February 18th, 2025
The strength and conditioning profession has been fulfilling and has also provided me with opportunities to learn, travel, network, and experience some really neat things (e.g., working with Les Spellman and 4 of the top 10 draft picks in the 2022 NFL combine, to working in the NBA, to currently working with the legendary Dr. Andrew C. Fy in the Jayhawk Athletic Performance Laboratory). From being a middle school athlete and remembering the first time under a barbell to eventually going on to play collegiate football and doing P90X during the off-season of my freshman year, to transitioning out of sport and into the “real world” and finding my why, which has led to me becoming a strength and conditioning coach, professor, and sport scientist. This has truly been a full circle moment and as I reflect on these experiences, I wanted to share about them and ways that we can continue to bridge gaps in our profession in order to elevate our field.
Strength and Conditioning – As sports become more competitive, athletes can only train and compete so much. As always, there is a need for educated individuals to help athletes physically prepare for the demands of sport. As such, the strength and conditioning profession (sometimes confused with training or athletic training) is continuing to grow, and practitioners impact/influence are continuing to increase. This is a great sign for those currently in the field and for those yet to join us. Additionally, as technology advances the S&C professional needs to be savvy enough to leverage it to support decision-making. This is one of the current gaps in the field but can be bridged by being open to the work that others have done and are doing. We don’t have to become academics, but it helps establish legitimacy to your approach if you have scientific evidence to support it. Sure, you may not always “need” it but if it is available why not utilize it. This is where the professionally trained sport scientist or even a professor in exercise physiology and/or strength and conditioning can assist or collaborate with you. Their full-time job or many of their interests are likely centered around how the human body functions during exercise, what types of technology can be used to monitor performance and recovery, how reliable that technology is, and how it can benefit you and your athletes. Over the years, I have had some great experiences on both ends of the spectrum. It saves time, progresses the field, and sets a great example for the future. However, as we all know, relationships are everything and although we periodize, program, and coach, deep down we’re in the people business. So, working towards developing meaningful relationships should always be the key for each profession (Figure here for my model of collaboration in sport performance).
My official S&C journey began as an undergraduate student at Midland University under Dr. Mark Snow and I have learned a lot sense then, but have never forgot my first “big” opportunity. At the time, I was willing to help in any way that I could to gain experience (as most of us do) and that opportunity came in the form of assisting with FMS assessments with the university’s spirit team. You read that right, cheer and dance. As a former collegiate football player, this was not the first S&C experience that I imagined, but I was grateful for the opportunity and did the best that I could. Although my role was by no means impactful (I didn’t think it was at least), the experience was, and it completely transformed my perspective on the field and how it aligned with several of my core values. That experience of course led to many others within a short frame of time. From founding the Midland University Powerlifting team, to later working at the Department of Wellness at OSU and assisting with employee fitness programs to eventually progressing to tactical strength and conditioning, assisting university teams with research and sport science, going out to intern with NCAA Division-I and professional teams as well as securing paid positions and contracts to support athletes on their journey to athletic success. To now, directing and coordinating strength and conditioning programs for pros to peewees. However, this career progression and ultimately transformed perspective would not have been possible without Dr. Snow. He took the time to connect with me, understand my background and interests, teach me about strength and conditioning beyond the textbook, and to get me involved with one of our university’s only championship caliber teams at the time. This experience impacted me so that it has remained in the front of my mind when I interact with students and has led me to create a pathway for developing future strength coaches.
For those working in S&C currently, our future depends on the next generation. It is on us to cultivate relationships with upcoming S&C professionals and to teach, guide, and involve them. With this also comes advocating for them and setting a great example of course.
Professorship – Becoming a professor was not in the initial plans for me, but I have truly enjoyed the experience. As a current strength and conditioning coach and sport scientist I can leverage my experiences to educate students and prepare them for the profession. What better way to give back? For those interested, professors are typically evaluated in three areas; 1.) Teaching – How well do you teach? Are you constantly working towards developing your teaching style? Are students able to retain and apply knowledge from your courses? Do you mentor students? 2.) Scholarly activity (otherwise known as research) – Are you conducting any scientific research? If so, are you either presenting or publishing your findings? Are you working towards securing funds to support your research and to become self-sustainable? 3.) Service – Are you serving your department, college, university, and community? Are you serving at the regional and national level? How about at the international level? These are very general forms of evaluation, but there is a lot that goes along with professing your knowledge for a giving topic area.
My current role in academia has been a winding road that unofficially began with my parents making sure that my homework was done before going out to ride bikes with friends or heading off to practice. They always emphasized the importance of education. However, it “officially” began with an opportunity to work as a graduate assistant within Oklahoma State University’s Division of Institutional Diversity. This towards the end of my masters degree and to be honest, the position itself did not 100% align with my interests in S&C at the time (obviously), but as a first-generation college graduate, I could clearly see the impact these programs had on the lives of many students. We essentially provided information related to academics, professional development, financial management, and served as a resource center through federally funded programs. Through this experience and the opportunity to pursue a PhD as a graduate teaching/research associate, my perspective was once again transformed on the possibilities of the S&C profession. As I progressed through my PhD program, I had the opportunity to assist with the instruction of courses like exercise physiology, medical terminology, and methods of strength and conditioning of course. I also had opportunities to involve a few of our undergraduate students in research projects as well as help them start the strength and conditioning club. This is not necessarily the norm, but goes to show the impact educators can have, and the work that goes on beyond the classroom.
