Faith Brown | The Evolving Role of a Strength Coach

Expectations for strength and conditioning coaches now extend far beyond the weight room. Athletes and sport coaches demand better data, deeper insight, and stronger performance. Faith Brown, Associate Director of Strength and Conditioning at George Mason University, supports women’s basketball and volleyball while collaborating with the Patriot Performance Lab. Brown describes balancing teams, testing, and athlete monitoring as a “circus act.” At the heart of her coaching is one goal: be the coach she wishes she had as a college track athlete. She demonstrates ways strength and conditioning coaches can contribute as scientists, creating impact and value outside the weight room walls. Brown shares how GPS, heart rate monitoring, and force plates support workload monitoring. However, she believes that technology should only be used when it answers a real question. Learn how to turn data into better training decisions, translate sport science so sport coaches buy in, and reach out to other coaches to refine your program.

Connect with Faith on Instagram: @faithsabrown, LinkedIn: @faith-brown, or by email: fbrown20@gmu.edu | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs and LinkedIn: @ericmcmahoncscs

From the Episode: Explore NSCA’s Essentials of Sport Science, a foundational text defining the field and the role of sport scientists in high-performance environments. It also supports preparation for the Certified Performance and Sport Scientist® (CPSS®) certification exam.

“We have a lot of interns that come through the weight room. And 85% of them aren't going to continue in strength conditioning especially, or maybe collegiate strength and conditioning, but a part of them doing that internship is figuring out this is not what I want to do. So what else is left out there that maybe I want to explore?” 7:50

“I think it's just being a two-way street with talking to coaches and learning from them about the sport and what they want to see.” 14:32

“The biggest thing when you're working with the new sport is just get out there, watch a sport, talk to the coaches, talk to the athletes, learn as much as you can about it.” 15:30

“For me, I went into student conditioning, obviously, because I loved it. I had a passion for it. But I think also being able to be what I didn't have when I was in college, I didn't have a conditioning coach and me and my friends, still, best friends with two of the girls I ran track with. And they always they're like, face, like all this stuff you all do is like, so cool.” 36:00

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Welcome to the NSCA Coaching Podcast season nine, episode 21. Yeah, it's just a high energy, exciting area to be in. So like when I was interning at, you know, physical therapy clinics and things like that, it was just so dull and boring. And being an athlete, you're just used to that. Like that, a certain level of fitness. And I think that's what the weight room gives of me.

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And I think for me, I've, I went into student conditioning, obviously, because I loved it and had a passion for it. But I think also being able to be what I didn't have when I was in college, I didn't have a conditioning coach and me and my friends, I'm still best friends with two of the girls I ran track with and they always they're like faith, like all the stuff you all to do is like, so cool.

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Like, we would have been so much better if we would have had access to that, if we would have known this, if you were known that. And I'm like, yeah, like 100%. So I think if I would have had what I am, I would have been so much better as an athlete. And I think it would have really inspired me.

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So I just tried to kind of be that person for my athletes.

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This is the NSCAs coaching podcast, where we talked to strength and conditioning coaches about what you really need to know, but probably didn't learn in school. There's strength and conditioning, and then there's everything else. This is the NSCA coaching podcast. I'm Eric McMahon, NSCAs, coaching and sport science program manager on season nine. We've talked a lot about colleges and universities.

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There's a lot going on in that space around the strength and conditioning profession, and this area continues to evolve and specialize. Today, we're joined by doctor Faith Brown at George Mason University in the DC area. She's the associate director of strength and conditioning and works with women's basketball and volleyball coach. Welcome. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

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Yeah, we ran into each other. Got to talking. Next thing you know, you're on the podcast. That's how it works. How's everything going? Yeah, it's going good. I mean, I think that just talks about kind of highlights the power of like networking and going up and talking to people like I've been at so many of the NSCA conferences, and I know who you are, but I've never actually like, you know, went up and spoke to you.

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And then, you know, I went and sat in that, CPSS talk and yeah, I was like, I want to touch base with him. And yeah, here we are. Yeah, I appreciate that. And it's something that we aim for at the NSCA is getting out and connecting with as many coaches and professionals as possible. But we want to hear your story.

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How did you get into the strength and conditioning profession? I saw you were a track athlete in college. Yeah. So I ran track in college and I was at, D2 University, Shaw University, which is an HBCU in Raleigh, North Carolina. And at that time we didn't have a strength conditioning coach. Football had one. But track, our track coach would write up our lives and we would kind of do alone.

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Like, you know, no one was really keeping track of how often we did them. I always like lifting, though, so I would I would probably be in the way you were probably like once or twice a week, but we didn't have the knowledge. Nobody really had the knowledge of, you know, what we were doing. So we would, you know, squats, deadlifts, pull ups, bench press and then, you know, track.

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We always want to do a bunch of abs so, you know, like, all right, 500 abs in the day. And you know that was the extent of our lives. And then after I graduated from Shaw I went to VCU, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, and I was training at a CrossFit gym at the time. And I connected with this guy who was talking to me about VCU strength and conditioning department.

