The success or failure of a team is frequently determined by their off-season workout accomplishments. In that regard, ASU is fortunate to have on its staff one of the leading strength and conditioning coaches in the country in Joe Connolly, who was recently named a Master Strength and Conditioning Coach (MSCC) by the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches association (CSCCA).

Yet, aside from setting a personal best in the weight room or exponentially improving one’s conditioning level, Connolly’s impact is also manifested with the guidance that impresses on intangibles that may be hard to quantify yet dictate the mental makeup of any team.

In this extensive interview, Connolly talks about those two aspects and their development in the last several months, what puts ASU on the cutting edge of strength and conditioning technology, as well as, what is on his wish list to advance those capabilities further.

DevilsDigest: As we do this interview just prior to the second summer session, and fall camp is just about a month away, from a strength and conditioning standpoint, does this feel like entering the home homestretch of the year’s bulk of the strength and conditioning program that takes place?

Joe Connolly: “We’re on week five, and we consider that first five-week block summer one. And then all the players that have been here all summer will get down week next week, where we just have open hours, and they can come in if they want to or they can go home. It’s their last little break because the following week, we come back, and then we have three weeks of training leading right into fall camp.”

DevilsDigest: So does the nature of the workouts this time of year require you to take your foot off the gas pedal a little bit, or do you continue to go as hard as you can because once fall camp starts, I have to assume that the whole regimen has to change?

Joe Connolly: “I’ll be honest, we don’t really take our foot off the gas pedal ever until we start practicing in August. It’s full go where guys are going four or five days a week, sometimes even six, when you count all the voluntary work. I’m looking out my window right now, and today’s technically an off day, and we got d-linemen TJ Pesefea and Mike Matus taking them (teammates) through some drills, and they’re on our agility field there. So the guys who are doing some voluntary work are basically doing six days a week.”

DevilsDigest: And when you see players who go through a grueling routine as it is still coming on their day off, going the extra mile, mentoring younger players. I guess that is something that, in your eyes, never gets old and never should be taken for granted?

Joe Connolly: “Absolutely. The summertime is a great time for developing leadership, qualities, and characteristics in setting guys up. It is super important during the calendar year and during the semester giving them the tools and characteristics that they’re going to need to use in the summer, but also then letting them execute that plan in the summer. That is super, super important. I think our guys right now are doing a phenomenal job at that.”

DevilsDigest: On that note, I heard from players just during and after spring practice on how the leadership and chemistry aspects of this team are probably the best they’ve had in the last few years. And this is not to disparage players that aren’t here anymore, regardless of the circumstances that had those former players depart. As somebody who, especially this time of year, has been spending so much time with the players, does the vibe, in terms of the leadership and chemistry, truly feel different than it did even earlier this year, let alone last season?

Joe Connolly: “Yes, I agree 100 percent with the players’ sentiment on that. I think this team has a really good camaraderie and have a really exceptional group of leaders. And, Hod, I don’t know how that will translate to wins and losses on the field. I have no idea. But I will say that the group is really, really gelling. They’re working incredibly hard, both with us and on their own, to be prepared for the season.”

DevilsDigest: Several players not only at ASU but really in most programs around the country have joined join the team through the transfer portal. And more often than not, you’re getting upperclassmen transfers that may not have had a carbon copy strength and conditioning program in their old school but, due to their experience, still know their way around a weight room and at a higher level than a player out of high school. Therefore, with this year’s newcomers, do you find yourself doing less handholding compared to the approach you would have towards newcomers just a couple of years ago?

Joe Connolly: “Different situation, right? The incoming freshmen always think they’re ready, and they know what to expect, and they never do. Because it’s just so different. But an older athlete who’s been through some things and been through a college calendar and a college program, regardless of what that program’s workouts consisted of, are obviously going to be a little further along than a freshman. And I will say that our leadership group and the leaders on the team have done a really good job of setting expectations and standards for those new incoming athletes and getting them up to speed very, very quickly. And that’s a testament to them and, and their hard work in that perspective,”

DevilsDigest: Do you treat those transfer portal guys, assuming they’re upperclassmen, just like a returning player from last year when you decide what their strength and conditioning workload will be?

Joe Connolly: “It also depends on when they came in. So, for example, a transfer that came in in January, or February, or even during the spring is going to be a little further along than somebody that got here in June or July. And then you got to use your eyes, you have to watch them, and essentially they have to learn how to do things our way. They may have a basic idea of some of the different movements and lifts but ultimately, everywhere you go, people do things a little bit differently. So once they get up to speed on that, which doesn’t typically take very long, they’re treated like they would be if they were here their entire career in regards to what block we placed them in.”

DevilsDigest: And even though you are still getting transfers who need to go through the paces etc., you probably see the team get more and more newcomers than any year before who represent the readymade product, from a physical standpoint?

