My Journey Through Strength and Conditioning and Sport Science

Splish, Splash, Clean up your entry.

I'll never forget the day I walked onto the deck at Egg Harbor Township's HS pool; furious fluttering filled the natatorium as swimmers churned up and down the lanes. The continuous paddling was silenced by the knocking of a diving board as an athlete was flung into the air and performed a front 1.5 summersault with a full twist and pierced the water. It was at this moment I changed my mind to pursue diving over swimming as a sport. Fast forwarding a couple of years out coach began to set up lagged film so we were able to do a rep, walk to the tv and watch what we did. Being able to look at each rep frame by frame to understand how movement sequences can create compounded error or success. I did not know then that this tool would be so impactful to my later career as a coach and sport scientist. While my passion for the field was not necessarily generated as a diver, the sport did lead me to attend West Chester University to compete and study Exercise Science

Stumbling upon an High Performance Environment | Cadence Cycling and Multisport

Place yourself in a scenario where you walk into a brick and mortar shop and a support center that encapsulates every aspect of your sport performance: coaching, physiological and biomechanical analysis, nutrition, equipment maintenance, and sales. A

storefront that could meet athletes where they were, an enthusiast or a world champion, and surround them a support network that destined the athlete for success. I interned at Cadence Cycling and Multisport and instantly was infatuated with their business model, turns out it was basically what we consider a High Performance model in sport today.

The staff of this shop was diverse and humble, each member had a passion related to optimizing performance, a mechanic who optimized wheel stiffness and resilience, a mechanic who obsessed on hardware that improved efficiency, bicycle fitters who specialized in aerodynamics or unique anatomies, coaches specialized in testing and prescription, and coaches that specialized on prescription and race preparation. This collection of individuals were bound together by a passion for cycling and bringing other joy and fulfillment on two wheels.

During my internship and the following three years I transitioned from a intern to a generalist, from a person who absorbed as much as I could, to a person who explored as much as I could. With exploration I found myself migrating towards all aspects of the team that revolves around experience, performance and numbers. Any skepticism I had when I had started on ability to map out training responses based on several months training had melted, and I became the data crazed endurance athlete. And I was ready to learn more.

Doctorate: The quest to learn more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing.

If I tried to give enough praise for the individuals I met and who had mentored me during my journey at East Tennessee State University., you would surely quit reading this post. One individual stands out beyond the rest for their friendship and mentorship at ETSU, John Wagle, if you do not follow him yet, you'll want to here., a mastermind in situational awareness and management, beyond that his wisdom spans the spectrum of lab-grade to boots

on the field. During my time at ETSU my experiences were filled with supporting the Olympic Weight room with direct interactions with Softball, Volleyball, Triathlon, XC, and ROTC. Beyond NCAA D1 teams ETSU hosted a Olympic Training Site, of which I was honored to assist Brad DeWeese in the training and monitoring of a group of elite athletes comprised of professional athletes and Olympians. Here I was exposed to how granular you could monitor athletes, and how to practically monitor athlete while managing coach and athlete expectations.

If you wondering more about the monitoring process; the toolbox was comprised of force-plates, force-plate treadmill, near-infrared spectroscopy (MOXY), hydration assessment (specific gravity), metabolic carts (Parvo-Medics TrueOne 2400), cycle ergometer (VeloTron) and more. While having all the toys is super exciting, the fun really began when you realize how to develop scenarios to optimize data collection without disrupting the training process.

As my time came to an end at ETSU, I defended my dissertation in which I investigated Muscle Oxygenation Kinetics in response to Repeat Sprint Cycling, and compared the differences between strong and weak individuals.... in case you were wondering strength encourages utilization and recovery, read more here

Play Ball, The Chicago Cubs

In 2020, moments before lockdowns struck the world, and moments after I had defended my dissertation, received several calls that changed my life drastically. Within a week I moved to Phoenix AZ to join a team led by Adam Beard and Cory Kennedy. I currently am in my fourth year and have been fortunate to experience many different roles. Strength and Conditioning Coach AZL, Strength and Conditioning Coach + Performance Science, S&C at High-A South Bend. S&C Double AA Tennessee, and currently Baseball Scientist within R&D. With the Cubs my responsibilities have included serving as a S&C coach at multiple affiliates, leading High Performance camps in the Dominican Republic, managing workload and physical performance data flows, developing reports and delivering actionable intel, and investigating novel assessment protocols and technologies for accuracy, reliability and value.