Those experiences led me to the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 2022 where I landed a job as a tenure track Assistant Professor. My primary responsibilities were to teach undergraduate and graduate level courses, direct our long-term athlete development program, and to mentor students. I enjoyed it and am so thankful for the Dept. of Kinesiology and Sport Sciences for giving me that opportunity. Of course, during that time my background and interests aligned well not only with our University’s strength and conditioning program, but also with a few local high schools. Through collaboration, we were able to bridge the gap. Together, we were able to provide sport science support to our football, men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, women’s soccer, and women’s golf programs. This began as a conversation with the coaching staffs, director of sports medicine, and strength and conditioning staff before I even got to town. I basically pitched my vision for what sport science could be there, how we could work together, and my willingness to work towards supporting them and their athletes. It went well for all of us.
From several all-conference selections, all-Americans, and conference championship teams to presentations and publications to help advance our understanding of the modern-day athlete, this is the potential that we have when we work as a united front. For professors/academics, it is not always all about research, presentations, and publications. Start by serving. Relationships take time. Earning trust takes time. Athletics is a different world and there are a lot of resources that go into developing athletes, coaches need to be able to trust you. Even if you are interested in something very complex and invasive, my recommendation would be to start small and with something non-invasive that benefits the athlete, team, and coaching staff. We also have access to many more resources than we realize. Engage your students, train them up, and involve them in the research/data collection process. Apply for those equipment grants and be willing to stop by the weight room to give short presentations that teams or athletes would be interested in. Also, the logistics of collegiate athletics is fluid (to say the least) so we have to be adaptable or at the very least proactive and innovative on our end for how we design studies especially during competitive periods. There are so many opportunities to support athletes and advance our field, but it all begins with building relationships, this is the gap.
Sport Science – The term “sport science” has become a buzzword as of late. But there is a rich history of scientists of sport that predates many of us reading this (probably). Beginning with Matveyev, Verkoshansky, Zatsiorsky, and Bondarchuk, to the legends (IMO) of the field that include Kraemer, Stone, Garhammer, Sands, and Fry, to the most recent group which includes Haff, Newton, Comfort, Bishop, Cabarkapa. My entry into the field came about by a chance opportunity to support the Oklahoma State University’s women’s soccer team. Prior to that, I always had questions in mind related to athletic performance during high stress periods (e.g., two-a-days), optimal repetition volumes for powerlifters, tapering for performance, etc. I just never had the training or resources to answer them. However, about mid-way through my PhD I was offered the opportunity of a lifetime by Coach Mallory Fowlkes. The team had a ton of data from GPS and heart monitors (we’re talking years worth) and they needed some help analyzing it. Fresh out of my third statistical analysis course of my graduate studies I knew that I was the man for the job. Although I did not know very much about soccer at the time, I did a deep dive into the literature, podcasts, and videos about soccer. The analysis turned out great, was easy to translate, helped answer a few questions, and most of all helped the team.
My journey into the field of sport science began at OSU and later led me to positions with the Washington State University football team, Oklahoma City Thunder, Spellman Performance, University of Nebraska at Kearney, and now at the University of Kansas within the Jayhawk Athletic Performance Laboratory, a member of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance. Although each role was unique, most of them consisted of a fair amount of data cleaning, analysis, interpretation, and visualization. For the future sport scientist, here is my recommendation: become very familiar and comfortable with training athletes. Surprising, I’m sure, but from experience it can become difficult to make suggestions purely based on findings from data. Sometimes, oftentimes, experience and intuition tells a very different story. Understanding annual training plans, demands of the sport, athlete needs, periodization and program design, practice structure, coaching and training philosophies, short-long-term athlete development, recovery and nutrition performance, schedule congestion, biorhythms and the diurnal clock, overreaching, overtraining, and allostatic loads, as well as how to get people strong, powerful, and fast, will provide you with the perspective needed to support your interpretation of the data. I’m sure that this is not the advice that you were expecting and you may have been hoping that I mentioned the best type of dashboard, regression model, or something similar, but this is what has served me well.
Sport science is a growing field and I am excited to see how it expands as a profession. There are already opportunities for employment at the Olympic, professional, and collegiate levels. Many of these roles differ with some interfacing directly with team as a coach-scientist (similar to the original sport scientist) to others being based out of academic departments (similar to my current role) and others yet as independent companies that provide contractual services. Based on this range of roles and responsibilities, some sport scientist may be faced with the challenge of implementing evidence-based approaches or approaches that are practical for their setting. There is no one size fits all solution from my perspective, but I believe that there is always an opportunity to collaborate with others who have similar interests and are willing to help. This could be as simple as connecting with professors in your exercise science department to see how they can assist and/or if they have students interested in helping with technology implementation, recording and inputting data, etc. Also, many business or computer science departments have experienced professionals in them that have been trained to develop software, dashboards, and to analyze data, the opportunities are abound. Of course, being able to communicate with the coaching staff to understand what they are interested in as well as to share about the data you are collecting, trends, etc. will always go a long way.
Leave a Reply