☕️ S&C Daily — It's Old School

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Wisconsin's director of football strength and conditioning, Brady Collins, told Badger Observer this week that the cramped, half-built setup his team is training in this summer might be the best thing to happen to it. With construction tearing through Camp Randall, his weight room is down to a third of its usual size and the players have been pushed into the visiting locker room - no big lockers, no cold and hot tubs, everyone packed in tight and sweating.

Collins loves it. "It's old school," he says. "They're getting to know each other more, and they're being accountable and cleaning up." When weather forced an audible, he moved a session into the wrestling room - a "sauna," in his words - that "turned out to be one of the greatest days ever." His larger point is a challenge to his own players: if the missing luxuries are what you're worried about, "maybe your heart isn't in it for all the right reasons." The passion has to be for the game and the people you grind alongside. The shiny new facility opens at the end of July - but the adversity, in Collins' telling, is doing the building right now. "Trust me," he says, "we don't need much room, but we'll get it in."

In a new essay, performance coach and author Steve Magness argues that fun, not gritted-teeth seriousness, is the real performance enhancer - and says his own survey of 2,000+ elite performers backs it up.

Performing from joy, curiosity, and fun beat stoic grinding 11 to 1, and when he asked what advice they'd give their younger selves, "enjoy it, have fun, don't take it so seriously" dominated; exactly one person said to be more serious. He ties it to Robert Vallerand's work on harmonious vs. obsessive passion - both can drive elite results, but the obsessive kind, where self-worth rides on winning, trends toward burnout. His frame: dedication and joy aren't opposites, they feed each other.

The Washington Wizards pulled off something rare last week, The Athletic reports: all 12 players on the standard roster gathered in Las Vegas for an optional three-day veteran minicamp, with the 11 not on the summer-league team paying their own travel and hotels.

Anthony Davis and Trae Young arrived a day early. Sessions ran under the team's coaches, development staff, and athlete care and performance staff inside a 27,000-square-foot Mandalay Bay ballroom the franchise converts into a full practice facility - court, weight room, film area, training tables. Assistant J.J. Outlaw, who ran it: "The guys have chosen to be out here... they bought into the group."

Oklahoma State's Human Performance & Nutrition Research Institute shared some news this week:

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