The basic idea is pretty simple. Strength and conditioning coaches currently don’t have their own distinct occupation within the federal government’s Standard Occupational Classification, or SOC, system. The SOC system is how the federal government organizes occupations so it can collect and report information about the American workforce. Right now, strength and conditioning professionals get grouped into broader occupational categories that don’t necessarily represent the education, credentials, experience, or responsibilities that come with being a strength and conditioning coach.

The STRONG Act is an effort to change that. The legislation would direct the Office of Management and Budget to consider creating a specific occupational classification for strength and conditioning coaches during the next revision of the SOC system. One important clarification is that passing the STRONG Act wouldn’t automatically create that classification. It would require the federal government to formally consider it, and if a separate classification isn’t created, the Office of Management and Budget would have to explain its reasoning to Congress.

Now you might be thinking, “Okay, but what does having our own classification actually do for me?” You’re not going to walk into work the next morning with a bigger paycheck because strength coaches have an SOC code. It doesn’t create licensure. It doesn’t change your scope of practice. It doesn’t require an athletic department or professional organization to hire more strength coaches. It doesn’t establish which certification you need to hold. There are a lot of things the STRONG Act doesn’t do, and I think we need to be clear about that.

What it can do is allow strength and conditioning to be accurately measured as its own profession. Think about all the questions we ask when we’re trying to understand the state of our field. How many strength and conditioning coaches are working in the United States? Where are they working? What are they being paid? How quickly is the profession growing? Where are the jobs? What does career progression look like? When strength coaches are buried inside broader occupational categories, getting reliable answers becomes much harder. Recognition within the SOC system gives us an opportunity to develop better workforce data about the people actually doing this work.

That data might not change your Tuesday afternoon lift, but over time it matters. Better information can help universities understand career pathways and prepare students for the profession. It can help researchers study our workforce. It can help professional organizations advocate for coaches using better evidence. It can give employers better information about compensation and workforce trends. It can also help young coaches understand the career they’re entering. If we want to have serious conversations about salaries, staffing, education, professional development, career longevity, and working conditions, it helps to have reliable data showing what the profession actually looks like.

I also think there’s something bigger happening here. Strength and conditioning has spent decades developing into a profession. Coaches today work in collegiate and professional sports, high schools, private facilities, the military, tactical settings, and with first responders and other active populations. Many coaches have undergraduate and graduate degrees, nationally accredited certifications, extensive internships, and years of supervised experience before they’re ever responsible for their own program. We’ve developed professional organizations, continuing education, research journals, conferences, standards, and career pathways. The profession has evolved significantly. Asking the federal occupational system to recognize strength and conditioning as a distinct profession is, in many ways, asking the system to catch up with what’s already happened.

Now that you know what it is and why it matters, here’s my two cents: Recognition comes with responsibility.

If we want strength and conditioning coaches to be recognized as specialized professionals because of our education, credentials, experience, and expertise, then we have to continue behaving like professionals. Having our own occupational classification shouldn’t just be something we point to when we want better recognition or better compensation. It should challenge us to keep raising the standard. That means continuing our education, staying current with research, understanding our scope of practice, collaborating with other members of the health and performance team, mentoring young coaches, and being willing to hold ourselves and each other accountable. We can’t ask people outside our profession to recognize the expertise required to do this job while minimizing the standards required within it.

I’ve been in this profession long enough to see how far it’s come. Strength and conditioning coaches have earned a seat at tables we weren’t always invited to. Our role in athlete development has become more clearly understood, and the profession continues to expand into new environments. That progress didn’t happen because someone handed us credibility. Generations of coaches, researchers, educators, and leaders built it through their work. The STRONG Act may look like a small administrative change involving a federal classification system, but I think it represents another step in that evolution.

So, should the everyday strength coach care about the STRONG Act? I think so, even if nothing about your daily job changes tomorrow. This is about accurately recognizing that strength and conditioning is a profession with its own workforce, expertise, responsibilities, and career path. Better recognition can lead to better data, and better data can help us make better decisions about where the profession goes next. But if we’re asking for that recognition, we should also accept what comes with it. We have an opportunity to continue building a profession that deserves to be recognized for the value it provides. The classification matters, but what we do with that recognition matters even more.