University of Pittsburgh assistant strength & conditioning coach Freddie Walker was a presenter at the 2017 IYCA Summit and is one of 17 authors in the new Principles of Athletic Strength & Conditioning book. Coach Walker has been a college strength coach for several years, but he also has a background working with young athletes. Freddie spent two years working in high schools and with athletes as young as eight years old. In his current position, he has worked with multiple NFL draft picks and some of the finest athletes in the world. All of this experience gives him a unique perspective on athletic development.
In the video below, Coach Walker gives us a tour of the Pitt strength & conditioning facility and talks about how they create and organize their athletic development programs. Getting a behind-the-scenes look at how top programs like this are organized can help high school and youth coaches learn how to organize their programs in the most efficient manner possible.
One of the most interesting and important things he says in the video is “We’re not weightlifting coaches or training power lifters. Our guys are not here on a weight lifting scholarship, they’re here on a football scholarship. So, everything we do is always geared toward what they need for football.”
This through process is sometimes missed by coaches who are enamored by numbers or who believe their training program is more important that the actual sport. None of this means that you should train young athletes the same way Freddie Walker trains his athletes, but listening to top professionals discuss their programs can always teach you something.
Coach Freddie Walker authored a chapter on Athletic Assessments in the IYCA Principles of Athletic Strength & Conditioning book. Click on the image below to pre-order your copy today – available only to the IYCA community.
