We sat down with ASU’s first-year strength and conditioning coach Joe Connolly to discuss his training philosophy, interaction with players and coaches and what are the recruiting benefits his program has.

DevilsDigest: Let’s talk about your journey to ASU. What brought you here?

Joe Connolly: “Well, this particular job, with any job in college football, a lot of times, it’s word of mouth. That’s what brought me here. I was lucky enough to be part of the interview process. I think coach Edwards and I hit it off pretty well during the interview and 24 hours later the job was offered. So, that’s kind of the short story but yeah, it’s been, just like any job change, it’s quick and you have to kind of get up and go. I told my wife, we made the decision together and away I went. She stayed, packed up everything and we were working and she’s finally out here now so it’s been good.”

DD: My understanding is that you know Joe Kenn who used to work at ASU some 12 or so years ago, very well. Did that help the hiring process, not only just getting the interview but also knowing what you’re getting into?

JC: “Sure. I’m very close with Joe Kenn, he’s a mentor of mine. I know Ben Hillcrest really well, Josh Storms, guys who have been here. That was great. They say this world isn’t a big world, it’s kind of a smaller fraternity so we know each other pretty well and certainly if I have any questions about stuff they are people I lean on in particular, just really about the area because every situation is different with head coaches and administrators, the way things are organized.”

DD: Did you have any impressions or preconceptions of what ASU was looking from afar?

JC: “Honestly I always thought Arizona State was a sleeping giant because of where it is and the proximity to really fertile recruiting grounds. It hasn’t been a giant yet but that’s our job and that’s our plan, to make it something special.”

DD: There’s really no such thing anymore as an offseason and I would have to think, that this period between May and fall camp in August is probably the most important strength and conditioning phase of the year-round training. What makes this phase more important than the winter or in-season period?

JC: “They’re all important and they all have their purpose. Certainly having a purpose for each of those phases is the most important thing. What you can’t do is just recycle what you did in the winter or the summer or recycle what you did from last year to this year. You can’t do that.

“So, to me, regardless of what time of year or what phase it is, the athletes dictate the program, as far as what types of things you’re doing. What they need is what we need to provide, not what we want them to do is different from what they actually need physically and mentally and emotionally and all those things because ultimately they are the ones who go and play on Saturday. Summer time, obviously, there’s a closer proximity to football, real games. That’s what kind of gives it a little bit of an extra emphasis. Also, the nice thing is we’re not inundated with academics during the summer so you can spend some more time on their own working on their craft and being able to help them do that is all part of our process.”

DD: In your experience, is there usually a correlation between somebody having a monster January through July strength and conditioning sessions and then, August through December, performing at a high level?

JC: “Absolutely. There’s no doubt about it. I think that what coach Edwards and the staff and myself and my staff are trying to preach is that, every single day, every rep of every exercise of every drill, every one of those matters. It’s like putting money in the bank. It matters, every dollar, every rep, everything matters and it all adds up to ultimately what you are in the fall.

“It’s the same thing I tell recruits when they get here. I’m not going to say, ‘Hey we are going to train for eight weeks.’ You have to do what we are asking you to do right now in this moment today this very second and then you have to go on to the next thing and the next thing because, especially with the young guys, they’ll be like, ‘Whoa. I have to do what? I have to train for how long? I have to train for this many weeks?’ You can get overwhelmed. If you just focus on the moment in the now, it makes a big difference.”

DD: The common football fan might not know that strength and conditioning coaches actually end up spending more time with the players than a head coach or the position players do. Being in your first year with a program, does that make the transition more challenging or easier?

JC: “I think it makes it an easier transition for me because I see them every day. I get an idea of who they are quicker because I see them more. To be honest, that’s important for me and my staff because ultimately the relationship we have with them is what’s going to fuel what we’re building. Once we know what makes them tick, how they’re motivated, how they react to certain situations, we can refine that and make sure we are getting the most out of them every day.”

DD: I loved your quote when you got here about the weight room smelling ‘a little too clean.’ But how does this weight room really stack up to other college football weight rooms out there?

