Athletic Performance Podcast

Inside Cal Poly's Weight Room: Leadership & Legacy with Sara MacKenzie Ep 51

• Ryan Patrick

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In this episode of the Athletic Performance Podcast, Coach Ryan Patrick sits down with Sara MacKenzie, Director of Strength & Conditioning at Cal Poly.

Sara shares her journey from a $0/hour intern at Arizona State to running a full department at Cal Poly, the challenges of coaching 500+ athletes solo, and how parenting reshaped her coaching philosophy.

We cover everything from building systems under resource constraints to balancing toughness and empathy in the weight room — and why durability, not numbers, is the ultimate metric of success.

📌 What You’ll Learn

  • How Sara broke into strength & conditioning when few women had a seat at the table
  • Why her Arizona State internship became the turning point in her career
  • The systems she uses to manage programming for hundreds of athletes
  • How COVID forced Cal Poly into a “wedding tent weight room”
  • Balancing parenthood, leadership, and athlete development without burning out
  • Why Sara chose legacy and community over chasing jobs across the country

🔗 Links & Resources

Sara MacKenzie:

And so I took his advice and I found a really good opportunity to go to Arizona State to be an intern in their sports performance department. Um, and it was awesome. It was, it was life changing. So, I mean, you move out there to make$0 an hour to work. 50, 60, 70 hours a week doesn't really matter. Mm-hmm. Um, but it was eye-opening and I realized if I can do that for four months, and I loved every minute of going in at being at work at 5:00 AM minimum till 5:00 PM on Saturdays and Sundays for game days, that that was. That was definitely a calling.

M-2-peakfast:

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.

Ryan Patrick:

Welcome to the Athletic Performance Podcast. Sarah. It's been a long time since we've talked. You're like one of the few people. I always get excited when I talk to people that I've actually like. Met in person because there's so many people like, I know, but I just like call'em internet friends. Mm-hmm. Um, and obviously, you know, we talked about us kind of bridging this gap towards 40. So like, my social circle just gets a little bit smaller every year. It's like the herd thins a little bit, so

Sara MacKenzie:

it does, when

Ryan Patrick:

I actually know somebody, it's, it's cool to have'em on. But anyway, I wanna talk about you and for those who don't know you, please. Um, just let's start with the origin story. Like what was your career path into SNC? And how did that set the stage for where you are now?

Sara MacKenzie:

So I did my undergrad at Kentucky, um, where we met, um, in kinesiology and health promotion. And after doing my, um, student teaching, I did that at the high school level and junior high level. I realized I needed a little bit more. I really missed people that wanted to be there. I mean, PE and health is fun for those who like pe, you know? Mm-hmm. But I didn't really realize until I did my student teaching that not every kid likes PE the way I did. So, um, I had a nice, um. A mentor that we, a friend we have in common, Jim Laird, uh, from Lexington Athletic Club. He kind of gave me some really good advice. He was like, why don't you get an internship in the, I was just about to finish my undergrad in the strength and conditioning world. He's like, I think that might be a really good fit for you and. I didn't realize that that was gonna be such a game changer. He was like, if you go somewhere, you know, where you're not comfortable, where you don't know people, you'll probably dive all in. And so I took his advice and I found a really good opportunity to go to Arizona State to be an intern in their sports performance department. Um, and it was awesome. It was, it was life changing. So, I mean, you move out there to make$0 an hour to work. 50, 60, 70 hours a week doesn't really matter. Mm-hmm. Um, but it was eye-opening and I realized if I can do that for four months, and I loved every minute of going in at being at work at 5:00 AM minimum till 5:00 PM on Saturdays and Sundays for game days, that that was. That was definitely a calling. So I got really lucky that once I finished that, um, fall internship, I worked with mostly, mostly with football at Arizona State at that point. But as an intern, they kind of just pull you different places, so you get to see a lot of different things and they offered me a graduate assistantship, um, that didn't start, it wasn't available until until May. So I finished that internship in December. And then they were like, we can bring you on board to start your, your graduate assistantship in May. So in between then they were awesome and they gave me, um, some opportunities. So I worked for the Arizona Cardinals chiropractor for a while. Mm-hmm. So I did like some stretching, like a manual stretching, um, therapy type stuff out of the chiropractor office. That was an awesome gig. And then I worked at Gold's Gym. Um, I basically had like three jobs in like a five, six month period in order to save enough money to stay out here, to stay out there in Phoenix. And after that started that graduate assistantship. And, um, I primarily, my focus then was men's basketball and baseball, and I worked under their director of Olympic Sports, who, those were his main responsibilities in women's basketball. And so he and I would take turns traveling or not traveling, depending on which teams he needed to be with. And, um, I got to go to two College World Series. That was a game changer. Um, made me really like the baseball aspect of things. Um, yeah, worked with some big guys there. I mean, like James Harden was on the team for those two years that I was with the men's basketball team. So it was an exciting time. Um, and after that I was looking at, I actually was really dead set on working in minor league baseball. That was my goal. At the time, there weren't a lot of people break, uh, a lot of females breaking through. And so I would get, you know, when you're out in Arizona, there's, I mean, half the teams are in Arizona training, half the teams are in Florida. Yeah. So I'm, I'm like, this is a no brainer. I've got experience, I've got, I've worked with, I've a really good college team. I've got references and nobody would call me back. I would not get any, any interviews. Um, then a couple times I put just my initials on my resume and I got a couple calls in. At least they let me know. You know, now it's probably, you could probably soThe people for stuff like this, but they said, Hey, you know, we're just really not in a position to be hiring females right now. We've had such and such issues and stuff like that. And so I kind of gave up. But in a, in a way, it was a good thing that, because I really didn't realize how much I love the college setting. And when you break down the minor league. Job. That's a rough go for a while. You're, you're eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, making a grand a month or something. I don't even know what they make. Yeah. Back at least back then. Um, so it's a long road and it's, you know, it's still 120 to 160 games and I can't imagine that now. I mean, at 22 I was, or I guess I was finished my grad school, so I was probably 24. Yeah. But it didn't work out. So I started working. Um, I just took a full-time role at Gold's Gym in the meantime while I was applying for other jobs. And I conveniently met my future husband there. So he hired me as his personal trainer when I was working at the Gold's Gym in downtown Phoenix. And, um. We'd been dating for a while and he got offered a job to move to California here to the Central Coast full-time.'cause he used to work half the year in Arizona and half the year in California. And so he was like, Hey, would you move out here? And I was like, well, I'll move out there if I can find a job. So in the area, the closest schools are Cal Poly or, uh, uc, Santa Barbara. Those are kind of in the middle of like where he works. And so I, um, applied in Cal Poly had just had an opening for like a part-time position. Mm-hmm. And when I got here, I was. I was a little bit shocked because the mid-major level is way different than what I was coming from. Yeah. Arizona State was like, oh, for

Ryan Patrick:

sure.