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He was like, yeah, you should like, try interning there. Like he's like, I think you really like it. And I started looking it up and, you know, I went on the website and applied for the internship and, you know, went on the interview, got the internship, and then at the end of the first week, I just fell in love with it.

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I was like, this is what I want to do. Because prior to that, I thought, I want to do physical therapy. And I did a thousand clinical hours throughout my undergrad in different areas geriatric, occupational therapy, physical therapy, personal training because we just had to, you know, touch every aspect. But we never had strength conditioning as one of those options, I think because, you know, it's like a newer, newer field.

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And our coordinator at the time was older, and I just don't think he had the knowledge of it. So I fell in love with it. And then at the end of that first week, I was driving down to my mom's and I actually got into a car accident and I broke my femur, broke my, broke my leg. And so I couldn't continue with the internship.

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And I was able to, you know, rehab went through that whole process, went back to school. This was in the summer. So I went back to school for my second year of grad school in August and still was rehab and still was on like crutches, canes. So I couldn't really like intern. So then the following January I reapplied for the internship, was able to redo the internship and then, you know, continue on from there.

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So once I graduated from VCU, I got my CSCS while I was in grad school. So I had my CSCS, and then I was also working, like a hybrid mix of physical therapy, strength conditioning type facility. I was doing that part time. And then, Jeff Garrido, who was the internship coordinator, who I was in GA under at VCU, he was sending me different job postings for a part time internship full time.

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And so he sent me one for Georgetown University, and I was applying to so many different ones. I ended up, applying to that one and then being able to get that opportunity. So I moved up to DC area for that Georgetown opportunity. And it was it was a great opportunity. I learned a ton. And as a result of that, I ended up also being contracted out to work at a high school, the Potomac School in McLean, Virginia.

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And that was a good opportunity. I had a whole high school to myself, so I was a head strength coach. I had a lot of responsibilities there. And then at the end of that, I was like, I need something full time. Like this part time. You know, I got my masters, I got my CSCS at other certifications.

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So I was applying to different universities, and I saw a posting for George Mason pop up. So I applied to that and I did the interview, and I honestly did not think I did well in the interview at all. I just the interview ended up just being kind of weird. They had like an itinerary, and at the end of the itinerary, I was supposed to have a lunch with, the, like, my boss's boss.

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And then my boss was supposed to have, like, a little three day lunch, and he just kind of sent me on my way, shook my head, was like, all right, great. Nice meeting you. Whatever. And I went on about my way and I was like, okay, so I must have not done well in that because they didn't even invite me to lunch.

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But either way, I ended up getting the call that they wanted me for the job. So I got the job, and I have been here ever since. So yeah, that's kind of how I got into it. It's and I think everybody's path is different. You know, my path was a little bit off because I got my master's while I was kind of figuring out where most people kind of figured out maybe an undergrad, and then they go, like the undergrad GA, you know, part time, full time.

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Roman was kind of all over the place. But, you know, I think it worked out really well for me. So, yeah, I'm happy. Yeah. You talked about physical therapy kind of led you on your path towards strength and conditioning. You went on to get a PhD. So higher education was always part of your path in this field. Why was it important for you to pursue that advanced education?

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Yeah, I think like the way that the way that I was raised, like my parents, there was never an option of like not going to college. Like I don't like some people grow up and their parents like, oh, like, you can go do a trade and going to the military, me and my brother, like it was we just it was just college was the only option.

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I didn't even know that there was really anything else outside of that. So I think that was their biggest thing. And so when I went on to pursue my masters, both of my parents have their master's. So it wasn't like that was an expectation or anything like that. But once I realized I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I also was looking at like job postings and just talking to different people and everybody who I was mentoring under or interning under.

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They had a master's degree or an advanced degree. So I was like, well, it's not going to hurt me to go to get a master's degree. So that was kind of the thought process, and I figured that would give me two more years to maybe kind of figure it out. And ultimately it really did. And I tell our interns, now, a large part of college is figured out what you don't want to do.

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So we have a lot of interns that come through the weight room. And I mean, what, 85% of them aren't going to continue in strength conditioning especially, or maybe collegiate strength and conditioning, but a part of them doing that internship is figuring out this is not what I want to do. So what else is left out there that maybe I want to explore?

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So I think that's kind of what my college journey was. But the PhD was something I started thinking about after I finished my master's. After I finished my master's, I was like, I'm done with school and you can take a break like, you know, six straight years. And then I started kind of looking more into it. But then I was like, I can't really like working full time job as a strength coach.

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Like get a PG. I was like, that's that's something that no one does. Like, you know, how can this even happen? And then when I started at George Mason and I met Dr. Jones and started talking here about what her PhD students were doing, and I kind of shared with her, like, I, you know, I really want to get a PhD is just something that I think would be a life goal that I would want to achieve.

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And looking at the way that her role was and the potential I saw for myself at George Mason, I felt like it might make sense to do. And so then logistically, I just started talking to her about like, how can we make this work? And she was great. She connected me with everyone who I need to be connected with.

