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Good morning. Virginia's strength coach breaks down the six months before camp, LSU's baseball strength coach explains how he uses Claude to cut hours off his week, and a pro club publishes its return-to-play protocol for postpartum athletes. Let's get into it...
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📸 Williams Strength
Virginia head football strength coach Adam Smotherman told 247Sports the weight room is where the season actually gets built - "our opportunity to mold the team into the personality that Coach Elliott wants." Coming off a breakthrough 2025, his message was that none of it carries. "Last year's touchdowns and sacks don't carry over," he said.
What he built the offseason around:
Learning new bodies fast. The hard part of the portal era isn't writing programs, it's learning dozens of new athletes in a matter of weeks. He meets recruits on their visits, texts them after they commit about what has worked for them before, and nobody maxes until sports medicine clears them and they pass a movement screen. "Every guy is a puzzle you have to figure out."
Technology that confirms. GPS on sprint speeds and practice workloads, VBT on every rack, force plates for reactive strength. "A lot of times the technology confirms what we already see." A missed velocity threshold tells them recovery is off before it shows up anywhere else.
Culture on purpose. Virginia lost six veteran leaders after last season. Teammate Tuesday has players publicly recognize teammates who stood out that week, and team meals come with guided discussion questions.
Smotherman's headline from this offseason is Sichan John, who cut almost 10% body fat. He squats 700 pounds and power cleans 365.
This week's AI Playbook guest is Chris Martin, head strength and conditioning coach for baseball at LSU. He built his own athlete management system in Claude - force plates, TrackMan and VALD in one place - and uses it to cut data entry down to a fraction of the time. He talks through how he uses it day to day, why he thinks this job doesn't have to take your whole life, and how AI helps with that. Out Sunday. Join Now
In a new Sportsmith piece, Dorcas Copa lays out the return-to-play protocol her club's medical and performance staff built after three players got pregnant, gave birth and came back to play inside a single year. There is almost no published guidance for this, so they wrote their own.
The details:
Players kept training past 12 weeks of pregnancy, since deconditioning during pregnancy is itself flagged as a postpartum injury risk
Return to play ran 8 to 10 weeks, built on percentages of the club's own average loading metrics
The plan never moves 70% to 80% in back-to-back weeks, because soft tissue injuries showed up there - each of those two levels repeats
Sessions were modified or ended for cramping, overheating, pelvic floor symptoms, dizziness or shortness of breath
The three players returned at 4, 8 and 12 weeks postpartum, each choosing her own date
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