It’s a relatively small room, set back in a corner of the school that many students pass only as they are leaving or entering the building. Its doors are often locked, yet as one glances through the glass panels it’s easy to see the room’s focus on function: mirrors and metal fill the space within these four walls carved out of the athletic lobby. It’s a classroom as well as a training ground, busy before, during, and after school. And it’s about to see even more action.

This school year, the FHC weight room is busier than ever. As the athletic department pioneers mandatory strength and conditioning sessions for all in-season athletes, they hope to make a large segment of the FHC population familiar with this corner of the athletic lobby.

“If we want to get our athletes to understand that being an athlete is kind of a year-round endeavor, the only way we can do that is to hit every in-season sport,” said athletic director Clark Udell. “So at the end of this year, every single athlete, regardless of [whether they are] a freshman basketball player who only did one thing or a varsity 3-sport athlete, they will have gotten the opportunity to learn to value the overall strength and conditioning of an athlete, regardless of sport. [Mandatory in-season strength training] was the only way we could hit 100%.”

In an initiative that was launched this fall, each in-season sports team is required to attend two thirty-minute strength and conditioning sessions each week. Led by head athletic trainer Janae Start, the sessions build strength and overall athletic ability through agility exercises and weight room training.

The program aims to combat several problems, including the frequency of sports-related overuse injuries in FHC athletes and a lack of flexibility in many students’ schedules that prohibited them from enrolling in Strength and Conditioning as a class.

“We’ve seen a very large increase over the past two years of sports-specific related injuries,” Start said. “We’ve been talking about [this program] for a couple years: we’ve implemented the new strength and conditioning classroom setting, but not all kids are able to take those classes, so we’re trying to set forth another option for kids that don’t have the availability in their schedules. What we’re doing with in-season [athletes] helps kind of reverse what they’re doing in season. … Say for instance, basketball: a lot of forward bending and good athletic position. We want to work on strengthening their upper back, their hamstring strength, that kind of thing. We’re working to kind of reverse what they’re focusing a lot on during in-season training on the courts or on the field or out running.”

The weight room was new territory for many fall athletes. Start made particular note of the cross country and cheer teams, who began the season with little strength training experience but progressed throughout the season to display “humongous changes.”

Sophomore cheerleader Brianna Arent was just one member of her team who was apprehensive about the weight training.

“I had no experience whatsoever. I hadn’t even been in the weight room before,” Arent said. “I was a little hesitant at first, but I was excited to become stronger.”

Senior cross country runner Cecelia Batterbee had a similar reaction to the idea.

“At the beginning when I first heard we had to do this I thought it was a horrible idea, and it freaked me out a little because I’d never lifted before,” Batterbee said.

Both Batterbee and Arent, however, reported satisfaction with the results of the program by the end of their seasons. Arent says that the strength and conditioning regimen “definitely helped” with cheerleading, improving her strength and making her better at her sport. After her initial doubts, Batterbee also came to see the strength and conditioning program as a positive force in her cross country season.

“The issues I normally have with my back didn’t happen this year and I attribute that largely to the strength training,” Batterbee said. “Without those issues my times were better than ever before because it was one less painful thing during our races, so now that it’s over I wish we’d had to do this in the past, too.”

The beginning of mandatory in-season strength training has coincided with one of the most successful fall sports seasons in FHC’s history, with two state championships, a handful of long runs in state tournaments, and several conference championships. Udell, however, hesitates to draw a direct connection between the strength and conditioning program and the success of FHC’s fall sports.

“There’s no direct tie, but the one thing I know is we’ve asked our athletes to give in a different manner than they’re used to giving and investing, and when we get athletes to invest more, … that typically transitions into more success,” Udell said. “Can doing some of this [strength training] affect some of it? Potentially. I’d love to say yes. Obviously you can’t. But I can’t believe it hurt.”

The reasoning behind the strength and conditioning program goes beyond the physical benefits. Behind all those back squats, cleans, single-leg dead lifts, and dumbbell curls is the idea of teamwork.

“The whole idea is to provide the opportunity for our athletes to become better athletes,” Udell said. “This would at the surface seem to be focused on becoming physically better athletes, which absolutely it does. But, there’s secondary motivation behind this too. It’s that, in season, it’s something that the team does which is somewhat outside the realm of what we think we do together. There’s a component of shared sacrifice, shared pain, shared time, in a different environment.”

Not only does this pain and sacrifice “reduce the risk of chronic injury,” according to Start, but it also results in more intangible benefits.

“There’s a mental toughness piece that comes from [how] the more fit we are, the better we feel about ourselves, the more confidence we have in the activity we’re doing,” Udell said. “All those things are across the board, doesn’t matter, any sport. … It’s going to help build team, it’s going to help build strength, it’s going to help build competitiveness.”

Moving forward, the athletic department hopes to build on the success of this year’s strength and conditioning program. Start describes the program as “ever-changing”: along with incorporating technology to record athletes’ information and assess where their strength gains are, she is working towards a national certification in strength and conditioning in order to equip FHC with the additional “input and insight” it needs to strengthen the program. With the advent of in-season strength training, some of Start’s ordinary workload has been transferred to assistant athletic trainers to allow her to work in the weight room with both in-season athletes and other students attending off-season all sport conditioning; this is held from 4:15 to 5:15 on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

As the strength and conditioning program gains momentum, Udell hopes that that small corner of the athletic lobby will become the breeding ground for athletic success of all kinds.

“If more success is only defined as on the team level, the non-scoreboard level, then [the strength training] is worthwhile,” Udell said. “Because we all love the scoreboard success. But what we walk away with is the success that’s part of being on a team, and the relationships and the shared experiences. In essence, we’re creating, if nothing else, [an opportunity] for every athlete to have a different kind of shared experience with their teammates.”