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She was the chair of my dissertation committee, so she was kind of orchestrating the whole thing and pushing me way out of my comfort zone. But, yeah, it was something that I wanted to do, but I just never thought I'd be in a place where I could actually do it and then realize, yeah, I could do that.

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George Mason I was like, this is an opportunity that I have to pursue. And once I started, it was very, very hard. But once I started, I was like, you know, it's no looking back, you know? So I was like, I just got to keep pushing through. And and I think it was worth it. You know, I think education is something no one can take away from you.

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So you might be in any job or any industry down the road, but you're always going to have that bachelor's degree, master's degree. And it speaks to your role. Now you're it's a balancing act. You have two teams. You also do some work with the Patriot performance Lab on the sport science front. How does that balancing act work for you?

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Yeah, it's pretty chaotic. I it's yeah, it's like a it's like a circus act honestly. But you know I think we my priority is women's basketball in every aspect of what they do. And then like I like you mentioned, I do have women's volleyball and women's volleyball. I mainly work with them in the weight room and then I do conditioning with them in the offseason, the first six weeks of the offseason.

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And when I can, I try to get over to their matches just to see and support them. And they've been in team I've had this whole time, so I have a great relationship with them. But I have struggled with the fact that I have to miss a lot of things for them. Like, like you know, while we this past three weeks I was in Spain or past two weeks I was in Spain with basketball, and I had to miss the first two weeks of their preseason.

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And because the basketball summer schedule, usually they go eight weeks in the summer, and then there's a week off between basketball and when volleyball starts up for preseason. So that would be my week that I would take, and I would come down to my mom's house and spend time with her like I am now. But because basketball trained all the way through until we went to Spain and then we came back from Spain and then Volleyball's already in their preseason, this was the only week I could take off, so I ended up missing there before the school starts next week.

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So I didn't miss an entire preseason. So that I really struggle with that because I don't think it's fair to them that, you know, I'm not there for such an important part of their season. But we we we make it work. And the coach I work with is, is great with that. But then with the lab, we it's it's kind of whatever's going on in the lab.

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So we have a variety of students and master students who are doing projects and things in there. And then as far as our strength coaches, we do a lot of the testing or we kind of get this gets the the schedule for the testing for the students to do in the lab. So that might be DEXA scans you make testing.

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So the ISO kinetic muscle testing machine, we have force plates now that we can use outside of the lab plates. So we it's just constant communication regarding what's going on in the lab. What do we need out of the lab? I don't have a dedicated role in the lab as of right now. I do have a PhD student that's ironically coming from Spain.

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So I actually met her when we were just in Spain. She's going to be flying over actually, on Sunday, and she's going to be mentoring under me for, her study abroad semester. So with her, I'll have like dedicated, you know, responsibilities with kind of helping teach her stuff in the lab. Teach her, you know, what I'm doing with basketball, volleyball, all that.

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But I don't have a dedicated role in the lab. And that's something that, like I talk to you about. We're working on actually getting defined so that we can really elevate the lab, because right now it's Dr. Jones is the director, and then we have the PhD students, and then our strength coach is kind of help here and there with different stuff in the lab.

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So it's kind of like a all hands on deck. But I think to really move the lab forward and to really like, continue on to uphold the mission of George Mason Athletics and what we want out of the sports performance department. We need to have defined roles of like in a director and associate director, and actually like a staff that runs the lab on a day to day basis, because it's a little bit too much for our whole strength staff to be jumping in and helping in the lab.

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It's a lot on the PhD students as well, and we don't really have any help from anyone else. So it's a it's a it's a circus act, but we make it work. But I enjoy the work that I do in there, and that's why I show up every day and do it. So I as a track athlete, lots of great strength coaches come from the sport of track.

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You're working with court sports now. Was that a transition for you in your mindset maybe around athleticism? How do you how do you approach different sports than you play? Yeah. So I played basketball actually growing up I guess I should have mentioned that. So I played basketball growing up. So that was my goal. Like when I was a little kid, I wanted to be a WNBA athlete.

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I had pictures of like, Lisa Leslie on the wall. You know, Kobe Bryant. I was a big basketball fan, but I was a very, very small kid. So I was like 95 pounds soaking wet. And my mom came to one of my basketball games and the girls were just so much bigger than me. And one girl just kind of like, threw me to the ground.

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And I was like, slow to get up. And my mom was like, oh no, she told my dad, like, get her out of this. Like, she can't do this. Like put her in track and I did enjoy watching track too. So I've always had a love for the sport of basketball and I understand it. So working with basketball was actually like, I think, it was like a nice change of pace.

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I was like, oh, this is cool. Like I get to, you know, work with this sport. And even with the coaches I've worked with, I've learned more and more about it and more about, like what they want to see versus kind of my mindset in my eyes and what I see. So it's been good volleyball, that's a sport that I played a little bit in middle school, but I didn't know much about it.

