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Strength and Conditioning
A small Division-III school outside of Philadelphia, Haverford includes 375 student-athletes in 23 varsity sports.The program is led by Cory Walts who acts as the program’s first strength and conditioning coach when he took over nearly 9 years ago. Holding a CSCS, Cory was also nominated for the 2013 NSCA Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year award.
Prior to using strength and conditioning software, Cory had a card-based system where he printed workouts on cardstock from workouts built on Excel - a process he used for every varsity sport. At this rate, Cory was building different cards every 3-5 weeks and printing them off which was actually pretty efficient considering most coaches print weekly.
However, even at this pace Cory felt like an admin formatting Excel, putting cards in folders, collecting cards at the end of workouts and hand-typing numbers back into Excel. For Haverford’s strength program, the paper and ink cost nearly $1,000 per year just in materials.
“At first, we had a lot of phones in the weight room which was better than paper but still not what we wanted. So, we switched to Weight Room View - the tablet module available on the Platinum plan which has transformed how we operate on the weight room floor.”
Cory also eliminated a lot of testing because of TeamBuildr. In his words: ‘Now, everyday is a test - TeamBuildr creates predicted maxes so that I coach effort every day without missing a workout. Percentages will be built on the previous predicted max so that athletes are constantly competing with themselves. We now only test our movements - sprints, jumps, etc.”
Perhaps the biggest benefit from the perspective of Haverford Strength is that Teambuildr has been a huge contribution to the athlete experience.
“I’m the head strength coach and we have a ton of interns, but interns come and go, so I end up putting in the majority of the work on the weight floor in terms of interacting with athletes. Even though I can end up working with one kid and 49 other kids are working, TeamBuildr saves the day because of video instruction I embed in the app. Athletes can quickly access these tutorials right in Weight Room View.”
Weight selection is also a problem that TeamBuildr solves by calculating weight percentages - instead of guessing, athletes keep pace with changing strength levels. Athletes can also give Coach Walts workout feedback, “Fist Bump” teammates, see their exercise history (Cory said athletes have a hard time remember what they did 3-5 weeks ago) all inside of the app. “It’s a value-add experience for an otherwise dry experience in the weight room.”
Haverford is well known for having an administration that is highly NCAA compliant. “It’s a big thing here at Haverford - it starts with our AD and she’s just doing her job really well. Since it’s DIII, we need to respect the rules environment in everything we do.”
“The beauty of TeamBuildr is that I can shut off access to kids’ workouts so that we’re not tracking it but still delivering workouts conveniently to ensure participation. This helps ensure that coaches and myself are getting the most out of TeamBuildr without the ability the break the rules even if we wanted to. Additionally, athletes don’t have to be restricted in any way from it.”
Before using TeamBuildr, Cory wouldn’t actually assign workout programming to incoming freshman because of the lack of instruction; that’s changed. “I can actually give workouts to freshmen because of the videos integration which allows me to assign my own specific videos to exercises. Freshmen can then view a video with any exercise in the app before they do it.”
“TeamBuildr is very user-friendly to the coaches which is a big deal but it’s also easy for athletes to use which may have been a bigger deal for me.”
Lastly, Cory had emphasized a need for top-level customer support especially during the setup phase and in response to new features. “The team behind TeamBuildr is probably their biggest advantage - responsiveness and adaptability - those are things that set them apart from competition.”
Considering the costs - both in materials and time - of the previous process, TeamBuildr returned Haverford’s investment in less than a few months. DIII schools are known for small athletic budgets and even smaller S&C budgets. Being quite familiar with this financial landscape, TeamBuildr is priced accordingly and provides a full-solution platform at the right cost for schools like Haverford.
Division III athletics poses different challenges from a strength coach's perspective. TeamBuildr is the perfect fit from a cost and compliance standpoint; it returned Haverford’s investment in less than a few months.
- Cory Walts, Director of Performance