JC: “It’s fantastic. This whole facility is really tremendous. A lot of money was spent on it and we have a one-stop shop which is great. We have an unbelievable nutritional situation here. Before the guys even get to the locker room they have two full opportunities to grab something. They’ve got the fueling station in here in the weight room, they have one upstairs in the locker room and when they’re done showering they have a huge cafeteria weight training table to go eat, so that’s great. That’s phenomenal. Everything’s upstairs. Everything’s big and beautiful and technology is here and it’s been really good. I think we are working on getting some (practice) turf right out here (scheduled to be completed next year), which will help us out a lot. Once we got that, to me, it’s the best facility in the country.”

DD: It sounds like you’re the type of coach that welcomes input from the players, especially the veteran players, those who have been there, done that. How should that dynamic work in your opinion?

JC: “First and foremost, it’s got to be fun. It’s got to be something they’re enjoying doing, regardless of what the exercise is or drill is. Once you have that mutual respect, I think it makes it a lot easier because even if you are asking them to do something that’s extremely difficult, they’re going to do it because they know it’s helping them. Once you explain to them the ‘why’, for me that’s really important. What’s the why? You can go out and do bicep curls every day because you want bigger biceps. But OK, is that really going to get you bigger biceps? Let’s delve into the 'why' as to what you’re doing.

“So everything we do has a purpose. I try to communicate that with the players, all the players, so that there is no questioning, there is no second guessing what it is we’re doing. You get a lot of buy-ins that way. We have a leadership panel. Coach Edwards has developed that. I think it’s a fantastic model we have. Those guys, those leaders, make a lot of the decisions that go on day-to-day that they can. There’s a give and a take to it and I think that’s important. There’s not one brain in charge of this whole thing. We’re all in this thing together. I think the players understand that from me and my staff and coach Edwards and all the position coaches. I think it’s a good quality situation to get the most out of them.”

DD: Talking to some of the players, asking what’s different about the strength and conditioning program under Joe Connolly, they said that we have a coach that can just get on the weight rack and show you what you need to do and have you learn that way. I got to think it’s something you take a lot of pride in, teaching by example and enhance the learning process…

JC: “Yeah. You look at how young men learn, a lot of these guys are visual learners. I’m actually going to explain it, then I’m going to demonstrate it exactly how I want it done. Sometimes they’ll get it, sometimes they don’t and then we try again and we try again. Demonstrating being proficient in all the lifts, it’s something for me that I’ve always been taught. My mentors have always taught me that it’s important and I try to convey that to my staff and the interns that we have that we’re trying to develop and there’s never a perfect rep in here from a technique standpoint. If you’re not using great technique in here, those movements patterns are just repeated in practice the wrong way and the same thing is going to carry over to the field.

“Every rep we do in here, no matter who it is, there are cues, there are corrections. Sometimes the guys go, ‘Coach, you’ve always got something to say.’ And I say, ‘Well, there is always something that can be better.’ For me personally, I tell recruits the same thing. I will never ask anybody to do anything I haven’t already tried or haven’t already done or my staff hasn’t already done. No matter what we’re doing, we’ve tried it out on ourselves. I think that’s important. When I’m programming for the offseason and I’m writing the program, I’m doing it. I’m going out on the floor, I’m testing things out. I’m still trying to stay in the game so to speak.”

DD: Do you find yourself being more hands-off when it comes to the veteran players that you see in here every day and know if this guy has it and my hands-on level should be minimal compared to a newcomer?

JC: “I think when you come in here you are going to get coached hard no matter what. That to me is important. A guy like Jay Jay Wilson who has been so good for us, you might think he doesn’t need quite as much refining but to be perfectly frank, it’s year one. They are still learning how to do it all the way. I don’t see that changing. I just think that’s kinda how we are as a staff and how I am. There’s always room for improvement and we can always get better. Whether you’re a fifth-year senior or a freshman coming in, there’s a lot of things we can do to get better.”

DD: Is there a process that takes place where you talk to coach Edwards or the coordinators and they say, ‘I want my offensive and defensive linemen or my wide receivers to have this body type, etc.?’

