Blog - 3 Starting to settle in now

 I remember leaving home to start University about this time a year ago. I had so many conflicting thoughts… What if I don’t like it? What if I don’t find what I’m looking for? I don’t really need a degree for what I want. They were mostly negative thoughts.

My first week in Sheffield was hard. I really missed home, friends and family. I hadn’t found anything that I wanted to do and my course lectures weren’t going well. ‘What are you doing here!?’ I told myself. Very cliché I know, but it’s truly how I felt.

Then one day I just woke up, suddenly and rather unexpectedly filled with an unrivalled motivation to succeed. I realised I had been sitting on my arse the last couple of weeks, opportunities weren’t going to be given to me on a silver platter – I had to go out and get them. I wrote two emails back to back. One asking for a job at Hallam Active, the other asking for a place on the strength and conditioning internship program. A few hours and emails later I had a job and an internship. I don’t think I will ever forget the feeling I had when both those emails came back to me. I felt like everything I had done within the last several years had been leading up to this moment. Coaching young kids to surf on summer camp, taking expensive fitness certificate courses, working 14 hour days as a personal trainer trying to fit all my clients in, and now, I had my first job in strength and conditioning. A goal I had set myself 4 years ago.

I also felt extremely lucky, I had just been given two amazing opportunities. I was going to make sure I didn’t waste them.

 Putting hours into fitness is something I have never struggled with. I remember going through my GCSE’s in school, I had to set myself a page number in my revision book I needed to get to before I could go to the gym.

 I’m telling you this story because this week at USF was like getting my internship at Hallam. Anyone who coaches athletes, especially teams, knows that forming a relationship is essential for your success as a coach and your team’s success as a group of athletes. If you don’t have a relationship with your athletes it’s very hard to get them to work. It’s also very hard for them to believe you’re actually there to help them. I didn’t have a relationship with anyone when I arrived here. I’ve certainly learned a lot, but for the most part I’ve been sitting back taking notes for two weeks.

Over the course of this week I’ve been getting far more involved. I’ve gone from taking warm ups and cleaning equipment to taking individual athletes through complete sessions, monitoring whole team workouts, designing programs and independently taking force plate data. I’ve starting working closely with athletes across all sports and developed a relationship with them. I am no longer the ghost in the room with a notepad.

 

On a sporting note, women’s soccer won both games they played on the weekend. A great end to a great week. They’ve been training hard and deserve every moment of success that comes their way. Women’s basketball had the week off as they’ve been back longer than any other team. They will return on Monday, well rested, both mentally and physically ready for their final conditioning tests before the season starts. Volleyball have been going hard as they also have the first game of the season next weekend. Baseball are the only team that have a while until the start of their season. However, don’t think for a second that means the pressure is off. Over the course of the week the final few individuals filtered in from their summer break. They’ve got some exciting times ahead with a conditioning test next week and the start of their 5:15am lifts a few weeks after that.

 

Out of the weight room I finally made it to The Golden Gate Bridge, after three weeks in San Francisco that’s pretty pathetic but I’ll take it. I spent Saturday on a long bike ride exploring the beautiful beach town of Sausalito. Sunday, a group of us went down to Palo Alto; the area surrounding Stanford campus. The weather was much nicer than in the city and we spent the day hanging around the pool.

 

I’ll say it again this was the best week so far and I’m confident that next week will be better than this one! The only negative is that this weekend marks the exact half way point of my time here. Six weeks really does fly by.

 

It’s been my dream from a very young age to own my own strength and conditioning gym in USA. This internship brings me one step closer to achieving that dream. I think back to that first week in Sheffield when I was filled with self-doubt. If I knew then where I would be today, I wouldn’t have dared question myself. I think about the internal struggle I had with myself, and how I made it through that. It reminds me what motivation feels like. I promised myself I would never again think like that. I would never again doubt myself of being able to achieve that things that I dream of. And this trip confirms that.