Joe Connolly: “Absolutely. I think that’s correct. You look at years past; we would get maybe one or two grad transfers that maybe had a year or two left to play; I’m thinking about (Stanford offensive lineman transfer) Casey Tucker or somebody like that where they get up to speed quickly and can play immediately. But now, with the transfer portal, you get a handful of them in, and it’ll be a plug-and-play situation come fall. It definitely accelerates your ability to fill a need much quicker than in the past. It still doesn’t mean that we throw development out the window because that’s still super important. But it does allow for a roster to get backfilled with talent relatively quickly.”

DevilsDigest: Speaking of returning players, which ones have you seen the most progress, from January until now?

Joe Connolly: “You know me, I don’t really love to single out individual players. But I will say collectively that, in particular, the defensive unit has made a lot of strides and is really, really coming together. And I think the offensive unit has made more strides here in the last probably five weeks at a rapid pace than any unit I’ve seen since I’ve been here. So that’s a positive too. So I’m really pleased with everybody’s progress and everybody’s development. We’ll see if that hard work translates over. I think it will.”

DevilsDigest: I know that you are always trying to be on the cutting edge of training methods and tools in your area of expertise. But there are probably some old-school aspects of your profession that will never change. In other words, even with all the technology and innovations at your disposal, from a strength and conditioning perspective, you’re not going to train a defensive or offensive lineman now the same way that you train a defensive back or wide receiver. Thus, there are some facets of your job that really are and have to remain etched in stone in every strength and conditioning program?

Joe Connolly: “Yeah, I think so. The barbell has been around for 125 years, and it hasn’t changed once. And it hasn’t got an inch longer. Dumbbells are very similar. So when you combine quality, movement, and hard work together, you’re going to have a good program. Now, obviously, that’s a really simplistic way to look at it. But ultimately, if those two things don’t exist, then the rest of your program isn’t going to be as good. You and I have talked before, and you know how in-depth we go with a lot of different things we use and track that help to gauge where our athletes are. But hard work, consistency, intensity, discipline, all those things they have to be present, or else you’re wasting your time.”

DevilsDigest: Can you put your finger on one innovation or gadget that in the last 12 months has made your life easier as a strength and conditioning coach?

Joe Connolly: “Definitely not in the last 12 months. I just had a call earlier today about compression garments that essentially give you a metric for muscle activation that is woven into the fabric of the garment. So it shows you, for example, if somebody had a hamstring strain or something like that. When an athlete wears the garment, you can tell whether they were favoring that hamstring or not. The innovations are endless, and it’s just like any other technology; it’s constantly evolving. The thing that we do is we test everything, we try everything, and if we think that any new technology will help us, we ask for it. If it fits within our system, then we ask for it. And if we get it, we get it, and if we don’t, we don’t.

“But we have a pretty good basis for some different things that we use. We use the Catapult that we talked about in the past. The GPS we use has been around for 15 years or so. We use a Force Plate, the Nord Board, and we have a bunch of different tools that we use that have been around a little while. Oftentimes, the things that have been around a little while, they have the most data points. They have the most data that you can look at and evaluate and determine basically their worth within your program. So we’re constantly evolving and trying new things. but often times we say. ‘No, we don’t really need to try to incorporate that just yet. It needs a little bit more time or whatever.’ We’re on the cutting edge as far as what we’re doing from a sports science perspective, on a daily basis.”

DevilsDigest: Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute; with all these cutting-edge tools and technology, you now produce an overload of information that can be overwhelming and inadvertently produce the paralysis by analysis element? How fine of a line do you have to walk every day, utilizing all the great information you have at your disposal, but still needing to thoroughly weed out the data that really does or doesn’t matter or maybe even putting some put some information in your back pocket to be used later on when it will be more relevant?

Joe Connolly: “In today’s society, everybody wants the secret sauce, right? They want the magic pill, the magic device, the thing that’s gonna get them there the fastest. And what I do is I look at all those things, and I keep it in perspective. It doesn’t change our philosophies; it doesn’t change the way we go about our business per se. But the metric is essentially that. It’s another tool that can give you some data that can potentially drive decisions or not. And sometimes there are decisions that are made based on those things, and then sometimes there are not. What I see too often is people that go all-in on one specific thing, and then they lose sight of kind of what got them there. Some in the world of strength and conditioning lose sight of that, and they don’t really have a global perspective on the entire system that they have in place.”

DevilsDigest: This generation of players, and society in general, have a strong case of FOMO (fear of missing out). So, do you sometimes experience instances where you try and purposely not to give out too much information to your players, but they might be pushing back and wanting to know more just so they can gain that edge when it comes to the physical element of their game?