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So definitely working with that sport and talking to those athletes, I've learned a lot. And I mean they love the sport, so they enjoy talking to me about it and just going to practices and games and just kind of seeing, you know, the style of play, you know, and just learning more about it has been has been great.

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And I think it's it's just being a two way street with talking to coaches and learning from them about the sport and like what they want to see. And, and definitely compromising on certain things. So I do run a conditioning service for women's volleyball because that's what the coach wants. And that's the first time in my career, two years ago, that she came to me and said, hey, I want to, you know, running conditioning tests.

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And so I was like, okay. Like I'm thinking, you know, what should that look like? You know, for that sport? And so I reached out, you know, to my network of people who work with volleyball and talking about kind of what have they done. And then I just went and sat down with the staff and I was like, you know what?

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What do you want to get out of this test? What what are we really trying to measure and assess here? And so kind of with that kind of collaboration and triangulation with everyone, then I was able to go back to the drawing board and come up with a conditioning test that to me made sense. I felt like set the athletes up for a success and then also achieved what the coach wanted.

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So it's it's been a learning process, but I think the biggest thing when you're working with the new sport is just get out there, watch a sport, talk to the coaches, talk to the athletes, learn as much as you can about it. So back on your your doctoral work and how you approach analytics and sport science within your coaching workload monitoring is a huge topic right now in the field.

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What where do you see this topic? Obviously, it's a huge topic when you're saying workload monitoring. How do you apply that in your day to day as a strength coach or just as a, guide for your sport coaches in, in helping them figure out playing time and workload and all these different areas. Yeah. So it's it can be tricky because it really comes down to how much your coaches know and understand about it, how you can communicate it, and if they really care about it, you know, at all.

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So I think when I first started using it, it was it was pretty new. I started using it in 2018 with Catapult and I was doing RPE and I was still it was just so much. And so I was learning it. And our coach at the time, our women's volleyball coach, she was trying she just want as much information.

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You have coaches, they just want a ton of information. And like most people you're thinking, okay, this number is higher. So that means this person is working harder. This person is better. And so trying to explain that that's not always the case was a little bit tricky. And I think I like most people they first start using you like kind of information dump.

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And you just give them everything all at once. And it's way too much information for them to digest. So now I'm way simpler with it. I'm just like, let me give you like a couple of nuggets of kind of what this means. Or you know what this what this trend is saying and kind of what are our next steps and just try to keep it simple, because the coaches that I've worked with have been a little bit older.

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So they just they it's not something they use when they were playing. It's just all new to them and they've been successful without it. So they're like, okay, you know, they don't really want to hear too much about it. But I think some of the younger coaches that are coming up who have played and used it are a lot more open to it and a lot more open to suggestions and allowing it to help influence, you know, the practice, training and how we approach games and subbing in games and different things like that.

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But I think really with workload management, I think it's I think it's really going to I mean, I think it's already taken off. You already see dedicated jobs that are, you know, directly geared towards sport science and workload management. And I think people are starting to see how important it is for our athletes health, longevity, wellness and and performance in the field.

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So mainly I use it with women's basketball, women's volleyball. We were able to get, an NSCA grant actually to for a research study for them to use a wearable called Vert, which is like similar to Catapult, but it just really tracks jumps in impacts of, jumps in like the intensity of the landings and things like that.

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And so that was a research project. Some of our students worked on. And I think that was really insightful for those coaches to see how much jumps these athletes were taking during the season. And that helped me kind of reinforce, like, how many jumps am I actually doing with them in the weight room during pre-season? Does it make sense for me to even have a low jump count with them in the weight room, when I know that they're taking 300 jumps between a morning and afternoon practice?

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So it kind of helps influence the way that I program a lot. And I think like when we have intense days on the court, do I want that to match up with our intense days in the weight room? We lift before we practice. So it's kind of tough for me to kind of adjust a lot of people who practice before they can look at the load and say, okay, what about what adjustments do I want make?

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So I just kind of have to make adjustments, maybe for the next day or later in the week. So we use GPS heart rate, RPE force play regularly and then we use the human eye. So kinetic machine we use that about 3 or 4 times a year. We do body composition 3 or 4 times a year. So even on a weekly or daily basis, I feel like I have a good insight into the lows that they're experiencing and then how their bodies are responding to it.

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So I feel really good about adjusting and the weight room and even sometimes just talking to the athletes. And a lot of times just talking to the athletes, what they say will match exactly up with what I'm seeing from their loads in terms of, men out there loads, but like their kind of movement job or as well as I might.

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So if he's like, yeah, I'm not feeling that great, I'm at 50%. Sometimes I'll see that when they jump, or sometimes I'll have athletes who are the opposite and they'll say, oh, this is going to be a really low jump. It's not even going to make double digits. And then they jump. And you know, so I think just kind of again, triangulation of everything, it's kind of how I make decisions.

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And I think a lot of it is a gray area. I am confident with certain things. I'm like, yeah, I know this is going to, you know, lead to this, but sometimes I'm really like, you know what? I'm going to try this and, you know, use the best judgment I can to make this decision. And then I'm going to see how it goes.

