A couple of weeks ago I spent a solid four days at Eastern Washington University with Head Strength & Conditioning Coach Nate Brookreson and his staff. Some of my time was spent providing soft tissue therapy to a few of the athletes and some of my time was spent watching workouts and watching Nate “coach it up”.
I love seeing coaches work in environments like this where you have a huge number of athletes and limited coaching personnel. This sort of stuff can present a host of problems and be a complete nightmare if the coach is not well organized and very specific about what needs to get done. Nate and his staff do a great job trying to make sure that they meet each athlete’s individual needs.
One of the things that I really enjoyed about Nate’s program was the continued emphasis on the basics. Coaches often get very enamored by high level exercises, increasing the weight on the bar (despite large breakdowns in technique), and cutting edge progression. But Nate’s program is centered on doing the basics very, very, well.
Over the four days I got to see football and women’s volleyball train. The first thing I like that Nate does is separate the freshman from the rest of the team. The “veterans” have a different training program as they have been there longer, their technique is more refined, and they “know the drill” when it comes to being in the weight room. The freshmen are hammered with a good dose of the basics. Things like goblet squats, RDLs, 1-leg RDLs, push ups, and rows. This was awesome to see when watching volleyball train because you could see the progressions right there in the weight room. On one side of the room you had girls that were learning how to train and on the other side of the room you had girls doing power cleans and front squats with great technique. You could see the steps that Nate takes to bring the girls to the higher level right there in front of your eyes.
Football was a little bit different in that the freshmen were training in the gym by themselves, not with the upper classmen (who trained at a different time). Again, the freshman were given a good dose of the basic lifts – even if the athlete came from a high school program where they lifted frequently, Nate makes sure that they are doing things the proper way before more intense loading. In a sport like football where strength coaches are so quick to get their athletes under the bar and start loading them up, it was nice to see a coach take some time out and ensure that technique was appropriate before allowing the athlete to perform a more advanced progression of the lift (e.g. learning to goblet squat before they front squat or back squat). I think most strength coaches feel like they only have a limited amount of time with the athlete so they need to get them under the bar right away. In college setting I just don’t see how this can be though. You have at least four years with the athlete (and five years with a number of them) and many of the freshman redshirt their first year, giving you plenty of time to develop their exercise technique, strength, and fitness level. There is no need to rush.
Another thing that I thought was really great was that within the freshman group there was a further subdivision of guys that may have come to the program with injuries from high school, guys coming back from surgeries, or guys with pain. Those guys were pulled out of the larger group and placed into a smaller group where one of Nate’s staff worked with them on more remedial exercises to ensure that further damage was not done, appropriate healing was going to take place, and the athletes were maintaining their fitness level and getting ready to eventually go back into the normal practice environment.
I really enjoyed my time at Eastern Washington. It was great to see a staff that puts so much effort into the care of their athletes and you can tell that many of the athletes know they are getting something special in their strength & conditioning program that some of their friends at other DI universities might not be getting. Great job by Nate Brookreson and his staff!