Career Chat: What it means to work in sports medicine
Because there are a multitude of occupations in this field, the responsibilities are distinct for each. Examples of the jobs falling under the category of clinical roles are physicians or physical therapists, performance roles are athletic trainers or personal trainers and support roles are nutritionists or psychologists. However, they all have one thing in common: they care about the health or wellness of individuals on their exercise journey and want to help in their specific way.
Amalya Tovmasyan is certified in many of these careers. Her main concentration is personal training, but she is also a nutrition coach, bodybuilding coach and balance training coach.
“I basically help train people,” Tovmasyan said. “I make sure I understand where they’re at as far as their body, their health and their goals. From there, I create a plan. I spend two, three, four and sometimes five hours a week with each client. Most people want someone to hold them accountable.”
Tovmasyan’s preference is to be self-employed and has over 25 clients.
“I’ll start with my first [personal training] session at 7 a.m., and I have back-to-back clients who come into the gym where I train,” Tovmasyan said. “Each hour, I have a different client, and with each client, they have a specific thing that we’re working on.”
In a digital age, there is an abundance of instruction and advice at people’s fingertips. Though professionals can use online resources to stay up to date with medical studies regarding fitness, often a large part of their job is combating misinformation.
“I saw something online that said, ‘If you do this for the next 30 days, your entire body composition will change,’” Tovmasyan said. “That is like the most incorrect information out there. What I try to do is help people unlearn that, using my knowledge and my expertise to teach them the correct way.”
The educational requirements to work in sports medicine can be a deciding factor in the type of career an individual wants to pursue.
For instance, if someone wants to become a sports cardiologist, that is going to be one of the longest pathways (around 15 years), as it is a specialty in medicine. For someone who may not be able or want to go through a long schooling process, training online to become a certified strength and conditioning coach may be better suited for them.
Something in between would be an athletic trainer like Oak Park High School’s very own Brenda Pasqua, which would require aspects such as obtaining a master’s degree and state licensure.
Before Tovmasyan began her journey in sports medicine, she attended college to study journalism and communication while working in retail management.
“I was in that job for close to 20 years, but I was always into fitness and exercise,” Tovmasyan said. “[It was] something I saw growing up with my uncle [boxing], and then my brother was super into exercise and bodybuilding. So I started doing that on my own and enjoying it.”
Her switch into sports medicine was considered risky at the time, but ended up being worth it.
“At some point in my early 30s, I started to think about doing [personal training] professionally,” Tovmasyan said. “I talked to everyone around me about fitness all the time. I started to think to myself, ‘What if I did this for a living and talked to people who want to hear about it instead of annoying my friends and family? What if I took that experience [as a manager] and my love for fitness to work for myself?’”
Once Tovmasyan received her personal training certification from the National Academy of Sports Medicine, she started applying for more in an attempt to learn all aspects of fitness and stay updated on the knowledge of the human body. She’s currently working on acquiring her certification to be a wellness coach. Some of the programs and tests for certifications were completed online at home, whereas others had in-person components.
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