Ohio State held its first football strength and conditioning clinic in four years at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center on Saturday.
For the first time since 2019, Mickey Marotti and the rest of Ohio State’s sports performance staff opened the doors of the Buckeyes’ weight room to coaches and fitness professionals for a clinic specifically geared toward football strength and conditioning, offering a glimpse into how Ohio State trains its players to perform at their best.
Marotti viewed the clinic as a great opportunity for his staff to both share their knowledge with and learn from others in the strength and conditioning industry.
“I think the value is to help provide some continuing education for coaches, for strength professionals, for everybody involved. It's a great platform for our staff,” Marotti told Eleven Warriors. “And we're here to learn too. We're trying to learn to stay up to speed with training and nutrition and everything that's going on. So it's been awesome.”
Specifically, Marotti wants to impart as much knowledge as he can to high school coaches, knowing they play an integral role in preparing players to be as ready as they need to be for the collegiate level.
“We rely a lot on our high school coaches, strength coaches and coaches to help develop them before they get here,” Marotti said. “The better job that they do at that high school level and developmental level, when they get here; like, nowadays, you got to be ready to play. So if we can help that system which is promoting strength, conditioning, nutrition, fitness, recovery, all the sports science, I think it just helps everybody.”
Marotti kicked off the clinic with a presentation about what he considers to be the seven non-negotiable principles of Ohio State’s strength and conditioning program: Competitiveness, effort, toughness, accountability, leadership, brotherhood and development. While he says a lot has changed in strength and conditioning over the past four years, he says those principles have remained consistent throughout his 36-year career in the industry.
Marotti also explained how the Buckeyes structure their offseason strength and conditioning program, starting with their ongoing winter workout program. Ohio State just completed its fifth week of winter workouts, with two more weeks to go before spring practices begin. Following a week in which the Buckeyes held their famed mat drills, Marotti said he is pleased with how winter workouts have gone so far.
“They're going good,” Marotti said. “Every team’s different. Every day is a learning opportunity for everybody. Guys are working really hard. The fun part of the offseason for us is the team gets molded and you just see it kind of matriculate as we go. So it's great to see.”
Woke up for Mat Drills like pic.twitter.com/kRqUKXlU59
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) February 15, 2023
Other presenters at Saturday’s clinic included assistant strength and conditioning coaches Kenny Parker, Zach Higgins and AT Turner, the latter of whom just joined Ohio State’s staff in January after spending last year at Ole Miss. Each of them demonstrated some of the exercises Ohio State uses to help its players become stronger and faster and to foster competition during the offseason.
Team dietitian Kaila Olson also presented at Saturday’s clinic, where she discussed how the Buckeyes develop individualized nutrition plans for every player and the importance of proper nutrition for players to maximize their performance. Both Marotti and Olson spoke about the importance of staffwide collaboration to Ohio State’s success, which made it important to Olson to be a part of the clinic.
“We have collaboration between strength and athletic training and everyone that really helps to have everyone on the same page,” Olson told Eleven Warriors. “And I think that's like one of the biggest things is nutrition, speaking at a strength conference, is really kind of just helping grow that collaboration.”
Additional speakers at Saturday’s clinic included Tennessee Titans director of sports performance Frank Piraino and Cincinnati director of sports performance Niko Palazeti, who was one of Marotti’s assistants at Ohio State for the past six years before leaving for Cincinnati in January. Others in attendance at the clinic included Detroit Lions director of sports performance Mike Clark and Louisville associate athletic director of student-athlete health and performance Pat Ivey, and Marotti was honored that all of them traveled to Columbus to be part of the event.
“I was like humbled, like nervous to get up and talk in front of those guys. Because they've been in the field so long and have done such a great job,” Marotti said.
Former assistant director of strength and conditioning Niko Palazeti returned to Ohio State for Saturday’s strength and conditioning clinic.
While the clinic was put on hiatus for three years due to COVID-19, Marotti says Ohio State’s sports performance operations are back to normal now. And he said events like Saturday’s provide networking opportunities for him and his staff that participating in Zoom clinics simply does not.
“Just being able to connect with the coaches, professionals in our field that we haven't,” Marotti said of what he enjoyed most about Saturday’s clinic. “Zoom does not get it. It's the relationships that you have and you develop. I’ll meet five or six maybe future interns here at the clinic. There's some young students that came in that may be an intern. And that's happened a lot. So it's so exciting to see it.”
