Published on September 2, 2025
Running coaching involves more than building endurance and speed. It requires helping runners stay healthy, strong, and prepared for each session. To do this, you need to understand how the body works, how to prevent injuries, and how to adjust training when challenges arise. Learning about the principles of physical therapy can give you these skills, offering insights that go beyond coaching experience alone.
Whether you’re a PT student considering coaching or planning to add coaching credentials to your PT practice, your clinical training provides unique advantages. Here’s how an internship program in physical therapy can sharpen your abilities as a running coach.
Mastering the Body’s Mechanics
Strong coaching starts with knowing how the body moves. A deeper understanding of anatomy, biomechanics, and the movement patterns that make running efficient allows you to assess a runner’s form with precision. For example, you might notice that an athlete’s hips drop slightly on one side during each stride, which could eventually lead to knee pain. With this knowledge, you can introduce targeted drills to help strengthen and stabilize their hips, correcting the imbalance.
This insight also lets you adapt training for different body types. Not all runners have the same flexibility or muscle activation patterns. Some may need specific exercises to improve ankle mobility for a smoother push-off, while others might benefit from increased hamstring strength for a more powerful stride. By combining your coaching experience with biomechanics knowledge, you can design targeted drills that enhance performance while reducing unnecessary strain.
Recognizing and Preventing Injuries
Even the most skilled runners face setbacks when early warning signs go unnoticed. As a coach, you need to be able to spot these risks before they disrupt training.
One way to sharpen this skill is through exposure to diverse rehabilitation methods. For running coaches pursuing physical therapy education, immersive physical therapy internships in global settings, such as East Africa and South America, can introduce you to varied techniques, cultural recovery practices, and specialized tools. For instance, in places like Kenya, known for elite long-distance runners, you might get to observe joint mobilization in local clinics or recovery protocols shaped by community traditions. These insights can expand your coaching toolkit and improve your understanding of performance and recovery.
Internships often involve injury assessment rotations, where you observe how therapists develop targeted treatment plans based on specific conditions and athletic goals. Working with a runner experiencing plantar fasciitis, for instance, demonstrates how combining calf stretching, intrinsic foot muscle strengthening, and gait modifications facilitates a safe return to training.
With this foundation, you can recommend injury-prevention warm-up protocols, recognize early fatigue patterns that warrant training modifications, and most importantly, know when to refer athletes to qualified healthcare professionals for proper evaluation and treatment.
Building Personalized Training Plans
Every runner is different. Some recover quickly from intense sessions, while others need more time. A physical therapy internship teaches you how to assess an athlete’s mobility, flexibility, and muscular strength. These assessments help you create training plans that match each runner’s capacity and recovery needs.
For example, if an assessment reveals weak glutes in a long-distance runner, you can integrate single-leg strength drills into their plan to improve propulsion and stability. Or, if you’re working with a sprinter who has tight calves, you can include mobility sessions and low-impact conditioning to prevent strain.
You’ll also gain experience in exercise program design, creating exercise programs that address weaknesses, build strength in underused muscles, and improve movement efficiency, all while minimizing the risk of injury.
Enhancing Communication Skills
Explaining technical concepts in simple, practical terms is crucial. During a physical therapy internship, you’ll work with clients who may not know medical language. You’ll learn to make complex information easy to understand and act on.
This skill transfers directly to coaching. You’ll be able to explain why certain drills matter, how small changes in form improve efficiency, and how recovery practices protect long-term performance. For example, instead of telling a runner they have “hip internal rotation limitations,” you might say, “Your hip doesn’t turn inward enough when you run, which can cause your knee to track differently. Here’s an exercise to fix that.”
In physical therapy, patient care is a core focus. So, you’ll get to develop active listening, empathy, and constructive feedback techniques. These qualities build trust and keep athletes committed to their training.
Collaborating With Other Health Professionals
Some athletes you coach may also work with doctors, therapists, or sports medicine specialists. A physical therapy internship teaches you how to exchange information effectively with these professionals, ensuring your role as a coach supports the overall recovery plan.
During your internship, you may shadow sports trainers in rehabilitation facilities, learning how they track progress, adjust conditioning sessions, and communicate updates to the rest of the care team. You might also assist in documenting training modifications or participate in debriefs where each specialist shares insights from their perspective.
By understanding how these collaborations work behind the scenes, you’ll be better prepared to integrate your coaching into a coordinated care approach. This improves results for athletes and builds trust among other professionals.
Boosting Your Credibility as a Coach
The more expertise you can demonstrate, the more confidence athletes will have in your guidance. Completing a physical therapy internship shows that you have trained beyond the standard scope of coaching and are committed to professional growth.
This credibility grows from both the clinical skills you gain and the way you present your experience. You might share examples of working with different types of athletes during your internship, adapting training styles to suit their needs, or applying new techniques learned from physical therapy mentors.
These stories help prospective clients see that you bring a broader perspective to coaching, one that blends athletic performance goals with long-term health priorities.
Final Thoughts
A physical therapy internship can elevate your coaching beyond performance and athletic training, giving you the skills to protect long-term health and adapt to each athlete’s unique needs. From refining body mechanics to working alongside other professionals, the experience shapes how you approach every runner you train.
If you want to stand out in a competitive field, make a lasting difference in your athletes’ progress, and bring new expertise to your coaching, this step is worth taking. The knowledge you gain will help your runners cross their finish lines with strength and resilience.