☕️ S&C Daily — The Most Violent Team in the Nation

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The big change in Clemson's weight room this offseason is a Friday-night ritual: squat parties. New strength coach Dennis Love turns the room into a nightclub - bright lights, loud music, teammates crowding the platform - and players go after max squats in front of the crowd.

He borrowed the idea from Urban Meyer's Tebow-era Florida to build camaraderie and confidence. Players say everything feels more structured and efficient under him, calling him a "modern-day" coach. Love, a Super Bowl 50 winner with the Broncos, took over for Joey Batson, the 29-year Tigers legend behind the "they don't put championship rings on smooth hands" mantra.

At Penn State's Lift for Life event, new strength coach Reid Kagy - who followed head coach Matt Campbell over from Iowa State - laid out the philosophy he's bringing to Happy Valley. He trains each position group differently so the work carries straight to the field: power, speed, strength, and the ability to repeat efforts, all toward becoming "the most violent team in the nation."

Connection matters just as much - he's learning players individually so he knows when to push and when to ease off. With only eight hours a week, his rule is simple: cut anything that doesn't make them better or bring them closer, and "keep them on the field."

Siena has hired Kevin Rodriguez as its new head strength and conditioning coach, along with assistants Patrick Madden and Dewight Carruth - a trio the school framed as "building the future" of its program.

Rodriguez arrives from four seasons as an assistant performance director at UT Chattanooga, after establishing Delta State's first strength program as its head coach. Madden ran the weight room at Hartwick College, and Carruth handled basketball performance at Grambling, with U.S. military service in his background. Rodriguez's pitch to his new athletes: create a culture where they take pride in the daily work and leave "stronger, more resilient, and more confident."

In a new SimpliFaster piece, former pro soccer player turned S&C coach Troy Cole makes the case for the humble RPE scale as the best budget tool in team sports: multiply a session's minutes by each player's effort (1-10) and you get a free read on internal load. It fixes the usual guesswork - starters and subs needing different work, and the week-long monotony a "high/low" plan breaks up.

But Cole is honest about the mess: getting truthful scores is hard when you're also the trainer and the rehab guy, and a coach can quietly turn a planned RPE-4 recovery day into an RPE-7 grind. His bottom line - RPE only works if you sell coaches and players on the why, and collect it the same way all year.

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