Blog 2 - Life as an S&C Coach

Monday morning of week two. The alarm on my phone wakes me up at 5:15am. A time I have gotten used to waking up at. I’m out the house and at USF for a 6:15am, ready for the basketball girls to come in at 6:30am and put the work in. They won the East Coast Conference last year, which is a big deal. Every girl has learnt to feed off the energy and dedication of the players on the team who want to go pro after college. When they have a good day and are all motivated, they really come together and produce some amazing results. Just to be in the gym with them at the same time gets me fired up too!

However, when a few girls are having a bad day, the whole team pays. Win as a team and lose as a team. An ideal that is strongly instilled here at USF is holding players accountable. If someone isn’t making their conditioning times, you can bet the coach is going to make it known to the team that they are struggling. Their going to be held accountable. I sometimes find it uncomfortable to watch coming from a fitness background where people were encouraged to take part no matter what their ability, slowly building their confidence through months of classes. Now in a world of semi-professional sport, it’s a different story. Times are there to be made. If there not being made, we will run it until they are made. That morning we had 10x down back half backs. The girls had to run the length of the court and back, then to the half way line and back in 17 seconds. We ended up running over 25.

Accountability works both ways as when a player does well, the coaches make sure everyone knows how well they did. USF Women’s basketball has some of the most motivational and inspiring coaches I have ever met, but their words of wisdom and motivational speeches can quickly become harsh warnings of things to come if the girls don’t continue to put the work in, suddenly bringing them back down to earth to realise ‘even though we just had a great session, we’ve still got a championship title to defend’.

Women’s soccer has their first scrimmage of the season on Friday. It’s a chance for the coaches to really see where the team is and how they play together. It’s also a great opportunity for the girls to see how the new team mates play under pressure, it’s the closest thing to a real game they are going to get. With the scrimmage in the near future the training didn’t back off and the girls still brought their A game to every session in the weight room.

I’ve been working closely with a group of freshmen and injured athletes. Unfortunately, we can’t completely reduce the risk of injury in the S&C suite and mistakes do happen. One of the girls has an ACL tear, the other has two, one on each leg! We’ve been working alongside the sports medicine department, sports physiotherapist and an external rehab centre to get these girls back in shape for the season and get them back on the field as soon as possible. It’s always hard as an athlete, to see your teammates put everything they’ve got into a training session and all you can do is watch from the side lines. But I’m impressed at how the girls are dealing with their participation being limited, they continue to motivate the rest of the team from the side lines and know that it wont be long before they are out there with them once again.

 As the week goes on, all teams continue to work hard towards the fast approaching start of the school semester. The baseball pitchers keep a smile on Brian and I’s face with their endless trash talk and amazing work ethic. “let’s do one more” or “He was too slow, we all have to go again” are some of the things said by the guys almost every training session. Not by Brain or me, by them. They really push themselves making our work easy. We can just focus on making them move correctly and become better, without having to worry about how to motivate them. When you find group like that as a coach, it’s really not ‘work’, it’s just fun.

Friday evening most of the athletic staff meet at the soccer field at 7pm to watch the girls under the heavy fog of San Francisco. For many of them it’s not only the first time they would have played together as a team, but the first time they’ve all played on the new pitch. A beautiful artificial grass pitch was installed just weeks before I arrived here. From what the girls said afterwards they really like the way it feels under foot and the speed of the game is greatly improved as the ball isn’t slowed by the wet grass. Everyone left happy as the girls walked away with a 2 – 0 win.

Anyone in strength and conditioning knows that ‘days off’ are a distant, few and far between. So in true S&C fashion I worked everyday this week coming in on Saturday and Sunday. It didn’t stop me popping down the the beach to get my toes sandy and I managed to have another fantastic weekend in SF. I only hope the weather is a little better next week. I thought California was sunny.

Dan Cornelius at USFCA

After years of dreaming, waiting for and working towards getting to America, I’m here. It’s hard to explain why I have such an obsession with USA. Think back to an experience you had that was so good and made you think; I want to do ‘that’ for the rest of my life.