JC: “The communication with the coordinators and the position coaches and coach Edwards is daily, ongoing. All the way from recruiting, all the way through graduation for that student-athlete. I’ve been places where it wasn’t that way. Here, it is and it’s a better situation because of it.

“We see the film on a young man we are trying to bring in, I may be up there (asking) ‘how does he move? How does he bend?’ That’s my expertise is movement and the physical attributes. Get a guy in and just talking about his frame. How are his shoulders, his hips? What does he look like? And then, obviously, when they get in here, how are they progressing. Through the program?

“The nice thing here is that we’re not in a rush to do anything as far as changes. We let them happen naturally. You can’t rush strength and you can’t rush physical changes, body composition-wise. It just doesn’t work. But with sound training and consistent training over time, you get a lot of great results. Body weight is extremely important. We have criteria we like to keep guys in. With a new coaching staff in some new positions, we’re still trying to plug in the types of body types we want. So there has been some guys who have had to change some things, Jay Jay being one of them. He’s been up to 270 (pounds) at one point, he’s down to 235 right now. He’s also played three different positions in his time here. So there’s a lot of refinement to those nuances to get guys to do that but get them to do it the right way.

“I always talk about the 22 hours: So they are in here for two hours a day most of the time in the offseason. They have 22 hours in a day to either help that or hurt it. If your 22 hours are hurting what you are doing in here, it might as well not even count because that 22 hours is going to overwhelm the two hours every time. Can’t out-train a bad diet. If you’re not sleeping right, you’re not doing the right things outside of this building, you are not going to get where you want to get. So all those little educational pieces help those changes occur faster and more fluid and that’s all part of that process for sure.”

DD: Would it be fair to say that, just the general directive you are getting regarding linemen on both sides of the ball is generally to be leaner and quicker?

JC: “I don’t like to use the term ‘lean’, in particular for an offensive lineman or a defensive lineman because if you look at the NFL, nobody is lean that plays O-line. That term is for something else. We want them to be as powerful and as strong as possible while being as quick as possible while being as conditioned as possible, so being able to repeat that over time.

“Whatever body composition type that they’re genetically pre-dispositioned to have, we can alter to a certain degree in different directions. But ultimately you only get this certain window of where you need to be and you need to find that sweet spot. So that’s what we try to do. We try to find the sweet spot for body composition. A guy like (defensive lineman) Renell Wren or Jalen Bates is going to be a little leaner than a guy like (offensive lineman) Steve Miller. They play different positions; the positions require different things. Are we trying to get Steve as much muscle mass as possible while maintaining his quickness and ability to play his position? Of course.”

DD: Who are the players who’ve emerged as leaders on the ‘Leadership Council’ you mentioned?

JC: “The reason I can’t tell you is because I heard Coach Edwards talking about (to a reporter) and he said, ‘I can’t tell you,’. But I’m glad I heard him say that because I probably would’ve spilled the beans on it because he didn’t want it out there. (smile)

“But you can probably take a pretty good guess. They’ve been great. Coach Edwards has given them a great voice. They’re doing a great job and they’ve bought into what we are trying to do right from January, right when I got here. When I got here, half the position coaches weren’t even here yet. It was coach Edwards and a few other coaches and they were making some hires and getting a staff together and the athletes, the guys came in and we clapped it up on that first day and we blew the whistle and I said, ‘Okay. Here’s what we got,’ and we rolled and they’ve done a good job, they haven’t looked back so it’s been good.”

DD: When it comes to approaching the newcomers, they’re naturally a totally different story. They have a program they have to follow from the day they sign with Arizona State until the day they arrive on campus. Is your plan just trying to ease them into it and then once they get to campus, everything ramps up or are you trying not to challenge them while they are still at home working out or here on campus?

