☕️ S&C Daily — Micro-Doses, Not Sessions

October 14, 2026

Major League Soccer runs from mid-January into December, and Sportsmith asked six of the league’s performance coaches how they develop strength and power across it instead of simply holding on. Charlotte FC’s Peter Gorka puts heavier strength work early in the week, MD+1 through MD+3, and shifts toward power and speed work as the next match gets closer.

At LAFC, head performance coach Anton Matinlauri makes the case for microdosing: fifteen minutes across four days is an hour a week, potentially 40 hours over a 10-month season. Atlanta United’s Chris Murphy puts the main strength exposures on MD-4 and MD-3 and uses concentric-only quarter squats from pins during congested stretches to limit soreness.

Portland Timbers head performance coach Charles Burdick points out that the maintenance research everyone cites, one lifting session a week holding maximal strength and 40-meter sprint across 12 in-season weeks, is a floor, not a ceiling. His rule for the lower body is to stop sets at 10-20% velocity loss and never train to failure, because the match already trained the legs. “But maintenance is usually the first thing we decide, not the last thing the calendar leaves us,” he writes.

A new study measured how much a max moves when strength hasn’t really changed. Researchers including Eric Helms and Michael Zourdos looked at near-max singles from 16 to 19 competitive male powerlifters over 6-10 weeks. A max moved about 2% either way: roughly 9 pounds on the squat and deadlift and 6 pounds on the bench.

The authors offer those numbers as a way to tell a real strength change from normal day-to-day swing. They also found the gap between places at international powerlifting meets often fell inside that range.

UConn freshman center Olivia Vukosa, the 6-foot-5 national Gatorade player of the year, arrived in Storrs in June, and her offseason was mostly about conditioning. She worked closely with strength coach Andrea Hudy on a plan to make her more agile and faster, watched what she ate and lost weight.

Geno Auriemma said the staff gave her a lot to do over the summer, from training to nutrition and recovery, “and she came back and changed her body.” In Monday’s 88-60 exhibition win over Syracuse, Vukosa had 10 points and a team-high nine rebounds in 18 minutes.

UNC Charlotte has parted ways with football strength and conditioning director Jake Miller, sources told FootballScoop. Miller led strength and conditioning at Ohio under head coach Tim Albin from 2021 to 2023 and joined him at Charlotte in December 2024 after a year at UCLA. He’s expected to be paid out the rest of his contract.

The 49ers are 0-6 this season after going 1-11 in Albin’s first year in 2025. Assistant strength coach Ben Gilkey is leading the program for now.

The Citadel updated titles across its strength and conditioning staff in a round of internal promotions. Joe Varga now serves as Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Performance, Russell Hubbs moved up to Director of Sports Performance, Seth Summers is Associate Director of Sports Performance and Jerred Scott was named Coordinator of Basketball Sports Performance.

IUSCA recognized Aspetar high-performance lead Martin Buchheit as a Master International Strength and Conditioning Practitioner (mISCP), its highest practitioner level. Buchheit has held senior roles with Paris Saint-Germain, Olympique Lyonnais, Lille, Aspire Academy and Kitman Labs and has more than 250 scientific publications.

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