Joe Connolly: “Sure, and one of the biggest jobs that I have is education. I have to educate on a daily basis in regards to everything from a performance perspective. So that includes nutrition, sleep, recovery, weight room, and different types of exercises. And then you have different trendy things on social media, and a player would come to me and say, ‘Hey coach, can we try this today?’ Well, no, because that doesn’t fit within our macrocycle. So it doesn’t make any sense to do that. Maybe we’ll put that specific thing in a place that would make sense. It’s always about education first. But yes, there are a lot of times when the athletes don’t even know what we’re doing; we just ask them to execute specific things. And then we’re tracking data and doing different things behind the scenes to help drive some of our programming or some of our practices or some of our schedules. It’s constant, and that’s important.”

DevilsDigest: Hard to imagine that it was a short two years ago when not only sports but our entire world, for that matter, went through hell with the COVID-19 breakout. As challenging as those times were, what are some of the lessons that you were able to implement since then going through such a challenging period, professionally and personally? Furthermore, are these lessons that can pay some dividends and be implemented these days?

Joe Connolly: “The majority of the time, you learn more from a struggle or an uncomfortable situation than you do from feeling really comfortable, happy, and safe. For our team, and for me, personally, the struggle that everybody went through, it was harder for us to do our jobs. So we had to move and adapt constantly, and the players had to do the same thing. And they also learned that a letdown doesn’t necessarily mean that you got to go into the jar, so to speak. You can just turn the page, have a short memory and move on to whatever the next thing is, and that’s really important. That’s part of our society. The struggle that you go through daily, I think, is really important, and a lot of great things have come from that for individuals for and for the team.”

DevilsDigest: In regards to the meat and potatoes of the weight room, have there been any significant additions from when you first got here until now that have greatly aided the player development process or made it more effective?

Joe Connolly: “We’re constantly pushing on a daily basis to try to get more and do more. We’ve added a few racks to our weight room. The turf field that we added outside of our weight room really helps our scheduling and some of our processes. But there are still a few things me and my staff need. I look at it like this, it’s my job to give the decision-makers the information, and then it’s their job to decide. I have a small staff in comparison to some other programs, and that needs to change. We talked about all that data we get, and that’s a huge, huge time taker for us every day. Having a dedicated sports scientist under our umbrella would be would be tremendous.

“That’s not to say that we’re not doing as good of a job as we possibly can without that, but that would help clear up some time for us. And then also a dedicated registered dietitian (RD) that would help us as well, from a football perspective, and there are a lot of programs in the country that have that. In 2012, when I was in South Carolina, I hired Joey Blake, who’s actually the head dietician for the Los Angeles Rams, and he’s been there for four or five years. And at the time, we were the first program in the country to have a football-only RD, and now just about everybody does. And things like that would move the needle for us. We manage all that stuff daily, and I think we do a damn good job of it. But having some more bandwidth and some more people to lighten the load on us that would definitely help us out. That’s something that I talk with people about on a daily basis, and it’s part of the process for us.”

DevilsDigest: Is there anything on the near horizon that is a bit closer to implementation? An aspect that maybe does not move the needle immediately but at least helps make some significant strides in the right direction?

Joe Connolly: “I don’t know the answer to that. I wish I did. The other thing Hod that has been challenging for us and will continue to be a challenge for us until something changes is our ability to have to travel to our practice fields and our bubble. That’s a struggle for us. We cannot use the game field, obviously, because they want to keep that in pristine condition and make sure it’s ready. And I understand that. We’ve had some challenges with all the construction (on-campus). Logistically, that’s a little bit of a problem for us when you have to move 120 guys, even if it’s just a couple of blocks away. It takes a lot of time; it takes the athletes time. It takes our time moving equipment and getting set up and then making sure everybody’s there and making sure there’s parking. It was a financial challenge for us in the beginning because we were actually busing over there, which was costing a little bit of money every single day. And now the athletes can go over there on their own, but we have to make sure there’s parking. So I’m hoping I’m here to see the practice fields (constructed) right out front of the weight room and maybe even have an indoor facility over there because that sort of thing would be a game-changer.”

DevilsDigest: You talked about how in your opinion, how the leadership of this team has sincerely kicked up a few notches compared to the last couple of years, as the chemistry and the camaraderie greatly improved as well. Are these elements even more important these days, keeping the team in the proverbial bubble as much as possible? We talked about a generation that tries to consume as much information as possible, yet on the other hand, is there something to be said about trying even harder this year to keep your nose to the grind, which can at least give yourself a chance to be in a successful position for the 2022 season?

Joe Connolly: “I think that with the smartphone and with social media, it’s kind of impossible to truly be in the bubble. But what our leaders have done an exceptional job of is to educate the players on the front end about what that is like and how to handle those sorts of things. And I think that our leaders and our team have done an incredible job of dealing with expectations and dealing with the quote unquote noise, and putting that aside and understanding that it really doesn’t mean anything for what our goals are and what we’re trying to accomplish. And so, if we can continue to have that mindset and not get distracted by noise, opinions or whatever, I think we’ll be just fine.”

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