Strength Coaching in America: A History of the Innovation That Transformed Sports

Shortlisted for the North American Society for Sports History 2020 Monograph Prize

It’s hard to imagine, but as late as the 1950s, athletes could get kicked off a team if they were caught lifting weights. Coaches had long believed that strength training would slow down a player. Muscle was perceived as a bulky burden; training emphasized speed and strategy, not “brute” strength. Fast forward to today: the highest-paid strength and conditioning coaches can now earn $700,000 a year. Strength Coaching in America delivers the fascinating history behind this revolutionary shift.

College football represents a key turning point in this story, and the authors provide vivid details of strength training’s impact on the gridiron, most significantly when University of Nebraska football coach Bob Devaney hired Boyd Epley as a strength coach in 1969. National championships for the Huskers soon followed, leading Epley to launch the game-changing National Strength Coaches Association. Dozens of other influences are explored with equal verve, from the iconic Milo Barbell Company to the wildly popular fitness magazines that challenged physicians’ warnings against strenuous exercise. Charting the rise of a new athletic profession, Strength Coaching in America captures an important transformation in the culture of American sport.

Jason P. Shurley is an associate professor of health, physical education, recreation, and coaching at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater and previously served as the director of the kinesiology program at Concordia University–Texas. An NSCA-certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and a BOC-certified athletic trainer, he has also worked as a strength coach or athletic trainer in professional baseball, football, and hockey.

Founders and codirectors of the Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the University of Texas at Austin, Jan and Terry Todd wrote the classic guide Lift Your Way to Youthful Fitness. Jan Todd is also a professor of kinesiology and health education at UT-Austin and the author of Physical Culture and the Body Beautiful. A world-record-setting powerlifter, she was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame. Terry Todd (1937–2018) was the author of four previous books. His many honors included induction into the International Sports Hall of Fame and being named a Legend by the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association.