JC: “We send them a manual and a video and I can converse with them once they’ve signed. That’s great. It’s really about slow cooking. You can’t rush strength and people don’t understand how important the technique of these lifts are. If you do it wrong, you may not see the negative result right away but you’re going to see it eventually. That manual they get is really simple. It’s a lot of just relative strength, meaning bodyweight strength, being able to move in space. When they get here, they learn how to lift our way. All the lifts in a progression, it flows, it makes sense. Typically, we teach them things in pieces before they actually do the whole movement, understand what positions to be in, where the spine needs to be, where the hips need to be, shoulder and core and how to engage all those things.

“We use a block system so it’s based training age. Over the years, you just can’t train a 17- or 18-year-old the same way you train a 22-, 23- or 24-year-old. It doesn’t work. They’re just different. In order to continually get improvement throughout a career, whether it’s three, four, five, six years, you have to change that adaptation, you have to change what you’re doing. The body is smart. It learns quickly what you’re doing to it and then it adapts and then there’s not an adaptation anymore so you have to change things. Every year, when these guys walk in January, it’s different. Every year is different. To me, that helps me gauge improvement. Are our seniors continuing to improve? If you do the same thing for four years, same program, they’re not going to. You have to change things up. So that’s one of the many markers we use to see if what we’re doing is working: Are our seniors improving?”

DD: So it’s fair to say that a true freshman that comes here in June will never work with a sophomore or older until that true freshman himself becomes a sophomore or can they still be same time in the weight room just doing different stuff? What’s your philosophy?

JC: “They’re evaluated. They’ll spend a short amount of time or a longer amount of time in that developmental program depending on where they are. They’re in here the same time everybody else is in here. That’s one thing I don’t (do). I do not separate those guys from the team because they need to understand… I want them looking down that rack and going, ‘Holy crap. What’s going on down there? Those guys are strong, they’re moving big weights, they’re moving things fast, look at all those complex movements they’re doing. They’re doing all this cool stuff. Man I want to get there,’ because that’s the graduation effect of those things. Graduation from one block to the next.

“Sometimes they get frustrated, (saying), ‘Why am I down here?’ Well, because you don’t know how to do this right yet and that’s okay, we’re going to get there. But they’re in here when everybody else is in here. When we’re running, they’re running with us. They’re with their team. I know there’s a lot of different ways to skin the cat and I know some programs throughout the country do five, six groups a day. We don’t. We do two (groups). I like big groups. I like the energy. I like the music cranked up. I like it loud. I like it intense. I feel like we can coach that way just as well as we can coach in six or seven different groups throughout the day and you still get that energy and that intensity that you need to bring out the best in the athletes.”

DD: Let’s talk about the Arizona climate, one you’re experiencing for the first time. Is this really a non-issue when it comes to strength and conditioning? You have this tremendous facility; you have the dome. From your point of view, are there any challenges at all?

JC: “Well, I’m lucky. I spent seven years in Columbia, South Carolina. The slogan on the license plate is ‘famously hot.’ The difference being, it’s 98 percent humidity every day. Everybody is like, ‘heat is heat.’ No it’s not. It’s not the same.

“I would take this, 115 degrees here (in Tempe) over 100 there (in Columbia) any day of the week. It’s fantastic. Now, do you have to be mindful of what you’re doing, what times of day you are doing it, how you progress and acclimate the athletes to this heat? Of course, you have to be smart with that, how your hydration is. Obviously, those things are extremely important and we delve pretty deep into that here. That sports medicine staff has had a lot of experience with that; they are here already so I lean on them quite a bit.

“But Coach Edwards has made no bones about it. We’re going to be outside. Our groups on Monday and Thursday are on the practice field. They’re not in the bubble all summer long. As we get closer to camp, we’re going to be out there even more. It’s (during) the first half of the day. We’re done at noon so that certainly helps.

“But we play in it, we live in it, we practice in it. We have to be in it. It’s funny: coach Edwards was talking to the team and he said, ‘How many of you guys went to high school in Arizona?’ and a bunch of guys raise their hand. ‘How many of you guys had a bubble?’ Nobody raised their hand. ‘What time did you guys practice?’ (They answered) three o’clock, four o’clock. ‘Alright, well we’re going to be outside.’ The guys were like, ‘Oh man.’ But they realize the reason for it. There’s a reason for it. It’s nothing they’re not used to. If we get a kid from New Jersey, Frank (Darby), we’ve got to make sure Frank is good (smile), Frank is acclimated but it’s, you know…”

DD: Do you review game film or even practice film, and do you do so with the position coaches? Are you concentrating on totally different aspects I’m assuming than what a position coach would?

