Ethan Reeve is the Director of Strength and Conditioning at Wake Forest University. He has been involved as a strength and conditioning coach for fifteen years. He was a was a two-time NCAA All-American and four-time Southeastern Conference Champion wrestler at the University of Tennessee. In 1995, Reeve became the head strength and conditioning coach at Ohio University. In 2001, he was hired at Wake Forest in the same position.
Although I don’t know Ethan Reeve personally, I have heard much about him and have actually gotten to eat with him at an NSCCA conference several years ago. I soaked up a lot of information at that meal and was very impressed. Not only does he know his stuff, he is also a very intense person. He did us a favor and filled out a coaching survey and I had the pleasure of talking with him on the phone. While some of his ideas may run counter to some you believe in and what are stressed by other coaches, it is fairly obvious that Ethan Reeve knows how to be a strength and conditioning coach.
EFS: Thank you for doing this interview. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule.
Ethan: You’re welcome. It’s my pleasure!
EFS: First, what are the most common mistakes that you see strength coaches make?
Ethan: I have talked with many coaches and have seen many coaches train their athletes. There are some great strength coaches in this country doing some excellent things in developing their athletes. My advice is for strength coaches to not train their athletes like power lifters, Olympic weight lifters, gymnastics, kettle-bell competitors, strongman competitors or bodybuilders but to use and combine the vast knowledge from all of these areas to see how it might best fit the sport athletes they train. There will be some Olympic lifters and power lifters attempting to come into the strength coaching profession and use only power lifting or Olympic lifting to train their athletes! We would not recommend going down this path!
EFS: Sticking with that theme, what kind of mistakes have you made as a strength coach?
Ethan: We are trying to get better everyday. So, I imagine we make mistakes everyday. There are too many mistakes to list! I do have some pet peeves, however. One pet peeve of mine is strength coaches that tell us how dangerous standing presses are for the shoulders, how harmful Olympic lifts are for the joints (or how ineffective they are), how bad deadlifts are for the back and how bad deep squats are for the knees. At Wake Forest we have no idea what they are talking about. We have never witnessed these injuries, other than an occasional spasm, from training athletes with these lifts. All lifts carry within them a risk of injury if not performed correctly. My second pet peeve is a strength coach that tells us, “There are no bad lifts only bad strength coaches”. Then, in the next sentence, tells us that a standing press or any overhead lift is bad for the shoulders (impingement). A third pet peeve of mine is a strength coach that recommends to other strength coaches to follow the advice of an orthopedic surgeon to not perform a particular lift. He says this while knowing he will have his athletes perform many lifts that numerous orthopedic surgeons will recommend not to do!
EFS: What major things have made your program better?
Ethan: a) Paying attention to the athletes during team workouts b) Running lifting workouts like a sport practice c) Never lifting when your athletes are working out (this is their time-not yours) d) Having good organizational structure during the team workouts e) Coaching in the trenches!
EFS: What kind of weaknesses do you find common in most athletes?
Ethan: Every athlete comes to us with some sort of weakness. Probably the most common weakness athletes will come to us with is the lack of knowing “how to use their strength and power”. This is probably the most important thing we do with athletes. Initially, at least! Doing total body, athletic lifts through the fullest range of motion and performing athletic drills will help to remedy this weakness!
EFS: Are there any exercises that you feel every athlete should do?
Ethan: Yes, power clean, hang clean, dead lift, kettle-ball swings, Romanian dead lift, good morning, deep front, back and overhead squat, standing press, one arm DB Bench, chins, dips and pushups. Athletes should go through the fullest range of motion as much as possible with only their physical limitations being the limiting factor! Athletes need very little partial range of motion lifts!
EFS: As a strength coach, you have a lot of obstacles to overcome to reach your goals. What do you feel is the biggest obstacle?
Ethan: The biggest and most important obstacle to overcome is selling your strength program to the sport coach. When you have the sport coach on your side the athletes will be an easy sell!
EFS: What do you do when the sport coach doesn’t like what you are doing?