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And, you know, a lot of times it'll go well. And other times I'm like, okay, maybe I should have went the other route, you know? But it's so new and it's such a gray area. And I think we can't really fully predict exactly what's going to happen with athletes and bodies. You know, it's just so much variability out there.

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But I think I love the fact that we have the technology and resources that we have. I feel like it allows me to make an impact in a different way and not just be viewed as like the weight room person or the, you know, meat head. It allows me to be looked at as a scientist, which I think we are as strength coaches, and I think it allows me to make an impact.

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Like I said, outside of just the weight room, so I can quantify things that the coaches can quantify. I can bring information to meetings that no one else can, you know, talk about. So I think it allows us to kind of raise our value and raise our worth in terms of what we do in our profession. You know, this highlights the emerging role of strength and conditioning coaches in supporting game management.

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There's a lot of coaches out there that that have been tasked with the weight room, the four walls of the weight room. The teams come in once they leave. Those coaches don't have responsibilities. Beyond that. We're starting to see embedded strength coaches, single sports strength coaches or coaches with less team responsibilities. So that allows them to be more embedded within their teams.

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What's your advice for a strength and conditioning coach that is really just getting started with this workload management process, maybe starting to have these conversations with their sport coaches. How do you how do you begin that maybe you don't have the technology. Maybe you don't have the processes in place. Yeah. So I would say it's got talk to so many talk to a lot of people.

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So like that's what I started out doing before there was you know CPSS which if you're starting out in workload management and technology and you have those kind of responsibilities, I definitely think getting the book, reading it, studying for the exam, even if you're not in a place to take it or you're not, you can't qualify to take the exam.

00;22;04;05 - 00;22;22;03

Yet. I think studying and just reading that book will help out a lot because it's it's really just kind of it really gives you the background, in theory into everything that we do with all that's out there in terms of workload management. But when I started out, I would just talk to coaches because there wasn't anything published. There wasn't any research out there about a lot of this stuff.

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So I would just say like, as Catapult, I was like, what other schools have this? And then they would tell me and I would just reach out to those strength coaches and talk to them about kind of what they're doing. And, did the same thing, the mistakes just played at our, arena, at EBA for a couple of games back in July.

00;22;39;00 - 00;22;55;15

And so I know the directors and conditioning there. And so I talked to her and they ended up talking to her two assistants that she has. And I talked to them about what they do. So like, every time I had the opportunity to talk to somebody, I mean, they're a WNBA, WNBA team. So they're doing things differently. They have different technology in this.

00;22;55;15 - 00;23;18;03

But I don't know, like, you know, what do you guys do and what can I learn from you? What can I take and maybe apply to my program. So I think it's got to learn as much about it as you can. But definitely starting simple, starting small. If you don't have the budget to have a whole bunch of expensive technology, starting with wellness surveys and RFPs, those are the two free things that you can do that they're going to be objective measure.

00;23;18;03 - 00;23;34;18

So you do have to kind of look at that a little bit, but it really does provide insight into the athletes. And I think it's a starting point to start to have those conversations. So if you're doing daily wellness surveys and then you go to the meeting on Monday and you share with the coaches, yeah, like you know, it seems like last week was a hard week of practice.

00;23;34;18 - 00;23;57;05

We have some wellness scores that are kind of dropping low. Then maybe they tie in. Yeah, we didn't do this. Well we didn't do that well this weekend with the game. You can start to kind of build up trust and start to show the coaches how important it is to look at that. And then maybe when you have a chance to maybe get some sort of technology, then you can kind of implement that, but also making sure that the technology that you get is actually answering a question that is actually had it.

00;23;57;05 - 00;24;18;14

If you if you don't just want to get a piece of technology and you're like, okay, now what do I do with this? You know, is this is this going to help us answer something? So when we started with Catapult, the our athletic director or associate Adi, at the time that oversaw sports performance, she wanted to she thought it was a good idea because she was like, yeah, I want to quantify how much running that they're doing.

00;24;18;14 - 00;24;31;05

She was like, I think they're doing too much running, and I want to use this to quantify it. And I was like, great. Yeah, we can this is we can quantify the workload that they're doing. That's great. So we can start with that. And then the coach wanted heart rate monitors. She wanted she want to do a lot of heart rate based training.

00;24;31;05 - 00;24;46;18

And she wanted everyone's heart rate to be up as high as possible when, you know, so one of our better players would not have a high heart rate. And she was like, she's not working hard. And, you know, we're going to have, of course, like two years later, this girl transfers to, power conference. They make it to the Elite Eight, and she's a starter.

00;24;46;18 - 00;25;00;26

And I would always tell the coach, like, I think she's playing down to the teams. I think she's a lot better. She's in great shape. She just has to play down to the team. And of course, I think that I that the fact that she went and played it at a conference and was such a key player really kind of proved that point.