JC: “Typically, I don’t watch practice film unless there’s an injury that’s occurred or something like that. What we do is we are evaluating our GPS systems, our Catapult, so what we do is sync that software system up with the timeline of practice so we have an idea of when periods start and stop and what guys are doing. So we’re in it as far as that’s concerned. As far as coaching the nuances of the positions or anything like that, no. I’m not involved with that. Game film, unless coach needs me to watch something that he thinks is important for me to convey down here, we are looking at the Catapult data, we are looking at GPS data, looking at the heart rates. We are looking at things like that and looking at it through a different lens so we can convey that to the coaches so that they have a greater understanding of what’s actually going on physiologically during practice.”

DD: So you said a typical training session is just about two hours. So when you have the groups, is it offense and defense, or a mix?

JC: “Right now, we’ve been going offense, defense. We do team runs. So there are two days a week where it’s just offense, defense where we do some sort of speed, agility, quickness, run for an hour and then an hour of lift following that. That’s Monday and Thursday. Tuesday and Friday for most of the summer, we do a team run in the morning where everyone is there and then we do two lift groups in the afternoon to give them a little break. Those are our heavy conditioning days where they do actually need some time off in order for us to get what we need out of them in the weight room. Then Friday, similar to Tuesday. Wednesday being an extra day. Saturday being an extra day.”

DD: With the developed nutrition department, do you and the nutritionist have daily or often contact?

JC: “It’s great. Amber (Yudell, ASU’s nutrition director) does a great job and she’s got a tough job. She’s the RD (registered dietitian) for this entire athletic department so every student-athlete is under her view, which is tough. So the communication has to be on-point. She meets with us weekly but we talk daily about individuals, about different options, nutritionally, about menus, about different things we think we can do to help the different athletes at different times. Nutrient timing, caloric intake, body composition, all those things. That’s all part of the process.”

DD: So if a player is injured, you’re not going to push them just to push them. However, at the same time, the days of an injured player doing close to nothing strength and conditioning wise or just agility and what not, those days are over. Is that sometimes a hard balance?

JC: “The biggest thing for injury recovery is movement and blood flow, depending on the injury of course. But a lot of research suggests if you have a knee injury on your left knee and you’re doing single-leg squats on your right, your body knows the difference. You have to move and you have to train. There’s a progression to that based on our doctors’ protocols depending on the injury. But I told one guy this spring that if he was in a full body cast, he would be doing eyelid raises because you have to do something. There is no time to do nothing. That doesn’t happen. There’s no way.”

DD: I know the last few years, yoga has become popular for some football players. What’s your view on that?

JC: “If they are going to do yoga they have to do it intelligently. The nature of football, the nature of the demands of the sport and the nature of yoga are at two completely different opposite ends of the spectrum.

“So if you are going to do yoga every day, you would not be as good of a football player. That’s a fact. Any yoga instructor that tells you differently, they don’t understand the demands of football. I’m probably going to tick off every yoga instructor on the planet. Flexibility is inherently genetic. It can be improved to a certain extent but really what we focus on is not the static flexibility, like yoga, but mobility. Being able to move your joints throughout a full range of motion. Movement trumps anything static any day of the week.

“So, do I think there is a place for yoga from a central nervous system relaxation standpoint? From a recovery standpoint? Just being and turning everything off? What you see a lot of times in college athletics, in general, is that they’re constantly going. So much ‘all’ and not enough ‘nothing’ and the human body was built to have an ebb and a flow between two different systems. So there has to be a relaxation sometimes, where I think yoga is important for that or just meditation or mindfulness in general and then what we do, which is ‘all’, intense, high-energy, a lot of hormonal responses. There’s not a lot of turning it off. A lot of that stuff we utilize. (We have) different apps where doing body scans and turning your mind off and being able to calm down maybe before bed to help facilitate sleep, things like that. Doing some very nice and easy static stretching before bed to calm down - excellent. There’s some benefit to that.

