☕️ S&C Daily — Put Your Name on It

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A new meta-analysis posted to SportRxiv pooled 3,237 measurements from 480 resistance training studies to model a question the literature usually steps around: not what drives muscle growth, but how long it takes to get. The first 10 weeks of training returned about 7% more muscle size. Reaching 8.9% took 20 weeks. Reaching 10.5% took 36. The model does not get to 12.6% until 78 weeks, a year and a half in.

The early weeks do most of the work. Past 66 weeks, another week of training no longer moves muscle size by an amount the model can separate from zero. The paper’s own takeaway is that early gains should not be extended out in a straight line. The study has not yet been peer reviewed.

In a new article on how first-year head coach Pat Fitzgerald is leaning on former Spartans to steady a rebuild, the weight room is the through line. Joel Welsh is heading into his first season as Michigan State's head strength coach, and he is the third man in the job in four years.

The coach who had it before that run had it for 25. Ken Mannie was hired under Nick Saban in 1994 and walked away in 2020, after Mel Tucker was hired. Fitzgerald has been pulling him back around the program, and had him talk to the team after a fall camp practice earlier this month. "Put your name on it," Mannie told the players. Mark Dantonio, the winningest coach in program history, got his turn a week later. Fitzgerald's read on Mannie goes back to his 17 seasons running Northwestern. "He'd always come talk to me pregame and I thought he was distracting me," Fitzgerald said. "I thought it was like a really good Jedi mind trick."

The Portland Thorns and Portland Fire have opened the Kaiser Permanente Performance Center in Hillsboro, a 100,000-square-foot building the two clubs share. It cost more than $150 million. The site is a former Nike office complex, and the 5,000-square-foot weight room at the middle of it runs Nike Strength and Lifetime Fitness equipment.

The building is doubled in places and shared in others. Each club gets its own locker room, lounge and sauna, while the weight room, treatment area and cafeteria are common ground. There are two full-size soccer fields, one grass and one turf, and two full-size basketball courts. A retractable wall splits the treatment room so either club can take the whole floor when it needs it.

Recovery runs to hot and cold pools and an AlterG treadmill that carries part of an athlete’s bodyweight to bring them back to running sooner. Dr. Jacqueline Brady, an orthopedic surgeon and team physician for both clubs, works out of an office inside the treatment area. The unveiling took place at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton during the Epicenter Women’s Global Sports Summit, where Nike and RAJ Sports announced a new partnership backing both teams.

Marist named Will Blakey assistant strength and conditioning coach and head football performance coach. He arrives from Saint John’s in Minnesota, where he worked on the football strength staff while coaching running backs, and before that spent six years in the Air Force as an avionics technician and unit physical training leader.

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