“Some of the biggest impacts that were made on me as a young person were through my coaches and my teachers.”
Sitting down with Coach Crochran for Episode 4 of the Croc Show, Coach Javi Almanza of New Braunfels High School discusses his inspiration to become a coach, which was sparked by his own experiences playing high school and college football and being the first in his immediate family to pursue a university education. That background also informs his advice to younger performance coaches looking to find a foothold at a larger school, as he suggests that taking a special interest in working with freshman athletes and underserved female sports teams can make an immediate impact and help build buy-in.
“My passion for strength and conditioning really took off when I was programming for the freshmen and programming for the girls’ teams,” Almanza says.
Located north of San Antonio, the New Braunfels Unicorns sports program boasts not one, not two, but three weight rooms on campus. Before kicking off the interview, Almanza provides a tour of two of those facilities, explaining how each rack is set up for station work with big screen monitors hooked up to group programming via Rack Coach. Almanza also details how he manages and schedules access to the weight rooms for each team at the school depending on number of athletes, phase of the season, and sometimes even the week’s programming, with certain flooring preferable for heavier lifts and specific rooms having more ceiling clearance and space for medball throws and resisted jumps.
As with prior episodes, much of the conversation with Coach Croc covers the practical realities of wearing multiple hats as a high school S&C coach, providing value for sport coaches and teams with widely differing philosophies and needs, and setting boundaries and “non-negotiables” where necessary.
“My goal as a strength coach is to not only coach the coaches and let them know what each workout and each movement is, but also to teach the kids,” Almanza says. And, when asked how to handle scenarios where a newly-hired sport coach may have different training priorities than what has been established previously, Almanza keeps it simple: “Here’s what I was hired for, here’s what my job description is. I’m going to do what I’m supposed to be doing.”
Video 1. Episode 4 of The Croc Show featuring Coach Javi Almanza.
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