“But, you know, (if) you’re in the middle of a squat set and you’re doing a static stretch, it doesn’t work that way. There’s a time and a place for everything and I think that having the knowledge, the scientific knowledge of how the body works and not being jaded by one thing or another is extremely important. For me, educating the athletes on that, extremely important. If I want to be as elastic and quick as possible, I’m not going to do yoga and then go run a 40 (yard dash). I may do yoga before to calm down and relax but I’m gonna ramp things up before I do that because that’s how the body works.”

DD: In general, how do you stay involved and not stagnant? Is it by the workouts you do or even getting ideas outside of the box?

JC: “I read a ton. I read a lot of different books. I read books on leadership. I read books on business. I read books on exercise physiology, sports performance, Olympic lifting, powerlifting, strongman, football, position-specific drills. I’m reading a book on salt right now. I’m also reading a book on sleep right now. Podcasts. Once you think you know it all, it’s over for you.

“Every time I write a program, it’s different because of things I’ve learned. I go to conferences, I have a good network of friends in the business I can talk to, both in collegiate, in the NFL and in private. Me and my staff, we have continuing education where we go up and bring different things to the table and we talk about how it can benefit us. You have to stay on the cutting edge in today’s sports performance world because everything is constantly changing with the advent of technology. Different ways to develop or get data points on different things we are trying to create.

“I think what we do a good job of is identifying what we’re going to use, what we are actually going to use and what is going to benefit us and what’s just collecting data to collect data. I’ve done this myself: You have all of these different technologies you use but you’re not actually using any of them for anything. You’re not helping your athletes with it. You are just collecting data to collect data but you don’t know what to do with it. You’re collecting sleep data, you’re collecting hydration data, you’re collecting neuromuscular data. You’re collecting volumes and intensities and high-speed running and all these heart rate (measurements) and variability and all these different things. But you’re not utilizing any one of them optimally. So for us, weeding through all of that and figuring out what we’re actually going to use and what our athletes are actually going to use and benefit from, that’s important. And then getting really good at that.”

DD: What, in your opinion, should attract or improve recruits from a strength and conditioning perspective to come to ASU?

JC: “I think that they’re going to get a unique training environment. More unique than any other school in the Pac-12 in particular, and any other school in the country.

“I’ve been a lot of different places, trained a lot of different athletes and I think the way we train, the way we program is different. Utilizing that block system. Utilizing neuro-typing for different types of training. Understanding that every athlete is different and it’s our job to figure out the best way to intertwine all those things into a sound program that’s as tense as can be and as consistent as can be over time. I don’t know anybody else that’s doing it that way.

“We’re utilizing a lot of different things but more importantly, if you want to judge us – I tell all the recruits the same thing – ask the athletes, don’t ask me. I’m going to tell you one thing but if you really want to know about me and my staff and what we’re doing, ask those guys that are in the room. Ask those guys. Because they are going to tell you. I’ve never been one that judges myself on anything other than what those guys are saying and what we’re doing. Are they getting better? They’re the ones that know it. In their heart of hearts, they really know it: Are they getting better or are they not? Is it carrying over to the field or is it not?”

DD: What do you want to see at the end of the summer conditioning program to feel that this has been a successful phase?

JC: “I think that what I’d like to see is this entire group, top to bottom, operating on all cylinders and collectively completely bought into one goal and one mission. Coach Edwards gives us the direction on that and we sound that with a loudspeaker. We are coach Edwards’ loudspeaker. He’s fantastic in that he gives us a voice and an outlet to help him create that and once we get that, once we get that belief, then there is no team that can beat us. I truly believe that there’s no team that can beat us and we’ve got something special. It’s not easy to accomplish and honestly, once you have that, it doesn’t matter what your talent is. I’ve seen it over the years: When everybody believes and everybody is all in for the guy to the right and to the left of them, you can beat anybody on any given day. That would be nice.”

Note: Jack Harris assisted with this article