Tony Stewart in his 14th year as the Strength & Conditioning Coach at North Scott High School in Iowa. Coach Stewart received his undergraduate degree at Iowa State University in 2005, where he competed in track and field. He earned his master’s degree in Kinesiology and Exercise Science and also serve as a graduate assistant strength coach at Illinois State University before assuming the head strength coaching position at North Scott in 2009.
Coach Stewart discusses how his track and field has influenced his strength coaching philosophies and what he hopes his athletes learn through participating in his strength & conditioning program.
What are the core values of your training philosophy?Â
Keep things simple, meet kids where they are at, and serve each student-athlete the best that you know how. Stimulate, don’t annihilate. Â
How has your experience as a track and field athlete impacted your philosophies as a strength coach?
One of the most impactful things my college strength coach told me occurred during a day when I was having a rough day in the weight room. It was frustrating and he could tell. He asked me, “Do you throw so you can lift? Or do you lift so you can throw?” I clearly gave him the latter as the answer, and he said then “Don’t let a bad day in the room effect you so much. You will have good days and bad, but ultimately we care about the tape measure, not the weight on a bar on any given day.”
What do you do in your training program that makes it unique)?
I would say it’s the fact that with the majority of our exercises, we only do one set.
Which strength coaches have impacted you the most, and in what way have they impacted you?
I will always thank Rohrk Cutchlow for being my first college strength coach and also giving me my first job. He was very influential in a lot of ways. He was very impactful during a very difficult season in my life, I won’t get into it, but he did a lot for me that was unnoticed, I’m sure.
What trends do you see impacting the profession in the future?
I think sometimes trends aren’t great, but balancing technology with a coach’s eye is a growing trend that I don’t think is going away. Now, it’s being able to utilize technology without getting the cart in front of the horse. I think sometimes we want to go from A to E and we skip everything in between. Advanced methods are great, but at our level, I think we need to find ways to get the desired results being as simple as we can and save the advanced modalities for advanced athletes. That doesn’t mean we can’t leverage technology when training younger athletes, however.
What do you hope for a student-athlete to learn while in your program?
I hope our kids learn to do hard things, and that doesn’t mean just grinding out hard reps—that’s the easy part. The hard part is being consistent, showing up when you don’t want to, and having others know they can count on you in any situation…and you can count on them because you are there and you show them you care by your actions. I think being your best day in and day out is a very necessary skill.
It’s important to learn to love people even though you may not always like them. What does loving a teammate look like in that situation? When you leave our program, I want you to have a voice in your head telling you that you can do any of the hard things life throws at you because you’ve prepared for it and you’ve done hard things before.
