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Good morning. How Notre Dame sets a weight target for every player on its roster, what a college S&C coach wishes every recruit knew before arriving on campus, and how a Mariners coach turned his own lowest point into the way he changes players' careers. Let's get into it.
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Notre Dame director of football performance Loren Landow detailed the program's player-by-player approach to setting weight goals across its 113-man roster. "It's fluid," Landow said, noting his staff sets realistic ranges by position, age and developmental level, and watches a dropping vertical jump as one early proxy that added mass is hurting performance.
Landow, named the NSCA's 2026 Impact Award recipient Friday, prioritizes lean body mass over raw size. Transfer defensive tackle Tionne Gray is voluntarily cutting from 330 toward 315-320 to add "finesse" and play more downs.
Trinity Western University head S&C coach Cole Hergott laid out the habits high school athletes should build before arriving on campus, arguing too many freshmen show up unprepared and the gap is often mental or maturity, not physical.
The habits:
Time management: a consistent weekly schedule is "the single greatest life hack" for a student-athlete
Use your resources: lean on your S&C coach early, who can start developing committed athletes 6-12 months out
Attack weaknesses: strength is "the tide that raises all boats" for most young athletes
Recover better: 8+ hours of sleep, ~1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight, 3+ liters of water daily
Work hard: everyone at this level is talented, so work ethic is what separates
In a new Seattle Times feature, Mariners mental performance coach Adam Bernero discussed how he turned his own crisis into his coaching method. A former MLB pitcher whose career ended after two elbow surgeries, Bernero lost five years to depression and, in 2010, contemplated suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge before stepping back.
He later earned a sports psychology master's and joined Seattle in 2019, and now works with pitchers including Logan Gilbert, George Kirby and Bryce Miller on visualization, breath work and process over perfection. Miller credited Bernero's third-person visualization for his calm in a 2025 ALCS Game 1 win.
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