Strength & Conditioning

Success in competition requires power, stamina and skill, but also resilience, grit and determination.These are built through strength and conditioning.

Our mission is to engage, educate and empower our student-athletes to develop skills that will translate to improved athletic performance and build a strong foundation for a lifetime of wellness.

The Blaine Center is utilized throughout the entire year. In-season teams and out-of-season student-athletes train multiple times each week under the supervision of nationally-certified strength and conditioning coaches.

a high school football team works out in a strength and conditioning facility at penn charter

As part of Penn Charter's robust strength and conditioning program for Upper School students, Coach Estok and Coach Mal use use technology to enhance their practice and better support students. They orient younger students to the program, and are a top-choice destination for interns seeking experience to become a strength and conditioning coach.

Applications of Technology in the Program

Teambuildr Technology

TeamBuildr

Teambuildr is a team management software that allows strength and conditioning coaches to streamline training programs, student testing data, communication and reporting.

Athletes log workouts in Teambuildr and the results are entered into a database for reporting. Since athletes can complete workouts on their own, it allows for home-training monitoring during school breaks and during the pandemic.

Teambuilder has improved the coaches' data retention, reporting and organization, and cut down on their carbon footprint in regards to training data collection.

An iPad with attached to a weight machine shows an app for a strength workout.

a screenshot of an app for collecting data on strength workouts

Catapult Wearables

Catapult

Catapult is wearable technology that tracks multiple data points with the goal of improving performance, decreasing the risk of injury through load management, and to help monitor an athlete's recovery.

Catapult metrics paint a more complete picture of the physiological impact of different sporting activities. This enables the strength and conditioning coaches to quantify practice or game time intensities in a report to coaches in order to optimize performance and recovery.

Catapult wearables and the data from the device as athletes wear them, help guide the way we think about load management and training. How hard can an athlete push themselves without causing injury or extended recovery time? The technology minimizes overuse and tracks overall load in an athlete. Most importantly, this technology and its data can provide an early indicator to injury risk, allowing coaches to reduce the strain on an athlete before injury, causing its prevention.

screenshot of the data output from an athlete wearing a catapult wearable device during training

Polar Heart Rate Tracking Devices

Polar Heart Rate

Polar is a heart rate tracking device that is 99.5 percent accurate compared to ECG results. It is a wearable device that helps coaches track heart rate during training, practices and games. Coaches create heart rate zone profiles for each athlete during baseline testing.

The heart rate data is used to review load management and sport profiling to optimize practice and training in a way that protects athletes. The device is also used for return-to-play protocols for injured athletes, having the baseline data taken prior to injury as a guide.

screenshot of athlete heart rate data from the polar wearable

stock image of a polar heart rate monitor chest wearable

FreeLap Electronic Timing System

FreeLap Timing System

FreeLap is an electronic timing system that accurately measures speed and agility. The technology increases a coach's ability to reliably test and compare speed and agility baseline numbers. The system also is used in return-to-play protocols for injured athletes.

FreeLap technology aids students being recruited to play their sport in college because it gives accurate and reliable testing numbers they can then share with recruiters.

screenshot showing freelap technology output from an athlete's speed and agility test

Stock image layout of FreeLap Timing System gear

Eighth Grade Orientation to the Blaine Center

Internship in Strength and Conditioning at Penn Charter

Penn Charter's Strength and Conditioning Program invites individuals to apply for either one of the two internship options.

16-WEEK INTERNSHIP:

Available twice per year
- August 29th to December 16th, 2022 (fall/winter term)
- January 9th to April 28th, 2023 (winter/spring term)
Full internship classroom curriculum
Works with all current in-season sports for the respected term and off-season group

8-WEEK INTERNSHIP:

Available once per year
- June 20th to August 12th, 2022 (summer term)
Condensed internship classroom curriculum compared to 16-week internship
Works primarily with football and open lift times that are available to all student-athletes interested in training over the summer.

PART 1: HANDS ON EXPERIENCE

Minimum of 20 hours per week of hands-on experience working with our in-season teams
Interns will only shadow our after-school strength and conditioning department until the first two weeks of orientation are completed. Once integration into the Penn Charter community is completed, hands-on coaching experience will be gained throughout the internship.
Includes participation in all aspects of the after-school strength and conditioning program
This includes, but not limited to setting up and breaking down lifts, learning teaching techniques and cues, running warm-ups/cool downs, maintaining the nutrition area, completing daily/weekly cleaning duties, and gaining supervised coaching experience

PART 2: CLASSROOM CURRICULUM

Attendance at required weekly, hour-long internship classroom education meetings.
Our goal is to provide you with the information to create a solid foundation of the key components needed to be a successful strength and conditioning coach

Visit The Blaine Center calendar for hours of operation and schedule of team visits.

Contact Strength and Conditioning Coaches John Estok or Mal Benard with questions.

girls high school team work out in a strength and conditioning facility at penn charter

John Estok
Head Strength & Conditioning Coach

jestok@penncharter.com
215-844-3460 ext. 295

Strength and conditioning coach Michael Paesani stands in in a weight room with a PC fleece on.

Michael Paesani
Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach

mpaesani@penncharter.com

Mal Benard
Associate Head Strength & Conditioning Coach

mbenard@penncharter.com
215-844-3460 ext. 150

Technology, Science and Athletics: The Connection to Movement

Project by John Estok, Alec Tressler, Eve Schwartz and Tim Clarke.

Project Description

1) Engaging students in the classroom is an important part of keeping them connected to learning. Using technology and connecting topics that they enjoy away from the classroom and help spark interest into curriculum that they may not previously have connected with. With the use of technology, we can re-envision future science curriculum to expand upon traditional principles, while engaging the students with topics that make learning fun and practical.

2) Athletic monitoring has become more popular in recent years, tracking movement patterns, movement quality, and total workload of athletes while practicing or playing games. With our students engaging in a rigorous college preparatory academic schedule, along with a number of different avenues in the arts and athletics, the physiological and physical stress can affect the students in detrimental ways. Catapult is an athlete monitoring system that tracks a multitude of metrics that paint the picture of the workload on the student’s body. Tracking these metrics can help to build more time and energy efficient practice plans to utilize our student’s time more efficiently.

Project results

VITAL

Breadcrumbs