This past summer, Oklahoma Christian University hired Mike Graulich as their new strength and conditioning coach for all athletes across campus. Graulich served as an assistant at Oklahoma Christian for the past year after internships with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Rapid Sports Performance, and EXOS Methodologies.
Q: What is your goal for Oklahoma Christian athletes this year and moving forward?
A: “My goal is to consistently increase strength and athleticism through workouts for each individual’s career here. The athlete should improve all the way from freshman year to senior year. More importantly, through athleticism gains, we look to improve how well the athlete performs at their sport, resulting in more wins for our teams.”
Q: What things will change moving to your training program? What will stay the same?
A: “ We will continue to track and utilize different metrics to ensure what we are doing with the athletes is working to help them improve. What will change are some minor tweaks on how we get there and the introduction of something I call story time. This is where we will share stories with morals over hard work, adversity and other items.”
Q: What do you see in Oklahoma Christian Athletes that you think is special?
A: “ Their commitment to both their sport and academics. I have seen in the past, working with athletes, where academics is an afterthought, while here it’s considered to be more important than sports.”
Q: What did you learn during your time as the assistant last year?
A: “I learned a lot from my mentor, Jake Carney, and I’m sure as I answer this question, I will only scrape the surface of what I learned from him. For one, I learned that as long as we are tracking a metric which relates to the sport, we can come up with any crazy exercise we want, but only if it is helping the athlete improve. Be adaptable with your programming. If it’s not working for the athlete, don’t run the full exercise block. Move on and program something else. Along with this, we need to look to effectively manage the total stress load on the athlete through the semester to keep them healthy and fresh for the important parts of their seasons. If an athlete looks like they are not giving full effort, talk to them first before jumping to the conclusion they don’t want to work hard.”
Q: What is your favorite part of athletic training?
A: “Building relationships with the athletes. Getting to know each athlete, what drives them and how I can help them accomplish their goals. It’s one of the best feelings in the world to see athletes you work with accomplish their goals, especially when they worked hard to get there.”
Q: How do you want to enhance Oklahoma Christian’s athletic program?
A: “My goal to enhance Oklahoma Christian’s athletic program is to help build better athletics athletically and as people, and help create winning programs for all our sports at Oklahoma Christian.”
Q: How would you explain your style of training?
A: “I’ll try not to go in depth with my answer over my “style” of training here, as the methodologies can get somewhat complex. It’s a mixture of my experiences interning with Rapid Sports Performance, personal training athletes of all ages for 8 years, doing an online internship with the Arizona Diamondbacks, EXOS methodologies, and lots of stuff I learned from Jake. I will say in the weight room, we are going to train hard and smart in ways that make the athletes better. The goal is to make the athlete more explosive and better at their sport, not a weight room monster.”
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