00;25;00;26 - 00;25;18;27

So I think under helping everyone understand what the data is actually showing and also regarding heart rate, that athletic director, that, assistant Addie, at the time she came to practice one time and the girls were, they were conditioning everyone's heart rate is in the red, and we had it up on the TV and she's like, oh, do we need to, like, pull some of these people?

00;25;18;27 - 00;25;35;01

Like they're at 100% of max heart rate. And I'm like, well, if we look at the research, there's actually a paper that shows that when athletes are playing basketball, women's basketball athletes, probably same for men, but their heart rate is going to be greater than or equal to 85% of their max heart rate. So they need to be able to work in that zone.

00;25;35;01 - 00;25;50;05

So it's not bad like in games. They're going to be at 100%. I'm sorry. So it's not bad. So just explain that. So you really need to know if you get something. You really need to know what it's measuring, how it's answering the question. And then I think what you can talk to the coaches about is how do we want to implement this.

00;25;50;05 - 00;26;07;03

How does this look on a day to day? How do you want me to relay information to you? How do we want to make decisions based on that? And I'm studying for the stats right now, which I haven't taken it just because when it came out, I was in the middle of my PhD program, and Dr. Jones, of course, she was like, yeah, you guys should take this.

00;26;07;03 - 00;26;25;29

It's going to be really applicable for you all. But I was drowning and I was like, I can't do this right now. So either way, since I'm finishing my PhD, I've been studying for it. So I'll be taking that here in a couple months. But one of the things they talked about there was in the book was about how to get like your sports performance team and your interdisciplinary team together.

00;26;26;01 - 00;26;44;25

And how do you guys want to communicate? How do you guys want to share information and make decisions based on the information? So I think those are the things that really comes out. Really. You really want to talk to about your coaches. And I think a lot of times it comes down to the strength coach kind of making like a one off decision, maybe collaborating with the team, but really pulling everybody together in.

00;26;44;25 - 00;27;03;03

And then, you know, making those decisions together. So yeah, it's going to be a lot of learning. But yeah, I think if you just kind of start there, start with the basics and understand what you don't know, but try to try to seek to understand what you don't know so that you can make an impact with your athletes and your coaches is the way to go about it.

00;27;03;03 - 00;27;25;07

But definitely networking. It always goes back to networking and talking to people. Yeah, I mean, huge theme here. We met that way. You've connected with your coaches and your process is that way. Just through your PhD, through all the different coaching experiences you've had and you mentioned earlier working at the high school level, I want to ask you, how does being a high school coach inform your practices today?

00;27;25;07 - 00;27;41;25

And what are some of the things that you see now that you'd want to tell high school coaches and how to better prepare athletes for the college level? Yeah, that that experience, it was really eye opening. I thought it was just really cool that I was able to work with eighth graders, ninth graders and just allow and like that.

00;27;41;29 - 00;27;58;24

I was their first exposure to like, you know, weights and strength conditioning. I think it's good to start them at a young age, because you can really instill good foundations in them, and you can really just focus on like the building blocks. When I have athletes coming that have lived in high school, I know immediately and generally to me they're more athletic.

00;27;58;24 - 00;28;23;02

They're just they're they just move better. They're easily coachable. So I think really just I, I can't say that I've seen high school coaches making things like too complex for those athletes, but I think you can just really like hammer home the basics. And I don't think anyone's going to get bored with the basics. Obviously, you know, with social media, athletes see so much complicated training that NFL players are doing or, you know, high level athletes that they think that they're at that level.

00;28;23;02 - 00;28;39;20

But I think if you can hammer home the basics, maybe add a little bit of fun stuff here and there just to kind of break up the monotony of it. But I think hammering home the basics is really going to set them up for success at the next level. When I have athletes that come in and they're saying, oh yeah, we're doing a little bit of strength training, you know, what should we be focusing on?

00;28;39;22 - 00;28;57;03

I'm always like bodyweight stuff. Like, I think you should know how to move your body in space. You know, even just focus on simple things like planks, push ups, pull ups. I have one athlete that is from an actual athlete from overseas, and she's never lifted before because her body weight movements are just phenomenal that I didn't even know.

00;28;57;03 - 00;29;12;01

So we started out first day was like some push up down dog type stuff and she moved so great that then we went over. It's like a dumbbell bench press and she wasn't sure how to do it. I was like, that's right, you haven't lift weights before because it just based on how our warmup went, I was like, yeah, she's good to go.

00;29;12;08 - 00;29;33;04

So I think just really focusing on the basics with bodyweight movement and just good movement patterns. And I think even just going back to like from more of like a speed and agility or change direction standpoint, running mechanics, going back to running mechanics, I think athletes who that I have had, in my experience, who've run track in high school, they are just on a different level.

00;29;33;07 - 00;29;55;15

They just they just move better. I feel like for their sport because they have that base of like, you know, they know how to run without a basketball in their hand or, you know, they just they just have that foundation. And so I think that's always good. If you can work on some running mechanics with running mechanics with those athletes as well, makes me think that there's more of an emerging need for individualized training within teams.

