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October 23, 2026

The Washington Nationals plan to bring back all 12 coaches on Blake Butera’s staff but did not renew the contracts of five big-league training and strength coaches, The Athletic reports. Among them are head strength and conditioning coach Brett Henry, head athletic trainer Dale Gilbert and assistant athletic trainers Jonathan Kotredes and Eric Montague.

Washington had the third-fewest IL placements in baseball in 2026, per the AP, and only one position player went on the IL with a soft-tissue injury. The club is now hiring a director of physical development and a director of player health and mental performance, and plans to add biomechanics resources this offseason.

Florida basketball has a 96% availability rate over the past two seasons, and much of the credit goes to head strength coach Victor Lopez. Catapult tracks workload in practices and games, and force plates on the court measure reactive strength, eccentric braking and jump output to individualize each player’s program.

This offseason, Urban Klavzar tied a program record in the three-quarter-court sprint, and 6-foot-10, 270-pound Rueben Chinyelu ran it in 3.18 seconds. Every player on the roster also ran the mile in under six minutes, a test Lopez calls a gut check. “That’s kind of been our special sauce is our speed on our post players,” Lopez said.

Minnesota strength and conditioning coach Cal Dietz told USCHO the old model of just getting bigger and stronger has changed. The emphasis has shifted from constant heavy lifting to sometimes moving weights fast. “Instead of doing a heavy, heavy load where they can only get one or two reps, they’re moving weights extremely fast for three or four reps that they could do 10 times,” Dietz said. Gophers coach Brett Larson said players now lift almost every day, in 20- to 25-minute sessions.

Sophomore forward Javon Moore, 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds, has a vertical in the upper 30s and ran a 1.59-second electronic 10-yard dash. The fastest Dietz has ever timed was Phil Kessel at 1.51. At Wisconsin, defenseman Jack Phelan has gone from 170 pounds in juniors to nearly 200. “Most people plateau, but he just keeps improving,” Badgers strength coach Tommy Inkrott said.

Saints director of sports nutrition Jamie Meeks started planning for the NFL’s first game in Paris right after the 2025 season. The team spent a full week in France, eating three or four meals a day, and Meeks built every menu through a language barrier, balancing what players expect with French food.

She landed the job after the Saints’ strength coach and director of sports medicine picked her brain at an LSU pro day. “In this job, you can’t be afraid to pick up the phone and ask for help,” she said.

Writing for SimpliFaster, Kosta Telegadas makes the case that AI belongs in a strength coach’s admin work, not the coaching itself. He is the only coach at his site, serving more than 225 tactical athletes across two training centers in the U.K. AI drafts his first program outline, then he picks exercises and sets loads by hand and changes progressions every three to six weeks.

He says reporting is where AI saves him the most time, and a presentation that used to take 10 hours now takes about four. He wants young coaches to learn programming first. “Technology can make us more efficient, but it cannot replace foundational knowledge,” he writes.

Kosta turned a 10-hour project into four. Imagine getting six hours of your week back.

That’s what Morning Rep+ is built for. Our NSCA-approved course, Claude for Strength Coaches 101, shows you what to use AI for, how to prompt it, how to check what comes back and what never to give it. Members also get a new AI Playbook lesson every month.

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