Sara MacKenzie:

Eight or nine full-time, you know. Um, and they even have more than that now, but back then, um, you can only have, you know, five people work football, but the head guy worked football and then everybody else had other team responsibilities that also worked football. Um, now they just have five full-time football and then they probably have one per sport, you know, which is a luxury. Yeah. But here at this level, there was one guy. And his assistant doing 21 teams. So I was like, oh, okay. Um, and he's like, Hey, I can pay you this, which is comical'cause I was making about that as a ga. And I was like, well, all right. And so I stayed on board for like a year before I got like a pay bump, and I would just basically come in from like five to 10:00 AM and whatever teams he needed me to work with, um, at that point. And. I actually fell in love with this level. It was awesome. Um, there was, the weight room is not shiny. It was way worse than my high school weight room probably still is'cause my high school weight room's actually really nice now. But, um, it's, it's been the best. This community's so cool here because everybody, there's not a lot going on. You're, you're basically dead in the middle of San Francisco and LA Okay. So it's like this small little beach town. Um, the university's about 10 minute drive from the beach and, um. It's a cool spot and the athletes are awesome. They work super hard. They wanna be here. They're crazy intelligent. It's so hard to get into school here. Um, they're really well known for their engineering program, their architecture program, and

Ryan Patrick:

okay.

Sara MacKenzie:

They reject a lot of 4.0 kids. I mean. It's, it's impressive. So it's a really cool place to be. And so I basically have built it, built up this program. I was on board part-time for a year, maybe two actually years. Um, part-time pay at least. Um, and then worked up a little bit and, um. A new director came in in 2013. Then when he left in 2018, I got promoted to the director. And then since then, um, at that point it was just, he and I were full-time, and then we had like a part-time position and now we're up to four full-time people and I. One and a half, one and a half part-time people, I guess. So we're trying to build up the department as we, as we grow and like the sports, the dynamic change. We just lost a team for the first time ever. We had to cut a program and then we had some Title IX stuff going on where we didn't have enough as many female athletes. So they added a fe, an all female program. That'll be the first time we have a stunt team. Now that is, um, we already, we always had one, but they were not, um, an NCAA sport yet. So all kinds of dynamics are changing. So that was the long, long version of that, but yeah. But here we are. It's, um, all said and done. How many

Ryan Patrick:

years, how many years have you been at Cal Poly? Is it like 10 now? By, by my math, no. 14. 14. Oh my gosh. Okay.

Sara MacKenzie:

Yeah, I got here in, uh, summer of 2011. Wow. So, yeah, man, fall of 2011 was my first

Ryan Patrick:

Life Comes at you fast. I did not like I knew, I mean, obviously to be a director of a collegiate strength and conditioning program, you have to have like a pretty elite pedigree. I did not realize like all the stops you made along the way, like hearing that. Um, I was actually just out at a SU last. May I think. Oh wow. This may, I don't know. Last May life. It's so fast. It was last May, 2024. Anyway, um, Matt Jordan had a force play conference out there. It was awesome. Like, I'm just found myself, it was in the middle, like, you know, school was out, so there were really no kids on campus. Mm-hmm. So I'm just like, kind of navigating, I don't know what it was like when you were there. It's, it's insane. It's so nice now. Yeah. Um, but it might look completely different, you know, when I go back to Lexington, like I don't even recognize you. Oh gosh. Oh gosh. Like, I know, I don't know where anything is. Um. And then I can't believe how that

Sara MacKenzie:

different their campus looks. Yeah.

Ryan Patrick:

Oh, it's, it's crazy. And it's not like Lexington really has anywhere to go, but, um, we, we also need to like, just recognize the hotbed of talent, um, out of, out of the LAC, the Lexington Athletic Club.'cause obviously Jim LA's like the Godfather. Okay. So the guy huge in the power, huge in the power lifting world. Uh, Molly Galrith, girls Gone Strong. You at Cal Poly? Chris Freeman is. Crushing it. Alan, um, Alan Crest is like trained in like a Saudi prince or something. I don't even know what's Yes.

Sara MacKenzie:

What I, I have so many questions about that,

Ryan Patrick:

man. I'm like, y'all are, y'all are so impressive. I'm like the bottom of the totem pole here. I'm, I can just run.

Sara MacKenzie:

You could be, you can put yourself up higher. You should probably rank higher than that.

Ryan Patrick:

I just gotta, I just got moments with the goods. I connect.

Sara MacKenzie:

Yeah. I connected with Molly a few years ago. I went to one of her events. Um, she's absolutely, she's so impressive. I love, I love seeing her stuff.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah, I'll, I'll she'll reach out every once in a while, but, um, I wanted to see if she would do a podcast and she actually helped me get Krista Scott Dixon on um Oh, nice. A couple months ago. So that was, it was just like so nice to just kind of reconnect and catch up.'cause Yeah, she's traveling the world too, but, um, that's, that's amazing. So you kind of talked a little bit about the early years, like. You've got these teams, you've got like a coach, maybe an assistant, um, obviously not a lot of discretionary fun going into this program, at least in the beginning. So you're 20 something, you're walking into a division one weight room, which looks like a okay, high school weight room, and now you're in charge like you're the girl. So how do you, my question is how do you get these athletes and especially the sport coaches. To respect you when maybe they don't feel like you've really earned your stripes yet

Sara MacKenzie:

when you first come in. I think that it's really, really intimidating, but if you were in a position like I was at A SU where your graduate assistantship was a very good preparation, I think that's honestly, I know there's shying away from GA jobs these days, but that was the best position ever to be in because you get to be. You know, you have the mentorship and you have people around you. Maybe somebody else is gonna program and you're gonna carry out the program or mm-hmm. Depending on how, what your setup looks like. Right. And you get all the opportunities to ask the questions and to see how they do things. And, um, that made me, I, to be honest, I was probably dumb enough, naive enough, I wasn't even scared when I got here. I was like, okay, let's go. This is my show, let's go. Because I was so excited to do things my way. Mm-hmm. Now whether that was the, you know, the best way, I have no idea. Looking back, if I looked at my old programs, I'm sure everybody would be like, oh yeah, what in the world was I writing? But I think that you kind of do the best with what you have. So like, do better until you know better. Right? So like, you're gonna do what you do. I say that and I still tell interns this. I'm like, or beginning, beginning coaches that have gone from an intern to a coach for us or something, but. Coach what? You know how to coach really well. I think a simple program. Maybe it's like we grew up on the tier system at a SU. That was kind of like the, yeah,

Ryan Patrick:

yeah, yeah.

Sara MacKenzie:

Because Joe, Ken, I actually went, Joe was at a SU.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah.

Sara MacKenzie:

