Training mission complete

The value of special training

Today I finished my last training session on my path of becoming a professional coach. It has been an insightful journey for sure! Over the past months, I completed my training with the experts from the Tallinn University and from the Estonian Powerlifting Federation. I will pursue a certification in weightlifting an gym coaching. Not only my background in professional sport is important, the competence can only be gained through continuous personal development and education.

The Estonian sport system is becoming more and more transparent and there is also a great automatic verification option for checking the qualification of a trainer. Hopefully, I will receive my certification by the end of February and then it is possible to follow-up my progress over the years from that system. I will refresh my training annually and apply for certifications on higher levels.

In Estonia, we have professional certification committees that check the applicant’s qualification, organize professional examinations and make decisions on certifying the qualification.

The head of the Foundation of Sports Education and Information, Toomas Tõnise, says that a lot has been done for the credibility of the coaching profession in the last 15 years in Estonia: “We trust doctors and teachers, pilots and ship captains as professionals because we know that people’s lives or health would not be entrusted to self-proclaimed experts who are in fact incompetent. I hope we are beginning to realize that obtaining a profession as a coach is normal; it is a guarantee of safety and proper coaching. If we keep demanding it as athletes, parents, municipal government executives and sport event organizers, if this ‘neighbour watch’ in the best sense of the phrase continues, coaches with no skills or knowledge will have no place in the sport system.” Read more from the post by the Estonian Olympic Committee.