Strength and Conditioning
Meet the Staff:
Dr. Season Graves - Assistant AD, Health & Human Performance
Jesse Radil, CSCS - Head Strength and Conditioning Coach
Mara Vidal Moreno - Graduate Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach
Gabriel Cordoba, CSCS - Graduate Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach
Important Information:
Coaches Information
Athlete Information
Weight Room Expectations
Newsletter
Strength and Conditioning Philosophy:
CU Strength and Conditioning strives to be a program that prepares athletes of character who excel on the playing field, are resistant to injury, and who continue to lead healthy, active lives after collegiate sports. We aim to provide specific strength & conditioning programs for each sport in accordance to the physiological demands of the sport and the individual needs of the athlete. We seek to guide student-athletes to establish healthy lifestyle habits that help them to be successful in their sport and in life after competition. We are committed to creating a culture that fosters responsibility, effort, respect, community, curiosity, confidence, and competitive excellence.
Program Objectives:
- Enhance Athletic Performance – Use research based methods to develop strength, power, speed, agility, mobility, conditioning, and body composition to increase sport-specific performance.
- Improve Injury Resilience – Work alongside the Sports Medicine staff to:
- Proactively focus on athlete weaknesses through strength development and increasing movement efficiency to limit the risk of injury.
- Return injured athletes to competition as soon and as safe as possible.
- Encourage Character Building – Push athletes through physical and mental challenges to give them the problem solving skills and confidence to compete at a high level and face adversity.
- Prepare for Life – Uphold each athlete to high standards based on positivity, effort, respect, integrity, responsibility, accountability, and community. Teach an understanding of nutrition that can be used to improve sport performance and quality of life.
Core Values:
- Responsibility - Encouraging athletes to take ownership of their training, nutrition, lifestyle habits, attitudes, & actions to make the best of themselves.
- Effort - Having an "I can" attitude and putting forth your best with intent and focus every day.
- Respect - Treating everyone with value, in and outside of sport.
- Community - Striving to provide support, accountability, and value to teammates, the athletic department, campus, and the community at large.
- Curiosity & Learning - Encouraging student-athletes to ask questions and helping them discover solutions through movement, creativity, conversation, and education.
Training Principles:
- Move efficiently in all planes of movement – Be able to move efficiently and develop strength & explosiveness in the sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes to augment sports performance and injury resilience.
- Balanced Development – Athletes routinely expose their bodies to risk of injury. We train to limit imbalances by training the whole-body using researched-based methods and variation in training throughout the year.
- Systematic Progression – If exercise continues at the same level, the body will stay at the same level. Therefore, a systematic progression to continue stressing the body past its current capacity is needed to continually increase performance.
- Train Explosively – Once a foundation of strength is established, train explosively to increase power and rate of force production in ways that translate to skills of each sport.
- Specificity – Every sport & position consists of different skills & levels of energy system usage. Strength & conditioning programs are designed in a way to create as much transfer to sport as possible while also addressing gaps in sport training that may expose the athlete to injury.
- Periodization – Training variables are carefully planned and adjusted throughout the year in accordance to each team's season in order to peak for competition.