I went there when Jim, when Jim Laird recommended them, I was going there because I wanted to work under Joe Ken.'cause he was, he was doing a lot for the profession at the time. Nobody was like putting out books for people that wanted to be strength coaches and. So he recommended that and I kind of jumped on it and then right when I got there, he left and took a job in the NFL at the Panthers. So I never got to meet him or anything, but luckily the staff that was there was so cool. So Ben Hilgert was the head and then hi, the associate head for football, um, was Josh Storms and the pedigree that's come out of there, the people that I got to work with. So Ben Hildegard's now at Boise State, but he's been everywhere. He's been New Mexico, West Virginia, um, U of A, all kinds of stuff. And he's at Boise. And then Josh is the head strength coach at Florida State. Um, that's really impressive. And then, um, the other guy that was the next guy in line, Ryan Reynolds, he's the head for the Kansas City Chiefs. He's the director of strength conditioning there. Um, the guy who was, he was a GA when I came in as an intern. He's been the director at the Texans. So people have, have done some really awesome things there. So I was, I was sad that I didn't get to work for Joe Ken, but it was, looking back, I'm like, man, I still got a really awesome experience from there. So. But anyways, coming in and running your own program was super exciting. I probably should have been more scared'cause I guess when I got here I was only like 25, 26 and I just thought it was the greatest, the greatest thing ever to be able to run, run my own thing. But I did, I, I was pretty simple at first and I focused on the things that I knew how to coach really well. And then you just build up confidence. Um. Trying new things and seeing what works and training at the team. The team level is, depends on how big your team is or if you're coaching a, a sport that has, like, you need to specialize by position. Um, all those things are, you have to just learn by experience. You have to just kind of dive in and say. If you have a good sport coach, they help you out a lot too, because they're gonna tell you what the needs are. What you know in your sports medicine staff is honestly gonna help you out a lot with that as well. They're gonna say, these are the injuries that we're seeing most often. This is what we're trying to combat. And overall, to me, I think durability is the main theme of everything is like, okay, is it cool when they can do fancy stuff? Is it cool when they can? Squat, these insane numbers, benches and numbers. Yes. But what's cooler is having a team that's fully available for the coach to play, and we're not having a bunch of kids on the sidelines. So durability is number one. So that's how I sell it to the sport coaches, is this is what I'm trying to do. My number one goal is for you to have, um, nobody's sitting the bench, nobody on your injured list. Um, and then as they get better and better, we're gonna. Get fancier and fancier and see if we can do some, some more impressive, cool Instagram worthy stuff maybe.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah. One of the things I noticed, and I mean I'm in private sector so I don't have the magnitude of athletes that you have, but the first thing that like when our programs get battle tested and we're super busy and there's lots of kids coming in and out, is what is simple and what is just way confusing and cumbersome and mm-hmm Time and time again. Simplicity wins. Every time. So my question, you came in, like how many, how many athletes were you immediately in charge of like two, 300?

Sara MacKenzie:

I don't know. It depends. So like, I, I know I had softball, women's soccer, volleyball, and then I had like men's and women's tennis that was right out the gate. So those weren't large, large teams. Um, but at one point here in my tenure, like when I first took over the head job, I was the only person. So I had no help that first. From August till December, I had 21 teams. So it was like 500. I counted it, it one day. It was like 586, I think was, oh my God. I was solely responsible. I was the only strength coach. I don't even think I had good interns at that point. That was fall of 2018.'cause my, the guy that quit, um, he gave his notice and he was gone. And so I was in the interview process while taking care of all these teams. Thank God I didn't have kids yet. Um, I had just gotten married that year and I didn't have any kids yet, but I was like. I just lived here. I literally thought about just putting a bed under my desk and just saying I'll be home on Friday maybe. But, um. That was, that part's a little overwhelming. And luckily I am, I'm, I'm very tight b mom, like, I'm like the mom that just grabs a diaper and runs outta the house, you know? Mm-hmm. But when it comes to work, my, if I showed you my planner right now, you might be like, she's on the spectrum. Um, it's so organized. So that's, that's the key is that everything has to be like color coded, organized. I still use a paper planner, like same. Is there any more, it's a millennial thing, right? Is that what we do? I dunno. It's in my phone and like my Outlook still has meeting, but I still have to write everything. It could be an H ADHD thing. I do have rating Raging. A DH, adhd. I dunno.

Ryan Patrick:

Yes. So same here, undiagnosed do you? Which is the best part. But I'm like, man, I missed out on good drugs. Unfortunately, like Adderall would, Adderall would've been so useful for me. It would've saved your

Sara MacKenzie:

life. I actually was diagnosed later on in life because I thought I had anxiety. After I had my second kid, I thought I was losing it and the doctor was so awesome and she's like, well, after running some tests, you have, you have a DHD and it's pretty bad. Um, I don't, I'm not sure how you have functioned so far, but she's like, what? I think, and she started asking me these funny questions about birth orders. She's like, lemme guess you're the oldest. And I'm like, yes. Um, she's like, lemme guess you have. Prioritized your career and every, and I'm like, yeah. So she read me like a book and she was like, so I didn't take medication for a long time because I was pregnant or nursing and you can't take it. Right? And so what was cool is that I still met with this doctor all the time and she gave me so much insight into what our things that I was doing that are, that can be fixed and like the way, anyways, I'm getting off on a tangent, but it was really, yeah. Very insightful and no, this is real talk because I

Ryan Patrick:

bet there's a lot of coaches who deal with this too. I mean, we're always high energy, like every conference I go to. Yeah. You know, we were talking about your college being on the quarter system, like 50 minutes was a, like a hard limit for me. I start like mm-hmm. Losing my attention. I, I've never been to a conference where I can just sit still for the whole time, so I'm sure Oh yeah. I'm sure you're not alone here. I, I've actually found myself like recently, within the past like six months, like taking these tests online to see if I have autism. I'm like, I think I might have a little bit. It's not, maybe we all have a little bit of it. I, I don't know. I'm like, I, maybe something's I, I don't know. It's just where I'm at with it. She

Sara MacKenzie:

did explain, she's like, a lot of women are diagnosed later in life because you've been able to do it all and then you hit a wall. So my wall was two kids, two kids, and a full-time job without a break. And so that's where she's like, well, she's like. Kind of gave me my, I gave her like a rundown of my day, and she's like, that's not a normal, that's not normal. Why you can't do that? And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, she's like, well, that's why, that's why you're here. You have clearly at you, this is your breaking point. And I was like, oh, all right. Makes sense.

Ryan Patrick:

So, yeah, I mean, you got a cape on, like the fact that you're managing almost 600 athletes, like the one, the time to coach them is absolutely insane. But how do you, how do you program and plan for that? Like in that situation when, when it was at its worst, like how did you even keep up? Oh my gosh.

Sara MacKenzie:

It was really hard. Luckily I had a lot in place going into that fall because I already had had like at least a 10 team responsibility that I knew I was gonna have. Okay. And then when that coach left, I just had to like grind for a couple days. I'm really big on making these big 52 week skeleton outlines for my year. Mm-hmm. And then I plug everything in there. So like the exercise prescription at the very end is, is sort of the last piece of it, you know? Yeah. You kind of go through what movement qualities are we focusing on this, this. At this phase or whatever. Right. So if thing to me, if things are broken down into, you know, macrocycles and then microcycles, it's more of like a fill in the blank. And that stuff I can do on a whim now that I've been doing it for so long. So, okay. That was me. It was like, okay, let's get the big picture on the outline first and try to figure out where, how to fit things in. The scheduling is honestly the hardest part. Mm. Like the programming is, it is what it is. But getting with, at the, at that time it was one weight room we have. That's it. So I was like, well, okay, my first team has to start at five, whether they want to or not, and the last team is gonna end at six. And that was pretty much the norm. And that kind of still is, um, after COVID is what actually saved us. We had very strict, as you can imagine, regulations out here. Mm-hmm. And our weight room doesn't have any windows. It is wedged between two locker rooms and, um, not the greatest ventilation. So they were like, you can't train in here. We were like. What do you mean? They're like, you have to find somewhere else to train. We're like, I don't understand. Like, no people are allowed in here. And they're like, no. Eventually they told us we could train. I think the number was like 15 or less. So like a basketball team or less could train in there. Mm-hmm. So basketball, tennis, golf, that was it. Yeah, basically. So what we did was we took an entire tennis court and we bought a wedding tent, 45 by 90 wedding tent to cover an entire tennis court. My department was like, here's$20,000, and I was like. Buy me a rack or two. Yeah, what are you talking about? So we took all of our plates out, all of our dumbbells, and I bought a, uh, 12 rogue, like freestanding racks. Um Oh yeah. And that is what we did. And all of our barbells, rusted, all of our plates rusted, all of our dumbbells, rusted. We were out there for almost two years. Um, once we were allowed back in with like, I think that they eventually moved the number to like 20 or 25, could be in the weight room so we could train volleyball and like softball, that kind of stuff. But we still kept that tent because it was really nice to be able to train football out there with, with a space that big. We could almost do, usually we did three groups, but we could do offense defense if we needed to. Yeah. Um, but man, it was a rough couple years.