00;29;55;17 - 00;30;15;04

I go back on a time when it was, hey, the football teams got this program, the basketball teams got this program. How individualized do you get with your athletes? So with my athletes at the college level, we have basketball, volleyball, I have two separate programs. And with basketball I say I get a little bit more into the weeds.

00;30;15;04 - 00;30;33;01

So we've went about it a couple different ways the past couple of years. They kind of all have a template when we're like in the off season, it's like a general template and I make some changes and modifications based on people, like certain people backs. What doesn't work for them, certain people for us got we need to modify.

00;30;33;01 - 00;30;53;25

You need to use a slam board. So we'll have those little modifications or you can't do barbell bench things like that. But what what we've done in the past couple of years is we tried to have where everybody had an additional two workouts that they had to get in with me a week. So we would have our four lifts and they would have like two extra workouts that they would have to fit in with me.

00;30;53;27 - 00;31;12;19

And we we tried to kind of go from the standpoint of when you're in practice, you have your dedicated practice days, and then you may have two mandatory workouts with the coach, or you may have, you know, form shooting with a coach. And that's the way the weight room should be as well. Like there's other things that you may need to work on outside of what we're working on as a team.

00;31;12;22 - 00;31;33;17

So we want to get those sessions. And so we we did that for about two years. And then this year we, we had an optional day on Wednesday. And athletes who had massive low hanging fruit where lateral movement, conditioning, injury kind of return and play type stuff. They would have dedicated separate training workouts for those days.

00;31;33;19 - 00;31;48;22

And then other girls who wanted to get a workout in if they were kind of pretty, all even killed. Nothing was like major standing out then. It was just an optional lift, and I feel like we kind of had fun with it. It would just be, hey, what do you want to work on today? And of course, as we were going to Spain, I had a lot of, oh, I just want to do abs today.

00;31;48;22 - 00;32;07;24

Okay, fine. We just do abs today. And I think for our summer training and for the fact that we have such a new team coming in, I felt like, you know, it worked out. But the girls who had low hanging fruit, we would get those extra workouts in with them at that time. And, you know, just talking to the coaches about maybe some things that they can do on the court to try to reinforce it.

00;32;07;24 - 00;32;21;24

Because a lot of the things that they see that they're like, oh, this athlete needs to work on this with you. When we work on it in the weight room, because it's a controlled environment, it's it's fine. We don't there's no issue. So we have one athlete who struggles with body control and they're like, yeah, she's working out.

00;32;21;24 - 00;32;38;18

What do we do? We do a lot of contact stuff. We do jumps while I'm pushing her. We do deceleration things, but when she's on the court and she's going at full speed is when it's highlighted. And, you know, I can't really replicate that in the weight room. That has to be a core thing that the coaches work on with her.

00;32;38;18 - 00;32;55;07

So I think having that conversation as well, lateral movement we can work on. But again, when you look at certain things in the context of the game, is her lateral movement slow, or is it that she's struggling to continue the process, what's happening in front of her and then what her body needs to do and then her body actually doing that?

00;32;55;10 - 00;33;25;01

Again, that's game situations on court, things that she has to work at getting better at is not just a muscular, you know, a neuromuscular thing that we that we need to work on. So, so that's that's kind of how we've approached individuality. Once we go into the season, then I kind of have like a minute and lo minute kind of structured workouts, whereas a little minute goes into a little bit more, but that gets a little bit dicey because then we have people who are kind of on the border where out of two games in the week, one game, their little minute, one minute, their high minute, so it can be a little tricky.

00;33;25;05 - 00;33;41;04

Well, so once I get a group that's like dedicate a lo minute, then it's okay. We're doing extra running. You guys might do a little bit more volume in the weight room. We're going to hit some extra lifts when we travel, things like that. But I like that. Yeah that's that's kind of that's kind of how we went about it.

00;33;41;06 - 00;34;08;25

So yeah. Yeah I like the, you know, your process comes through there of, manipulating or adjusting the team program to get to the individual needs of various players on the team, small groups within the team, minute, little minute, different things. I think it's a good systemic process that you're okay. I had the team as a whole, but I can break this down into some different groups within the team.

00;34;08;27 - 00;34;35;04

Even in a sport like basketball, where there's only five people on the court playing and it's something that, you know, there's a lot of crossover and responsibilities there, you know, from position to position. Obviously some differences as well, but individual needs as well. And I like that you highlighted the communication between the strength coach and the sport staff because that's where the performance gets put into play.

00;34;35;07 - 00;35;03;09

And they could be very controlled. We could do some really rigid, postures, alignment type exercises in the weight room that maybe just aren't connecting with the dynamic chaos of what's happening on the court. So I think it's a really, important discussion to have, especially as athletes are demanding more from us today. Athletes are coming in with higher expectations for our field.

00;35;03;11 - 00;35;21;13

We could say that's a bad thing. I think it's a great thing for us because it gives us more that we can do to connect with these athletes, to provide value for our teams, provide value for our programs. I love your enthusiasm. I love your cool, hybrid role that you've had and obviously your passion to go pursue a PhD in the field.

