☕️ S&C Daily — Push It a Little More

October 19, 2026

After a game, a group of Bruins players heads from the locker room to a portable gym that head performance coach Kevin Neeld sets up even at road arenas. The reason is timing. Right after a game is the longest stretch before the next one starts, typically at least 48 hours to recover. Players are also still warm, awake and alert. Most players opt in.

Neeld uses a 15 to 20 minute window for a low volume of high-quality strength work. It’s usually one lower-body pattern, an upper-body push and an upper-body pull, plus some hip and core. Lower-body pushes are squat, single-leg squat and split squat variations. Pulls are deadlift variations and posterior chain work for the hamstrings and glutes.

Then it’s recovery. The staff makes the protein shakes during the game, and new team dietitian Amanda Feldman added fruit smoothies, which Neeld said refill carbohydrate stores quickly. “It’s pretty common that we do a workout after while our bodies are already tired, just to push it a little more,” forward Mark Kastelic said.

Matt Aldred runs strength and conditioning for Michigan men’s basketball, the reigning national champions, after holding the same job at Furman. His warning to coaches: coasting leads to “reusing the same programs each year and expecting a different result.” So he watches his information diet. He listens to two or three podcasts a week on the commute and during his own workouts. He stays off social media until midday, caps Instagram and X at 30 minutes a day, and aims for under three hours of phone time.

His other rule is curiosity over judgment. When a player missed a lift after not answering a text, Aldred asked if he was okay. The phone had died and the player had overslept. Accountability doesn’t require judgment, Aldred writes, because coaches work with humans, not robots.

A new study put 34 athletes through a five-week preseason Nordic hamstring program of up to 60 reps a week. Eccentric hamstring strength rose 9.5% on average. Then they were split into two groups for the season: one kept a microdose of one set of six Nordics a week, and the other stopped.

The microdose made no difference. By week five of the season, both groups were back at baseline, and they stayed there through week 10. The authors concluded that this dose was not enough to keep the strength built in the preseason.

Nebraska played at Oregon on Saturday at 8:05 p.m. Pacific, a 10 p.m. kickoff on its players’ body clocks. Matt Rhule said the sports science staff studied how to handle it. The answer was to push the week’s schedule back two hours. Meetings moved from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., practice from 4 to 6, with players eating afterward. Players were also asked to go to bed a little later each night.

“We’re going to finish this game at 2 a.m. our time. Your circadian rhythm starts to shut down,” Rhule said. He had never coached a game that late. Nebraska has a bye this week.

Ohio State released renderings for a renovation of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, including a redesigned weight room and recovery spaces. “We have completely outgrown it,” Ryan Day said.

Hartwick named Mike Cacace head of strength and conditioning for its 21 Division III sports. His last college job was head strength coach and offensive line coach at Eureka College.

Liberty hired Keenan Gumbs as men’s basketball athletic performance coach. He comes from Butler, after strength roles at UAB and Kentucky, and played for the Flames in 2018-19.

Miami Marlins

Tuskegee University

University of North Florida

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