Ryan Patrick:

That's wild. Yeah. I didn't think about how long you guys had the regulations, so, uh, felt like forever. What I'm, what I'm hearing a lot of this is like, it comes down to just having systems, right? With how you're programming, what you're doing, the flow of everything. Mm-hmm. What's the actual, like, just, uh, what's the actual, uh, delivery like, are you doing, are you programming the stuff on like a train heroic or team builder, or are you guys, you guys old school doing the like paper programs? We,

Sara MacKenzie:

I was old school Excel spreadsheets for the longest time. Once COVID hit, I had already been looking at things like train heroic and Team Builder, and we went with Team Builder. Mm-hmm. So since 2020 we've been using Team Builder. Um, some of our coaches though, like I let my coaches have like the four guys that work for me can do whatever the hell they want. If they want Team Builder, great. It's there for you to use. Um, I highly encourage it when athletes are off campus because it's the best way for them to, you know, there's no excuse. They have it, it's there. I know how you guys use an app better than anybody else out there. Mm-hmm. I didn't get your email. My PDF wouldn't like, no, it's on the, it's on that. Um, but I still use spreadsheets from time to time and print it off if I just need something quick. Um, it depends on the team, honestly. Um, my, some teams are so distracted by having their phone in the weight room or the iPad. Their phone is the worst because they can't ignore a notification that pops up. Cannot. It is humanly impossible. Can't for when an Instagram or a Snap or whatever, and I'm like, no, no, no. So always the snap is like a

Ryan Patrick:

picture of somebody's nose from under, you know? Mm-hmm.

Sara MacKenzie:

Oh yeah, it's

Ryan Patrick:

dumb.

Sara MacKenzie:

I can't, it's like, and then the, yeah, so that part of it has drove me a little bit crazy when they're on campus. So a lot of times mm-hmm. I am old school with like our, like we've just have dry erase boards. Um, we have one at, like, one side of our weight room is six platforms and then there's a dry erase board behind all those. So we use that. So I can write something up really quick, or I have somebody that's injured and I'm like, Hey Johnny, this is yours for today.

Ryan Patrick:

Yep.

Sara MacKenzie:

Just look up here. Whatever. So the whiteboard's big. Um. Then the other side of the weight room's got 10 racks, um, between these two different rigs. And so if they need their phone, it's not a big deal. My girls teams are a lot better about it, to be honest. Um, the guys team, I've out raw men's basketball's not allowed to bring their phone in the weight room anyway because they're the main culprit of, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna look really quick. I'm just gonna, you know, and before you know it. They've gone off, but, so yeah, team Builder is really helpful for that. Um, it's also nice that it, if I did have the athletes bring their phone in to do, um, to enter off, like say we were doing some max testing that day. Mm-hmm. They can enter it for me and it's so much faster than me walking around with a clipboard. And it kinda depends on how much help I have too. So if I have an intern that's really helpful, you know, we'll record stuff that way and you know, and now we just got, um. We're finally joining the, the, the Force Plate Club. So we are, I, I know we've been trying for so long. It's honestly been a manpower thing. We just don't have enough. Yeah. It takes me forever. So I'm, I'm getting a little bit better at it as far as the collection of the data. Um, but it's so hard now that I've got a couple good interns that have familiarized themselves with it. That has made it a little bit easier, but man, what'd you

Ryan Patrick:

guys go with? What brand

Sara MacKenzie:

we ended up going with Vault.

Ryan Patrick:

Okay.

Sara MacKenzie:

We had already had some, uh, I saw your Hawkin shirt, so don't be mad at me. But, um, we had, you know, Drake's my dude,

Ryan Patrick:

so

Sara MacKenzie:

Yeah, I feel bad. The, I like their product too. Um, vol just had a really nice hub that we were using in sports medicine. Yeah. Had dove into their force frame and their dynamometer.

Ryan Patrick:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Then

Sara MacKenzie:

football had already had their timing gates, so it just made sense for us to have everything in one platform. Um, so. Yeah, we're getting, that's football hasn't I Mean's a hasn't done the four 10.

Ryan Patrick:

It's really a great product. You know, it's, uh, it's funny, um, just, it kind of comes down to the individual stuff with the teams Right. Talking about do they do better with the programs? Um mm-hmm. My experience, you know, I have developing athletes, high school kids. They, they're, they're is bad as bad as the basketball team. They, I know they've gotta be because Oh yeah. We, we still print out stuff. I still use Excel, like I'm so old school with that. Oh good.

Sara MacKenzie:

I'm so glad. Yeah.

Ryan Patrick:

But I love it. Like we, I spent probably six months, like putting all, uh, six is exaggerating, probably about three months, putting all these programs on an online platform, like, you know, train heroic or, uh, team builder. And two weeks after launch I'm like, we're done. We're not using this. I'm like, this is terrible. Drove me crazy. Oh, the kids with the phones. It was the worst thing we ever did. I mean, it was literally two weeks. I'm like, I just spent the last quarter like getting all this stuff together. I'm like, I don't care. Oh, it's so hard. I'm like, we just can't do it. Um, but I kind of want to keep digging into this. So, you know, when you come into this role, okay, you're now the director, you're ownership. I feel like, you know, there's often a reason somebody leaves. So, so many coaches, probably inherent a little bit of a mess. But when you took over, I mean you had some time there, you kind of knew what was going on, but what did you feel like the things, um, that were in place that were working really well to make your life efficient and what did you feel like was broken that was just making it hard from like a, a management and a system standpoint to, to do what you needed to do, especially at the volume you were doing in?

Sara MacKenzie:

That's a really good question, and I'm glad you asked.'cause I don't think anyone's ever asked me that. Um. One thing that I noticed, and it's not a knock to the guy before me'cause he's still one of the greatest guys and a good friend. I think it didn't work well having the head of the department at this, at this level, be also the head football strength coach. Mm-hmm. Okay. That was the first thing I wanted to change and while I would've loved to been the head football strength coach, I had enough, you know. Pride to sit aside and say, I don't think I'm the best person to run this department and be the head football string coach. So I knew I needed somebody in place to take over that big, huge responsibility. Mm-hmm. Because it's 110 to 120 guys at any given time. Um, and that's a, that's a huge chunk and they really need somebody that's gonna be able to be at every single thing. So. With football. It's one of those rare sports where they need to be at practice, they need to be at every single thing that they do. Other sports I can get away with. I don't have to be at every volleyball practice. I mean, it'd be nice and I like to pop in. Um, if there's somebody that can't practice and I need to help them do some conditioning or some rehab, some return to play stuff. Mm-hmm. Um, if their sports medicine person can't do it, I try my best to do that, but. So that was a big priority for me. It was like, that person has to be at every single thing. Mm-hmm. Um, so that was the first thing I changed when I knew I got the role. So it was about a, a month and a half or two when he left in Midgut. He left the week of the first game. So after that, I didn't, I wasn't fully. In that role, I guess the head job as far as the title until October something. So at that point I could start finding my full-time person and that's when I looked for, I was like, Hey, I need somebody that's gonna be able to do football full-time and I will take some of the responsibilities off so that he can have a couple other sports. Yeah. And so, um, that was the biggest change that I saw. That's where I saw the biggest gap. So that was the first thing I changed. There was a ton of systems that I really liked and things that he did. Um, I liked the way he scheduled things. Um mm-hmm. He did a good job, like not prioritizing teams based on any, like favoritism necessarily, but hey, this team is larger for a team, like Swim and Dive was huge. It was 60 kids and they trained twice a day, so we have to give them some sort of priority because they have two, they have two practices, so. They're not a, not saying they're our favorite team and they get a priority, but we have to think about things like that. So I learned a lot from him from that scheduling perspective. I was like, okay, that's how we have to do things. And you have to tell teams and you piss a lot of people off, but it's not that you don't care about that team better or, um, it's just you have to do what works best for you guys. So that part I learned a lot from him is like, how to. How to do things and still like, you know, have people not mad at you all the time and you know when to care and when not to care and stuff like that. So that was definitely harder. But the, that transition in general was, it was tough and then it was just made me like, okay, we really need more staff. So that's what I just kept pushing for is like, I wanna better serve these athletes and these, and these coaches and it two people isn't getting it done. So that was my, the platform that I stood on for the longest time, it was like, I need more help. I need more people. I need more bodies in here and more coaches. So every time I would get somebody like, okay, we're gonna do a fundraiser this year. What equipment do you need? I was like, people. I need people. That's it. So I would just get, I would fundraise and I would get stuff and I'd be like, okay, well this is gonna be to pay, um, an intern, a paid intern, and this is gonna be to pay a, like we don't have grad assistant opportunities here. Um, we don't have a master's in kines either, which is really hard or anything in exercise and wellness as on campus. So it's harder to pull from that. From that graduate assistant community. But every once in a while you get somebody that's a recent grad or like a fourth or fifth year senior in the kines program that does a really nice job that you're able to bring on with a work study program or something. And so to me, I'll always prioritize people, coaches over, you know, I'll be like, Hey, nobody, we're not getting any staff shirts this year because we are having an intern and that's what I need. And so like I think the administration started seeing that. I was like, okay, this isn't a joke anymore. She's really serious about. Getting the help in there. And then I don't care if the weight room's shiny. That's not the newer weight room, like a a 10 pound dumbbell that's brand new and a 10 pound dumbbell that's old is they weigh the same. We're getting the work done. Right. Let's get, let's get people in here that's gonna better serve everybody. So

Ryan Patrick:

yeah, we want those rusty weights. But I mean, it speaks to a bigger problem. Right? You know, a lot of the questions are like, when I talk to people, it's like, Hey, what's the best thing for this? You know, the forest plates. What's the best way we can test? But it's like, how do we actually. We're on a program under the constraints that we have. We're trying to, you know, manage people and kids schedules and all these practices. And then once we get all that resolved. Then we're talking about like how to actually deploy these programs and coach them, you know? Mm-hmm. So there's so many steps of just things that I, I think people don't, don't realize that go into what you do. I'm learning a lot. Um, it's crazy. I don't, I don't envy some of the problems you have. I know for sure. I know. Uh, but what's interesting to me, like you are almost in a little bit of a silo, because not having those, you know, upper level kines grants Master's students is. That's, that's critical.

Sara MacKenzie:

Really hard. Yeah. We get some good undergrads and that's fine. And they're very, very helpful. And they're, they actually get a ton, probably the same amount of experience like,'cause once they've earned my trust, I'll basically treat them like ga, I'll let them do this and run this. And then. If they are CSCS certified, if they've just graduated mm-hmm. And you know they've got one of those, then I can give them a little bit more responsibility. And we've had several cases of that and guys that have gone on to do some really awesome things. And that's honestly what keeps us alive and keeps us afloat when you're able to like lean on people like that. But yeah, master's program would be a game changer.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah. Right. Um, so kind wanna shift the tone of the conversation because you know. At this point, we've kind of covered the ground of, hey, you know, this is an insanely um, just demanding job, demanding role. You know, we're short people, which presents its own challenges, and a lot of this, ultimately with you as the director is gonna fall on you. Mm-hmm. So. Most people in your position, you've already talked about some of the guys, Ben, Josh, Ryan, they've kind of bounced around and I think that's probably the norm for people who are in collegiate strength and conditioning who are in professional strength and conditioning is a reason I decided to go into the private sector is'cause like I know I don't want to be a journey man, you know, for a certain period of time. Just, you know, personal choice. But you've been there, like you said, almost 14 years. What has allowed you to thrive? To continue to be the obvious choice for Cal Poly. And I think on the other side of the coin is what's allowed you to not really burn out besides your a DD?

Sara MacKenzie:

Um, well, what I think was, I wanted to, as soon as I like, got here and fell in love with this community, this town, this school mm-hmm. I was like, I gotta find a way to stay here. And luckily, I mean, as you probably know, the collegiate side, the private sector pays way better. So there's definitely way more opportunity financially to move up, but you, once you fall in love with this little. Town and this like community and these athletes. I was like, okay, how do I just adapt and make this what I want it to be and you know, kind of create and change what this department looks like. So that's what I've spent the most time doing is figuring out a way to stay. My husband loves it here. He works in the ag industry, so he doesn't wanna move. So, you know, we have a really good thing going. I mean, I live five houses from the beach. Like, where can you do that in California? Right? Like it's kind of, yeah. Okay. I have a pretty good setup. Good. A good thing going. So that was the driving force was like, this is, this is where I wanna be. How do we change it? So I think that even though 14 years sounds like a long time, it doesn't feel like it's been that long because it's been so changing. It's, it's everything is just like, okay, this year we're gonna do this. And it's, I don't know. It went faster than I would, I would've thought. But you're right, the bouncing around, if I was a little bit younger, I probably would've taken, I turned down some opportunities early on that I think would've been, you know, good ones here and there, but ultimately it was okay. Well then I have to, you have to pick up and leave all the time. And the, the. The mid-major level has less turnover here. Okay. In general. So every time a football staff turns over at a big school, which can be one year, two year, maybe only four, everybody gets canned. Right? Right. You're just leaving and everybody brings in their own stuff. So that's another thing about this level that makes it easier to, to put a, you know, more, there's actually a lot of coaches here, like one of my best friends is our head volleyball coach. She got the head job the same year I did, but she had been here longer than I have, so I think she's been on campus for 16 years and she's a year younger than me too. So once people get here, they stay. They like it. Our softball coach has been here 20 plus years. Our baseball coach, um, our women's basketball coach a couple years, years ago, retired, I think she was 25 years. Our men, our women's soccer coach just retired last year and it, he's been the only coach at this university since the program started 30 years. Wow. So I think it's, it's a common denominator that people really like it here and they wanna, they wanna be here. I never thought I wanted to live in California, to be honest. It was not on my bucket list. It just kind of happened and now I see why people, you know, pay ridiculous amount of taxes and do all those things to live out here.'cause I'm like, okay, I get it. The weather is, 99% of the time is absolutely perfect. And yes, there's, there's a lot of benefits there, you know, but definitely found a way to stay. I think it's, I think it's worth it

Ryan Patrick:

to be, I like that you really highlight like this aspect of like, legacy. Like I wanna build this program into something bigger. It's not about, you know, I want Sarah, I'll call you bur Hager, it's McKenzie. Now I suddenly use Iceberg. Yeah, yeah. Um, maybe

Sara MacKenzie:

you'll have a iceberg white room one day.