For me that experience was a 2010 surf trip to the south of France. I remember thinking how amazing the lifestyle was. Surfing all day, eating great food, staying healthy and having a great time doing it. I wanted to be a better surfer so focused on becoming a fitter surfer, and that’s where my passion for health and fitness started. If I wanted to do one thing for the rest of my life it was to help other people realise the importance of fitness like I had.

So I knew what I wanted to do, but didn’t know where I wanted to do it. Until a trip 3 years later. It was a ski trip to USA, we drove through San Francisco and I just remember thinking ‘this is the place’.

Fast forward to now and I’m on a Strength and Conditioning internship at San Francisco University. The first visit I pay to the University (USF) is in shorts and a t-shirt – my work uniform. I remember stepping through the doors of the building ill be based for the next several weeks, the War Memorial Gymnasium. In between the sheets of plastic and workmen finishing off the summers restoration I see the colours green and yellow, pictures of athletes on the walls and names from floor to ceiling of people and teams who have broken records or won medals.

I walk past painters and more workmen on the paper covered floor to the basement underneath the basketball court. The excitement building inside me as I’m about to see the space ill be working. I hear the gym before I see it. The sound of Country rock music and clang of barbells hitting the floor. I turn the corner and through a set of glass double doors is a long room, power racks fill one side of the room stacked either side with weights. On the other side, enough dumbbells for every student on campus, jump boxes, foam rollers and benches. It’s perfect. I can’t help but smile to myself for a second. I’ve actually made it! I am introduced to Brian, one of the strength coaches at USF whom I will be working with and he gives me a tour of the amazing facility. Physiotherapy rooms, massage beds, conference rooms, athlete cinemas and fridges continually filled with organic chocolate milk and peanut butter but to name a few of the amenities available to the athletes.

Great facilities mean nothing without great people to fill them. It’s 3 weeks before the school semester starts and the athletic department already has the teams up and running. Women’s Basketball, women’s soccer, volleyball and baseball are a few teams that are putting the work in early and back before the start of school to train. Working alongside all the teams mentioned I get to see first hand the effort the athletes are putting in, the way the coaches work on developing the team for the soon approaching season and how it’s all coordinated between the members of staff.

It’s pre-season training for most of the teams here so volume is through the roof, it’s not uncommon for a team to have two sessions a day plus practice. All sessions are mandatory for ALL team members, injured or not, everyone is there.

The women’s basketball team are at a crucial stage right now as their season is one of the first to start and the coaches are wasting no time whipping the girls into shape with an intense training regime. A normal day would start with a 6:30am conditioning session at the court or soccer field. About an hour after that finishes their all in the weight room lifting heavy, going fast and getting after it. Followed by massage, physiotherapy and food. I don’t attend their basketball practise sessions but I assume they are all doing practise at least 3 times a week. A similar routine is normal for women’s soccer, a team whose season is also starting before school starts.

My first week I have been making a lot of notes on everything from coaching cues, new exercises and programming to nutritional advice, workout templates and names! – it’s always important to know the names of everyone your coaching.

I was shocked at how present the ‘support system’ for athletes was. The women’s basketball team have Brian – the strength coach, all four basketball coaches, a medic, movement coach and me all present at their conditioning sessions. They really have everything at their disposal and all the focus is on getting stronger, faster, better. If they had a hard session in the gym and they want a sports massage, it’s right there ready for them. If they didn’t have a good breakfast and want some nutritional advice, they have a nutritionist waiting and ready to go. I think it’s incredible the amount of resources available to the athletes and rightly so, with sport being such a huge part of university life in the USA offering full athletic scholarships to the best, it’s important that anyone who dedicates this much time to their sport or team, feels taken care of.

In summary, my first week at USF has been an eye opener to what is possible at collegiate level sport, a new standard of commitment and dedication on both the athletes and coaches part, and a steep learning curve for me trying to adjust to new athletes, new programs and new opportunities. It’s been very exciting and I really can’t wait for the start of school in a few weeks when things really start to pick up and teams start playing games.