Rapid Fire #1: Stephanie Grubbs—“Assess What’s Working, What Can Be Improved, and What’s Not Working”

“Exciting, first episode, let’s do it!”

Always game, Coach Stephanie Mock—the Assistant AD for Sports Performance at the University of Pittsburgh—jumps straight in with Coach Justin Ochoa to launch SimpliFaster’s new interview series, Rapid Fire.

The purpose? Meet coaches, sports scientists, and high-performance professionals where they’re at and connect for focused insights on a targeted slate of questions. Need to bookmark an hourlong podcast for when you’re gridlocked in endless commuter traffic or for that extensive, steady-state treadmill workout?

This is not it.

We’re going to be agile. We’re going to move fast.

“Year One was laying the foundation. Year Two I really thought about it as building a house, so it was more building the frame and the install.” Appropriate to kicking off our new series, Coach Mock begins the episode by detailing the four-year roadmap she charted when first taking on her new role at Pitt. With that early foundation laid, she describes then hiring the institution’s first Director of Sports Science and setting about asking the right questions. “We looked at what’s working, what can be improved, and what’s not working.”

Through the short conversation, Mock also touches on how she applies microdosing concepts during the game-dense, in-season schedule for Pitt Volleyball and previews her chapter on that topic for the ebook Strength & Conditioning: How to Program, Train & Recover. With those volleyball athletes, one recurring problem Mock has identified is players landing on each other’s feet under the net and suffering rolled/twisted ankles—to address that issue, Mock also describes how she targets lower-limb stiffness, rigidity, and stability through exercises on Skyhook’s Polish Plyo Boxes.

“The one box in particular that I use to introduce the girls into training with the Polish Boxes, I really like the half-pipe or circular box,” Mock says. “Especially because it’s easier to scale the intensity.”

Cutting to the chase, Mock wraps up by discussing how college coaching is evolving in the NIL-era and how she stays true to a people-first philosophy.

“I really try to hire the best people around me to make me the best practitioner as well and have the best team.”