Ryan Patrick:

Oh, that'd be sick. Yeah. Uh, but it's not like I, I need myself to be remembered as this great coach. It's like you're really thinking about something bigger than you. And I think that that just speaks a lot to. I know of you as a person, right? So I just wanna highlight that. But the, the challenge inside of all of this, and we talked about this a little off air, um, not, it's not just being a, a female, you know, head strength and conditioning coach, which is few and far between, but being a parent, and not only that, being a parent and. A state where you have no family, you don't have that support system. I know it's, you have three kids now, it's ex, this is extremely challenging. I mean, having kids alone mm-hmm. With parents around to help is so hard. So. I mean, my God, like how do you navigate all of this from being a spouse? You know, you talked about getting married the year you're training 600 kids. Like that's, yeah, that's stressful year one. I can't believe he

Sara MacKenzie:

didn't leave me right off the bat, but yeah.

Ryan Patrick:

You know, the only straight coach to get married and divorced in the same year. No. Um, but, but seriously, how, like, what's been your process and just, um, kind of your non-negotiables behind being a parent, being a spouse, and then also being like, you know, a mentor to all these athletes that you're responsible for.

Sara MacKenzie:

Kids was the biggest game changer. I think. I'd never put myself first in any of those situations, and now they come first. And so that's how I have to like rethink everything. Yeah. Um, the first few years were really hard. My first. Kid was born March 2nd, 2020, and then the world shut down five days later. So that was, that was a game changer. Um, for me, it was actually probably the best thing that could have happened. My mom came out for a month and stayed here because nobody had to do anything for a long time. Um, but it was, mm-hmm. It's been really hard. So basically now I try to figure out. I've had to things that really mattered that I like overanalyzed and like stressed out about. I have to like look step back and be like, is it that big of a deal? Like is it a big deal for me to ask a coach to move their lift time up a half an hour so I can pick my kids up at school two days a week and like 26-year-old, Sarah would have never. Mm-hmm. I would've never called our head football coach and be like, listen, can you move that last group for me? He probably did not think twice and would've never cared. Right. But to me, I was like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I would never do that. Now I'm like, okay, it's not a big deal. Right? Okay, I'm gonna be a few minutes late. Uh, the intern's gonna get them warmed up. And I, I've had, that took a long time to, for me to not stress out about stuff like that. And yeah, I just think about things in the grand scheme of things, like in the grand scheme, is this gonna be okay? Are we still accomplishing what we need to do in that workout? That's, I have to like, I have to just take a deep breath and be like, you know what? It's cool, but my kid, I got to pick my kid up from school. And he will remember that more often than anything else. Or, yeah. Now my husband always like was like, you can't bring them to the weight room. It's not, it's not safe in there. Well, guess what? They live in the weight room. So if they have to get outta school early and I have to come back to train teams, it's kind of awesome. It really, at first I was kind of stressed out when they're really little and they're like my, my almost 2-year-old. He has gotten himself in situations and I'm like, oh my gosh, he's gotta stay in the, in the stroller or something. But the other two are learning. You can just tell they learn so much and then they come into like my garage gym when I'm training and they'll be like, oh, this, I saw, I saw this, this, uh, football player doing this, or I saw this, you know, baseball player doing this. And it's so cool to see them do that. So to me, I have to like, I have to step back and say, okay. Can I still get the job done? And if, if it comes to a point where I can't, I'm, I have the ego where I can step back and say, you know, I'm gonna do this job part-time because they're the priority. But right now, knock on wood, I am, I think I'm making it work pretty well, and they're getting a really good balance of seeing a mom that goes to work every day and work super hard so that they can do, they can live where they live and they can, um, you know. Get those experiences that most kids like they're on the sidelines for, for football games, and they get to go in the dugout for baseball. They get to do whatever. So they're on the court for, you know, they get to go to volleyball camp before they're old enough to go to volleyball camp. So it's just super fun for me to see them get these little opportunities that most kids don't get and whether they become athletes or not. I mean, that. Very fun will be really fun for me, but at least they get to see hard work and they get to see like the little sacrifices that are made along the way, and hopefully don't feel like they're getting slighted for my attention because I care about this job and I care about the athletes. I mean, they're still first, but try to make a good balance. No, I

Ryan Patrick:

get that. I mean, Karen and I, we both own businesses, so I mean, oh my gosh, both. We could be on that grind 24 7. Yeah, it's, I don't know what we're doing. Wow. Um, but we can be on that grind 24 7, you know what I mean? And it's, there's hard to be times where to, I feel like we're just passing like two farts in the wind, you know, it's like mm-hmm. High and bye, or I haven't seen you all day. So,

Sara MacKenzie:

yeah. Um,

Ryan Patrick:

I totally get that. And especially being like type A like I am too, you know? It's like I want everything to run efficiently, but. Uh, I'm with you. It's like you just start to be like, you know what? You don't really kind of like in the way that parenting kind of forces your hand to make some of these decisions. Like if we leave town or we go on vacation, it's like, I gotta trust my people. Like, yeah, you gotta move some stuff around. It's just, that's huge. You know, just, just by virtue of necessity, like, I kind of find myself being like, why didn't I do this before? Like, is it really that big of a deal that somebody, yeah. Do you have like a general

Sara MacKenzie:

manager or something, like a person that's like your number two?

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, I got two of'em. One guy works in the mornings, the other one in the evenings. Um, nice. And, and neither are really available on the opposite, so it's kind of challenging. Um, yeah, we, we got a pretty small staff, but I, but it's, you know, it works, um mm-hmm. And most people are pretty, pretty chill with that stuff. So, um, follow up question. Do you think has being a parent like changed your coaching style or perspective

Sara MacKenzie:

at all? Made me so much softer. I'm so soft. It's ridiculous. I, oh my God, pre 2020. Sarah was like, if you had, you know, something her, I mean, I wasn't a total jerk about it, but now I like, actually I think I listen better. Um, I don't know, like. It definitely has softened me. I have like, looked into, you know, I can tell when somebody's late for a legit reason. Instead of me just being like, I don't give a shit. Get on the bike, let's do it. Or, you know, or you should up too late, get out. And now I'm like, man, okay. I can't kick them out. They really gotta do, like, I, I, it's, I a hundred percent softened me into like a complete puddle comparison. But, um, I think it makes me like, think about it from a parent perspective sometimes. Like, what would I want them? To say to my kid if that was my kid. And I never thought about anything like that before, which is, I don't know if that's good or bad, but if someone has like, you know, a death in the family and they're like, okay, well I can't get a flight until, you know, should I do it after my, I'm like, go, go. You need to be with your family right now. Like, and I, I don't know if I totally did that same, you know, was on the opposite end before, but now I'm like, family's so important and this one workout is not the end of the world. Yeah. But I think. 25-year-old Sarah thought it was the end of the, so. I've come, I've come a long way. This generation gets a, probably a much, much more empathetic version of me

Ryan Patrick:

for sure. No, sure. That's, I mean, so my mom had my kid brother, uh, basically when I was 17 and a half going into senior year. Oh my gosh. And

Sara MacKenzie:

no way.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah. I, I say my mom's first only child. Right. Um. But her, the parenting style between me and my brother was vastly different, and they were just at a different stage of life, you know? Mm-hmm. Professionally, they were in different areas. Um, so I totally get this, the question I always have, because I do think there is value in the soft side and some of the soft skills with this, but especially in strength conditioning, especially football strength and conditioning, that that can be so frowned upon, right? It's just like mm-hmm. It's wooy and weak. But how do you, how are you now balancing this, um, empathy and emotional intelligence with still holding standards and having expectations and getting results?

