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.