is sixteen weeks of lessons and coaching, interns have access to Strength Faction’s expansive professional network that spans the globe. Members are located across the United States as well as Europe, Africa and Australia. Through Strength Faction’s weekly QnA series, interns will also have the opportunity to directly interact with fitness industry leaders from across the world such as Dr. Mike Roussell, Dan John, and Eric Cressey.

The BSP NOVA internship program is intern-focused—meaning that it’s focused on helping interns grow into better coaches and people, not about extracting value from them, or giving them useless busy work to fill hours. Our goal is to give as much to our interns as possible, by leading them from the front, and creating opportunities for them to learn and express their knowledge and creativity.

This opportunity isn’t purely observational. There’s an orientation period during the first week, but beyond that, interns aren’t expected to sit on the sidelines and watch the coaches work. Quite the opposite is true. Interns are expected to coach and interact with clients daily. This is, of course, done under the supportive influence of the BSP NOVA coaching staff. Interns grow in responsibility as the course progresses while receiving real-time feedback from their advisors.

Each intern will also be assigned a BSP NOVA coach as a mentor. The mentor checks in with their mentee weekly, answers their questions, and helps them stay on track with their BSP NOVA internship curriculum.

How to Apply

Application is simple.  Applicants send a resume and cover letter detailing why she or he wants to intern at BSP NOVA to Todd@beyondstrengthperformance.com. Resumes should contain relevant work and volunteer experience, not a list of every job he or she has ever had.

Beyond Strength Performance NOVA Internship Curriculum

Month 1: Introduction to Beyond Strength Performance and Coaching

Week 1: Observation and Introduction to Coaching at Beyond Strength Performance

1. 15-25 hours observing floor coaching
2. In-service presentation on effective coaching methods (interpersonal relationships, cueing, managing the coaching floor)
3. Learn the warm-up boards
4. Experience Beyond Strength Performance Assessment

Week 2: Interns Begin Coaching

1. Interns begin coaching basic warm-ups/basic exercises
2. 15-25 floor coaching hours, mixed with observation
3. In-service on how to coach and cue the main human movements (hinge, squat, push, pull)
4. Begin their own Beyond Strength Performance Training program

Week 3: Increased Coaching Responsibilities

1. Interns add strength exercises to their coaching responsibilities
2. 15-25 floor coaching hours, mixed with observation
3. In-service on how to coach medicine ball throws and basic jumping exercises

Week 4: Increased Coaching Responsibilities

1. Interns add medicine ball throws and basic jumps to coaching responsibilities
2. 15-25 floor coaching hours, mixed with observation
3. In-service recapping the previous weeks’ lessons

Month 2: Strength and Conditioning Programming

Week 1: Movement Screening and Assessment

1. 15-25 hours floor coaching
2. In-service on Beyond Strength Performance Movement Screen and Assessment (Functional Movement Screen, Body Composition testing on Inbody, Goals and needs consultation)

Week 2: Programming Power, Strength and Assistance Exercises

1. 15-25 hours floor coaching
2. In-service on programming power training, strength training and assistance training

Week 3: Loading Strategies and Conditioning Programming

1. 15-25 hours floor coaching
2. In-service on selecting loading strategies for power training, strength training, assistance training, and conditioning programming

Week 4: Programming culmination

1. 15-25 hours floor coaching
2. Presentation on putting all of the elements of strength and conditioning programming

Month 3: Personal and Professional Expansion

Week 1: Building Personal and Professional Momentum

1. 15-25 hours floor coaching
2. In-service on how to take daily action for personal and professional growth
3. Assignment exercises to help interns get in the practice of daily planning to build personal and professional momentum

Week 2: Brain Dumps and Morning Rituals

1. 15-25 hours floor coaching
2. In-service on how to perform weekly, and daily, brain dumps to prioritize tasks. In-service will also include how to construct morning rituals that boost productivity.
3. Assignment exercises to help interns get in the practice of performing brain dumps and constructing morning rituals.

Week 3: How to Develop Writing/Video Content

1. 15-25 hours floor coaching
2. In-service on the importance of developing consistent informational content and how to do it efficiently and effectively
3. Assignment exercises to help interns efficiently and effectively develop written and video informational content

Week 4: Using This Internship to Develop Your Path

1. 15-25 hours floor coaching
2. In-service that culminates the previous 13 weeks while also helping interns to probe their own interests, abilities, dreams and desires to best use this information to shape the career path that they want
3. Assignment exercises to help interns examine their wants and needs to determine their next career steps