☕️ S&C Daily — Don't Do Mindless Hard Work

October 13, 2026

When Gerry McNamara left Siena for Syracuse, he brought director of strength and conditioning Matt June with him. The Orange grabbed the fewest rebounds in the ACC last season and were outrebounded 1,183-1,093 on the way to 15-17 and a 14th-place finish. McNamara pointed to the bodies on last season’s Final Four teams, and strength became the offseason priority.

Sophomore guard Kiyan Anthony added 12 pounds. Junior guard Aiden Tobiason played around 197 pounds at Temple last season and is now around 210, with a new nutrition plan alongside the lifting. Seven-foot freshman Abdramane Siby has gained 16 pounds since arriving. On June, McNamara said: “I watched the first two workouts he did with our team in Siena. I haven’t worried since.”

NBA players wear tracking devices in warmups, through the day and to monitor sleep, but not in games. Commissioner Adam Silver told CNBC Sport the league and the players union still have no agreement on in-game wearables. The sticking point is how the data would be used.

The union’s concern is bargaining. Numbers showing a player slowing down could end up in a contract negotiation. Silver said the two sides have to agree on exactly how the information is used, and he expects them to work something out. Players are “essentially wearing wearables 22 hours a day,” he said.

Texas Tech’s football weight room has 20 custom rack stations with LED lights built into the uprights and arches. The installation marked the first Power Lift P4 football facility to do it. The lights went in with recruiting in mind, and Lance Barilow said the idea “has shown to be a huge benefit.”

Function came first. Tech’s head football strength and conditioning coach wanted a layout that flows for coaches and players and gets a full college football workout done as quickly as possible. Then the room had to look like Texas Tech. The program’s line - the toughest, hardest working, most competitive team in the country - is written on the floor.

“It’s a complete no brainer if you’re designing a weight room in particular in the football space,” Barilow said. “Power Lift is who you got to go with.”

Writing on his Substack, Steve Magness broke down the 110-yard repeats from the new Nick Saban documentary: 26 reps on 45 seconds of rest, with skill players under 15 seconds and bigs under 18. His read is that it is a specific endurance session, not a toughness test, so the goal is a pace athletes can hold from the first rep to the last, what he calls a just manageable challenge.

He flagged two common mistakes: copying Alabama’s position-based times instead of grouping athletes by ability, and making the whole team run again when someone misses, which punishes the athletes who paced it right. “Don’t do mindless hard work. Make it intentional,” he writes.

The LA Kings promoted John Odgers to Director of Performance and Sports Science and Andre Carere to Head Performance Coach. They also hired Ontario Reign head strength and conditioning coach Taylor Khoury as Assistant Performance Coach.

Michigan State football strength and conditioning coach Joel Welsh sat down with The Only Colors to talk about his background, the role of the strength coach and his predecessor Ken Mannie, who ran the program from 1994 until 2020. “The weight room is a place of honesty,” Welsh said.

The Marlins did not renew head strength and conditioning coach Daniel Vega’s contract for the 2027 season and will look for his replacement. The news came as Miami hired Dillon Lawson as its major league hitting coach.

Former Brooklyn Nets head of strength and conditioning Daniel Jones is the new high performance manager for the AFL’s Melbourne Demons. He spent the past four seasons at Geelong as lead athletic performance and senior strength and conditioning coach.

Oregon State University

Princeton University

San Diego FC

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