Marty Klingelhofer is the Assistant Director of Athletics for Strength and Conditioning at Landon School, where he has served as the school’s strength coach since 1983. A 1981 graduate of Lafayette College, Coach Klingelhofer volunteered periodically with the University of Maryland’s strength and conditioning staff between 1995 and 2005.
He also worked at Gallaudet University as an assistant football and strength coach in 1996 and was promoted to Head Strength & Conditioning Coach in 1997. He began working full-time at Landon School in 1998, when he was named to his current role.
Coach Klingelhofer earned his NSCA CSCS certification in 1988 and his USAW Level 1 coach certification in 1992. He joined the National High School Strength Coaches Association (NHSSCA) in 2016, became the Maryland State Director in 2020, and was recognized as the NHSSCA Maryland Coach of the Year in 2020 and Regional Coach of the Year in 2022. That same year, he was also honored with Landon School’s Teacher of the Year Award.
What do you enjoy most about being a strength and conditioning coach?
I enjoy working with all kinds of students, especially those who are less athletic, and seeing them develop. Helping them improve in strength, speed, agility, and coordination through our program is great, but what is even more gratifying is to see their belief in themselves grow as a result of their consistent hard work in a focused program that helps them to witness the accomplishment of their own goals.
One example of this is a current NFL assistant coach whom I coached in high school. He wrote, as part of his recommendation for this auspicious award, “Everyone needs that someone to believe in him at some point in his life. That was Marty for me as a high school football player. I desperately wanted to start on the varsity football team. Marty dedicated himself to helping me achieve that goal. Marty built my foundation of hard work and focus on technique that carries me today as an NFL Coach.”
Please describe your training philosophy.
My mission statement is to build a base of movement literacy and mastery to which will be added strength and speed so that our students will grow into robust, resilient (physically and mentally) and efficient athletes for life. I work to develop the total athlete by helping each young man reach his maximum level of performance while reducing the likelihood of his being injured. I accomplish this goal through the implementation of a comprehensive research-based program design that includes multi-joint, ground-based, and multi-planar strength training and speed, agility, plyometric, balance, and mobility work.
What do you consider your greatest accomplishments as a strength coach?
My greatest accomplishment has been the development of one of the first strength and conditioning programs in the Washington, D.C. area—and, eventually, having buy-in from the entire school community. When I began, students could choose “Physical Training,” a loosely organized weight training and fitness option that would fulfill a school sports requirement. Over time, Strength and Conditioning became an offering in all three sports seasons with 60 to 100 athletes, all varsity teams and some JV teams lift in-season, and many athletes participate in summer sessions.
You have impacted so many student-athletes at the Landon School. What stands out most about your career at Landon, and how has that experience shaped your career and philosophies?
What means the most to me is the ability to work with a large number of athletes of vastly differing abilities and help them succeed. While the general goals for each athlete are the same—become stronger, move better, become faster in all directions, and focus on fundamentals in terms of technique—being able to help so many individual student-athletes, especially those without great speed or strength at the start of our work together, and to witness improvements in their skill and confidence, is very rewarding. To see them go on, in college and beyond, to use habits of mind and body that we instilled in our strength and conditioning.