00;35;21;15 - 00;35;42;05

What is it that you love most about the strength and conditioning profession? I think it's I think it's I just I've always just I think it's just a fun environment to be in. So I think back to what I spent my first week at VCU as an intern. It was just such, high energy exciting. Just it's just.

00;35;42;06 - 00;36;05;07

Yeah, it's just a high energy, exciting area to be in. So, like, when I was interning at, you know, physical therapy clinics and things like that, it was just so dull and boring. And being an athlete, you're just used to that. Like that, a certain level of fitness. And I think that's what the weight room gives me. And I think for me, I, I went into student conditioning, obviously, because I loved it.

00;36;05;07 - 00;36;20;06

I had a passion for it. But I think also being able to be what I didn't have when I was in college, I didn't have a conditioning coach and me and my friends, still, best friends with two of the girls I ran track with. And they always they're like, face, like all this stuff you all do is like, so cool.

00;36;20;06 - 00;36;34;09

Like, we would have been so much better if we would have had access to that. If we would have known this. If you know that. And I'm like, yeah, like 100%. So I think if I would have had what I am, I would have been so much better as an athlete. And I think it would have really inspired me.

00;36;34;09 - 00;36;54;03

So I just tried to kind of be that person for my athletes. I think being a woman in this field, you see it a lot more now, but I think, you know, back in the day, like you didn't see women in these types of fields, you know, and I think also being like a black female in this field, I think is something that allows me to connect with my athletes who, you know, look like me.

00;36;54;03 - 00;37;12;17

I feel like it's just they're able to see like, oh, like I can be in this field. This is something I can do or like, this is normal. You know, when we go and travel and you get the oh, you know, football strength coaches, you know, when they're just like, you know, treating the black women's basketball team like a football team, you know, and you know, I'm just I'm not that.

00;37;12;17 - 00;37;38;03

So I think I think that's kind of really what it is for me just being able to make an impact and be what I didn't have. And so I think the field itself is just it's just a really fun and exciting field. I think we provide this unique service that you can't really quantify. A lot of athletes come in, they don't like the weight room, but one of the best things I had an athlete telling me was I hated the weight room before you got here, and now I love the weight room.

00;37;38;03 - 00;38;02;03

And that was like the biggest compliment I could have ever. You know, gotten. Because especially working with two female sports, like, they don't really like the weight room, a lot of times they, you know, all these mixed images they get about body image and masculinity and muscles and things like that. So for them to come in and have me be like, you know, positive and like, oh yeah, let's, you know, you're doing the same weight as the men's team is doing.

00;38;02;03 - 00;38;18;09

And then the men's team is like, wait a minute, the women's team are doing 70 pounds for farmer’s carries. Oh, I gotta go get 80s. And having that conversation. I think it's just fun. It's just such a fun feel to be in. And I think we just. Yeah, we provide a really unique service to the athletes. So yeah. Yeah, I love that.

00;38;18;09 - 00;38;37;29

It's positive, it's encouraging. It fuels us as professionals and obviously fuels our athlete to be better at their sport, to be better as people. And we have a huge impact as a profession. So for everyone tuning in, I know some people are going to want to reach out and talk to you. What's the best way for them to do that?

00;38;38;01 - 00;38;59;23

Yeah, they can send me an email fbrown20@gmu.edu or my Instagram. I talk to a lot of coaches through there. It's faithsabrown on Instagram. So those are the two best ways to get in contact with me. Awesome. We'll add those to the show notes. A lot of great takeaways today. Thank you so much for being with us.

00;38;59;26 - 00;39;26;00

Big theme growing with the field, growing, in your education, in your approach, individualizing programs for athletes, providing a meaningful and impactful service at your institution, and working with your institution to figure out where what the future holds, especially in this time of college athletics. That is changing very quickly and we get to keep our head on a swivel.

00;39;26;00 - 00;39;48;11

So thanks so much for being with us, Faith. Really appreciate the time today. Yeah. Thanks so much. Eric is great talking to you today. Thanks everyone for tuning in to another episode of the NSCA Coaching Podcast. This is a passion project of the NSCA. We want to hear from you. So if you're someone interested in being a guest on the podcast, please reach out to the NSCA.

00;39;48;13 - 00;40;19;01

We'd love to have you on in the future. Hear your story and all the stories from professionals around the field. Thanks so much. And also special thanks to sauna exercise equipment. We appreciate their support. Hey guys, it's Dr. Bryan Mann coming at you from Texas A&M University. Hey, this is a call to arms. If you feel like there's something that needs to be done, something that needs to be changed, this is your call to go ahead and sign up for the volunteer opportunities within the SIGs, the different committees, or just to get involved in your local chapter.

00;40;19;05 - 00;40;45;18

Please go to the website for more details. This was the NSCA coaching podcast. The National Strength and Conditioning Association was founded in 1978 by strength and conditioning coaches to share information, resources and help advance the profession. Serving coaches for over 40 years, the NSCAs be trusted source for strength and conditioning professionals. Be sure to join us next time.

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