Sara MacKenzie:

Um, right now, like the football head strength coach, he just got here a couple years ago. I think he's really good at the, the hard side of things and I think he and I balance each other out. Mm-hmm. So I help him out. He's got a staff of, now he's got five of us, I guess technically a couple part-timers. Um, so I think that's a really good balance, that you can't have a whole staff of assholes. Right. So he gets to do the tough stuff and I get to be the nice one that, you know, I don't necessarily call it nice, but. I, because I'll, I'll work in a smaller capacity with like a couple guys that are returning to play or something sometimes. Um, but I, I take a little bit more time to explain something and he doesn't have that time.'cause he's managing all 110 of them. Yeah. So that's a good balance to have. I think you need both, honestly. Mm-hmm. They need to be, you know. You have to start out a little tougher. I always tell my new coaches, I'm like, listen, you can always get nicer and you can always get, you know, a little bit more lax, but you cannot start out like that. You have to. They will walk all over you. So it always starts off at the beginning of the year. It's not lovey dovey. I'm not asking you how your weekend was off the bat. It's okay. This is go time. And then you find those little pockets of time to where you're asking, oh, how was your weekend? Or, you know. Whatever it is, because then you, you get a chance to let them know that you care about them on a personal level. Mm-hmm. And I think that that helps win them over in general. Like, okay, well she really does care and so I, they inherently wanna work a little bit harder for you and they want. They don't wanna let you down, I guess is the word. Mm-hmm. You know, they, if you get that little softer side, but you really have to, you have to pick and choose when it's, when it's appropriate to like, let your guard down and be like a person and not just a coach that wants to get something out of them. So there's different times that you can, you can get away with that, but, um, starting out tough and then you can always back off just a tiny bit.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah, I think that works really well at our age too, because mm-hmm. When I went into graduate school as a ga, I mean, I was 22 and that was almost the same exact advice I got from our advisor. You know, it was one of the professors, he's like, look, you, the age gap is small. Like, some of these kids were older than me still, you know? Yeah. He's like, but you have to be in charge. He's like, if you. If you come in and you're too nice or you try to be their friend, he's like, they mm-hmm will steamroll you and you will nev, like for the rest of the semester, you will not get that power back. He said, you are better off just holding the line and doing it. And I bet even with the football coach, when you got 110 guys, you just have to make these big sweeping like cuts of like, Hey, this is the standard and you didn't adhere to it. Mm-hmm. You know, I don't have time to. To give you a case by case analysis of this. So I think yeah, that's really interesting though. But, um, no, you're right. The younger you

Sara MacKenzie:

are, the harder it is. I'm sure. I think, I'm sure you have to really, I don't think I smiled for like the first six months as a GA or like as an intern. I was so scared of like one of them. I don't know. I just like, I was all business for a long time and it, yeah, it was like terrifying. So

Ryan Patrick:

yeah, then you get a little bit more

Sara MacKenzie:

comfortable.

Ryan Patrick:

And like your tough side could be kind of scary. I mean, I can see that like looky, I'd be like, I'd fall in line real quick, you know?

Sara MacKenzie:

Yeah. The resting bitch face is just, yeah. It's terrifying.

Ryan Patrick:

Hey, you, you gotta work it. Yeah. Well, this has been awesome, man. I could probably talk to you for hours about this stuff. I think one of the, the most fascinating things is just like, to me, the, the magnitude of workload, the way you've managed this, just. The cohesion of the program at its whole is like so impressive, Sarah. Like it really is. Well thank you. I just wanna highlight that, but um, I do wanna hit you with some outro questions'cause I think they're fun and they're pretty short answer. Okay. But, uh, anybody in the weight room knows like the ox is, is the deal and it can make or break a session. And these kids love their music.

Sara MacKenzie:

They

Ryan Patrick:

do. But we'll be on, we'll be on, we already talked about this, like sometimes lifting in silence. So nice, but mm-hmm. What's the weight? What's the music situation like in your weight room? Do do the athletes get any input or do you just hate the playlist like we do?

Sara MacKenzie:

I let them have the ox, but I also have full reign of like, if they play something like they know I hate EDM, I hate it. If they just, if house is on and it's just like, like, I don't know, my brain goes crazy. So they know better than that. I love rap and I love country. Those are what I'm gonna play. Okay. Um, I also get to control the volume. They get to pick the music. Okay. I control the volume so when they come in. Until I have given them the rundown on the workout. There's no music, so we usually do our warmup when it's quiet, but the type of warmup that we do, this like flow mobility, it requires me or a captain or an intern, whoever's leading the warmup to be able to hear, to hear the cadence. So no music until that's on. Then I go up, I give them the breakdown. You know, if there's somebody that needs something different, we do that. And then after that, music's on it's go time. Okay. I, I'm a firm believer that the music does control the vibe and it's. Sometimes I'll look at them and be like, this is not it. Today. We cannot play this slow r and b. We have, we gotta get everybody's dead. It's Monday morning, let's go. So I'll give them my input, but I don't play, I don't usually play my music. It's usually just them.

Ryan Patrick:

So, okay. No, I think that's fair. Yeah. Every once in a while, like I'll, you know, we'll put the, the stuff on that we listened to, like the two thousands, they're like, what's with all the throwbacks in the oldies? I'm like, oh geez. Like, why you gotta, why you gotta, you gotta come at me like that. The worst is

Sara MacKenzie:

like, oh, this is my mom's favorite song. And I'm like, yep.

Ryan Patrick:

Yep.

Sara MacKenzie:

Me and your mom are the same age. Yeah.

Ryan Patrick:

I actually like that you pick the music. I control the volume. It reminds me of the old, like, you know when you got a piece of cake, it's like one cuts the other chooses one

Sara MacKenzie:

cuts the other one thinks, yeah, same thing. Yeah.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah. I kind of like that. And if it's

Sara MacKenzie:

really bad, it's, you can barely hear it. Sorry.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah. So actually I do like house music, like dead mouse and stuff. That's actually my, uh, like focus music.

Sara MacKenzie:

Oh my God. You do have a DH, adhd. I have the other kind. I ha I need background noise, but I can't have that, that stuff makes me, makes my brain shake.

Ryan Patrick:

I don't know, do it. It just, it gets me going. I lock in. My wife's like, what are you listening to? It would be like, I'll have, still have it connected to one of the speakers in the house. She's like, God, this,

Sara MacKenzie:

oh, the worst.

Ryan Patrick:

Okay, so now you're new to, new to Force plates, still working on that, but what's the best change, uh, to either a testing or training pro protocol for you in the last like year or two?