Ethan: Being a former athlete and sport coach I have some inside knowledge of this situation. The best way to deal with stubborn coaches is to change your attitude about sport coaches. Remember, these are the athletes of the sport coach and the sport. The sport coach will control who is on scholarship or not, not the strength coach! The most important thing for the sport coach is to have athletes that will perform during competition. There are a lot of great athletes that will not lift big numbers in the strength room. Some power lifters and Olympic lifters feel that football players are weak. This is an unfair assessment because football players do not use bench shirts, squat pants or dead lift suits. The football player’s main sport is football. The power lifter’s main sport is power lifting. The Olympic lifter’s main sport is weightlifting. Also, football players are not permitted to use steroids. There needs to be mutual respect for all athletes whether they be Olympic lifters, power lifters, kettle-bell competitors, strongman competitors, or sport athletes. The strength coach is there to help the sport coach get a better performance, on the field of competition, from the athletes they both share. The sport coach should have some say-so in what he likes or dislikes. The strength coach, however, should be able to stand up for the philosophy, lifts and actions he feels will help the sport coach with these shared athletes. The strength coach is there to help maximize the athletic potential of each and every athlete he works with! Emphasize this point to your sport coaches! Strength is just one of many qualities the sport athlete needs.
EFS: What kind of advice would you give someone that wishes to become a strength and conditioning coach?
Ethan: a) Develop an open-ended and open-minded philosophy that can be adjusted throughout the years b) Sell this philosophy to the sport coaches and athletes c) Pay attention to your athletes-it is their time in the limelight not yours! d) Coach, coach, coach (enjoy coaching in the trenches) e) Make workouts short in length, fun and challenging for the athletes e) Don’t make workouts so tough that athletes crawl out of the strength room or throw-up every time (you want these athletes to want to come back and do extra workouts) f) Treat athletes the way you would want a strength coach to treat your children if in this position g) Have fun learning about the iron game from all areas h) You are in the business of serving people not feeding your ego!
EFS: How do you explain your program to your athletes?
Ethan: We recommend that our athletes read our philosophy on the website! You will not ever make all athletes happy. We will really listen to our athletes’ recommendations or complaints, just not during the team workouts. We teach them what we want them to do and take them through the team workouts. They do what we ask them to do! We need athletes that are teachable. If our athletes are taught complex lifts, like dead lifts, squats, power cleans, hang cleans, power clean-n-jerks, and they are teachable for us there is a good chance they will be teachable for the sport coach. You can’t be afraid of the athletic compound lifts!
EFS: A lot of people say that the Olympic lifts are hard to teach. Because the technique isn’t perfect, coaches don’t use them. What is your take on this?
Ethan: Well, I can agree but only to a point. Since they are not Olympic lifters, the technique doesn’t have to be perfect. But as long as they are not being put in a position that will hurt them, they will receive some benefits from these lifts. Even if the form isn’t 100% perfect, I will let them lift. We have found these lifts to be quite productive for all of the athletes we coach. We also have a unique method of teaching the Olympic lifts that are easy and fun to teach and learn! Again, as long as they are not going to get hurt.
EFS: You and I were talking about running and agility work for football. You and I have very similar beliefs.
Ethan: At Wake Forest, we believe in doing a lot of stadium running and hill running. We also push and pull sleds. We will do some straight ahead, “normal”, running but never over 40 yards. For agility work, we do a variety of drills. Bag drills, cone drills, agility ladder and other basic drills. We have found that running stairs or bleachers is terrific for strength, speed and conditioning.
EFS: There has been a lot of talk about the new Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach Association. Some of it has been positive, other times it has been negative. What are your thoughts on this organization?
Ethan: I think it’s great to have so many different coaches with different ideas and philosophies. You have strength coaches that are power lifting-based, Olympic lifting-based, high intensity-based, speed-n-agility based and combinations of all of these. This is where you can learn a great deal and share with others in the profession of collegiate strength coaching. Even if I don’t agree with every single idea of every coach, it’s great that we have an organization that helps us out.
EFS: Thank you for doing this interview. I have learned a lot and I hope our readers have too.