Sara MacKenzie:

Well, we just got those, this, um, what was it, last month or July? We got'em in July. So we're starting to use that very, very new stuff. That's exciting. Um, yeah, but it's, it's been really interesting to just see. Well, first of all, it was humbling at first when the guys were looking at, they were thinking that they were just doing another vertical jump test. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that is not, not the same thing. So before we would use like a jump mat, like a just jump mat, and we would do, you know, jump testing there. But now it's letting us see so that they can focus on something other than just how high they jump. So that to me has been eyeopening for them and for me'cause it's like we used it, we would do the just jump mat. Every week for like a, like a say like a team like volleyball that's in season. And I would either jump them every Monday or sometimes Mondays and Thursdays'cause they play Friday, Saturdays, see how their legs feel and we could use that. This has been so much more insightful, um, to see those asymmetries and stuff. That's been really eye-opening and honestly it's kind of brought us in sports medicine a little bit closer, being able to use those tools together. Um, so I think that's the biggest change is like, okay, we have these baseline numbers. So now when somebody gets to campus, we have a baseline number for them and we can see what that return to play would look like. Okay, well let's get us back to this. This is where we were before you rolled your ankle. Now is it safe for us to load up or do we need to do X, Y, and Z? Um. So I think that's the biggest change so far. I'm hoping that once we've got this under our belt for like a year's worth of data, we'll be able to see what an entire, um, a year looks like in season, off season, all that stuff. Yeah. And that will be able to give us a lot more. So I assuming you guys do that too, I. You guys have? Yeah, we have a lot. I actually just

Ryan Patrick:

pulled, yeah. I just exported all the data. I'm gonna try to create some nice, like norms based on our, our population. So like, basically, so we can kind of stratify kids as like yellow light, red light, green light situation. That's awesome. Um, yeah. Yeah. In Excel, no less. Mm-hmm. Um, which I'll be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing yet. So this is a very, it's tentative project, but I'll run it by you so you can maybe peek at it. Yeah, no, I'm excited. Plug your own numbers in.

Sara MacKenzie:

The kids love hearing the normative data.'cause you can go back into like these libraries and stuff and say, okay, on average, you know, in this 18 to 22-year-old range for a female, this is what we're looking at. And that, that is like really eyeopening to them. Mm-hmm. Versus just like, this is how you jumped. This is what other people that are really good did that. Your jump testing is only so much decided by your parents primarily. So how much force can we apply? And then that's like a whole new like way of thinking for them. So

Ryan Patrick:

yeah. It's so cool. I mean, there's like, looking at the shape of the curves I think is valuable, but you know, pulling each one up individually and looking at the average of multiple jumps, like that's, that's tiresome. Like I don't have time to do that. I know, I know you don't have time to do that, but, um, some people do, you know, maybe in like a one-on-one setting or something.

Sara MacKenzie:

Yeah, that'd be nice.

Ryan Patrick:

All right. Favorite, uh, lift, exercise or assessment? You're, you're loving that, you know, force plates assessment. Well, favorite lift or exercise you're doing with the guys and girls?

Sara MacKenzie:

Favorite lift? Oh man. I honestly love. I love deadlifts. That's my favorite, like probably my favorite myself. That's my like, and a lot of coaches wanna skip out on that, or they wanna go to the trap bar or they wanna do whatever. Um, my, my kids don't do any Olympic lifts until their deadlift looks amazing. And so. For me, I love, I love coaching the deadlift and um, I think it's probably started with, because so many athletes have this predisposed fear of it, like, oh, I don't deadlift. Like, I love when a freshman comes in and says that shit to me. Like, oh yeah, so like, I hurt my back so I don't deadlift. You don't like, are you kidding me? No. You'll deadlift and you'll like it and you'll figure it out. Um, that's probably my favorite, just like, if we're being basic, we're gonna coach it. And, um, yeah. But there's, I guess depending on the sport or the athlete or whatever, there's so many things that I love. Like, I love seeing a female get her first pull up for something. Oh yeah. Something inside me, just like, that's so cool. It's the most liberating thing ever. I don't know what it is. It's like, especially like somebody, like a long volleyball player that has written them off, you know? Yeah. Like, they're like, ah,

Ryan Patrick:

yeah.

Sara MacKenzie:

Can't do pull-ups. Oh, we're gonna do pull-ups. We're gonna do the basics really, really well. Okay. And they all wanna come in. They all wanna do some crazy shit. But I'm like, well, you can't pull up, you can't do a really good pushup. You have no business bench pressing. Like there's just like, there's a hierarchy. And then, you know, we can go from there. But like the basic Block Zero program that most of my incoming freshmen get, they're like, they probably hate me for four weeks because they think that they're too, you know, especially'cause nowadays you don't, it's very rare that you get an athlete depending on a sport that has never lifted. Yeah. And that used to be the norm. You know, you don't, you don't get a lot of people that come in and lift or you would get like, you know, high school football players that had lifted in high school. But now it's like, thank God there's coaches like you out there that are doing the Lord's work from junior high on that are giving them all this opportunity to come into college with like a base, like a foundation, like we owe you big time. Because we're seeing more and more athletes that actually, you know. Aren't folding under a barbell or can hinge Yeah. With, with some sort of resemblance of something good. So that's been, that's been a game changer. Honestly, I would say there was a huge turning point about five or six years ago where I started noticing that even golfers and tennis players, sports, that you didn't notice it a lot. Everybody's got some sort of trainer that's been really, really helpful.

Ryan Patrick:

For sure. That's huge. I feel like I'm still trying to peel kids away from like year round club sports. I'm like, you need to take some time off of sport. I know. And you need to work on your development, you know? Yeah. Those parents are like, you know, I gotta. He's, you know, five eight and he's 140 pounds and he throws, you know, 75 miles an hour. I'm like, he needs to be like 190 pounds and like he ain't gonna get that when you guys are traveling and eating outta hotels all weekend and doing this stuff. I know. Let's get in the gym this off season. I. I'm not only that, just for other use, that's hard. Like it's just less time doing that sport, that thing, you know? Mm-hmm.

Sara MacKenzie:

Which, yeah, just play another sport. If you're not gonna take time off, play something else.

Ryan Patrick:

Well, training's, training's become in the second sport. That's what I tell most of people. Like if you're, if you're gonna choose to specialize early, then this, that takes this. Yeah. This, this has to be, you have to, it's gonna fill up the gaps. Like you, you know, there's the freaks out there. Like, you know who they are, they're just mm-hmm. They're just. Different, but then everybody else like needs to put in the work. So I don't know.

Sara MacKenzie:

Absolutely.

Ryan Patrick:

That's, that's probably my battle cry is we're dealing with that. But, um, no, I'm sorry. I love the deadlift. I think it, it's the best lift that underrated. It's just all there is to it. Yeah.

Sara MacKenzie:

Yeah.

Ryan Patrick:

All right. Well, where can people find out, uh, more about your work? Where can they connect with you? What's the best way to get in touch?

Sara MacKenzie:

So I'm getting better at posting on social media and we have like a me, a marketing like media department that helps out from time to time and like makes cool videos. Oh, nice. Because what's interesting to me is that how much they do a ton on the actual sports side, right? Like they'll come in and film clips of practice or training camps and whatever. But, um, they're doing a really good job of like filming them in the weight room and the behind the scenes stuff, because I don't think people realize how much time we actually spend with the athletes. It's insane. Yeah. So our, our Instagram for like our department is just Cal Poly Strength Conditioning spelled out. Um, you can, mine is just Sarah under McKenzie and I try to post both, but I'm, I'm better at, you know, trying to keep it about them and my page is more personal. It dabbles on in Cal Poly here and there, but you're gonna see a lot of spam of little kids. And if you don't like little kids, you don't wanna follow me probably. But so, we'll, we're gonna get better. We're gonna make get better videos and do a little bit more content. I would love to have an intern that's dedicated to that to help me out. But you

Ryan Patrick:

know, I feel like you find, prioritize where you can on camera. I mean, they all know how to use the phone. Like I found videos. Perfect.

Sara MacKenzie:

Yeah, that'll work for now.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah, so dude, it was, it was amazing catching up. So good to like touch base. You too.

Sara MacKenzie:

Anytime. Let's do it again.

Ryan Patrick:

We'll,

Sara MacKenzie:

for sure. Thanks for having me.