S02|E212
Teaching vs. Coaching with Charles Kenward | Samson Strength Coach Collective
In this episode of the Samson Strength Coach Collective, Charles Kenward of Incarnate Word University joins us to break down the nuanced relationship between teaching and coaching. As someone running both Olympic and football strength programs solo, Charles brings a unique lens on time management, communication, and athlete development. He emphasizes how the weight room isn’t just for physical training—it’s a classroom, a community, and a space where leadership is formed.
He shares how trust and understanding—knowing a coach’s or athlete’s middle name, as he says—are the foundation for effective coaching. Charles walks us through how his methods evolve as athletes mature and how empowering seniors to become teachers in their own right builds sustainable culture and performance.
Key Takeaways:
- Charles Kenward runs both Olympic and football strength programs at Incarnate Word University.
- The weight room should be a place of community, teaching, and leadership development.
- Teaching is the foundation of coaching—athletes must first learn before they can perform.
- Seniors are empowered to become teachers to freshmen, reinforcing knowledge and accountability.
- Building strong, trusting relationships with both athletes and coaches is critical.
- Intimacy in basketball training creates different dynamics than football.
- Understanding anatomy enhances coaching decisions and athlete development.
- Coaches should balance being both mentors and friends to athletes.
Quote:
“You can’t coach anyone until you really know them… at least know their middle name.”
— Charles Kenward
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Samson:
What’s going on, Samson Strength Coach Collective listeners? On today’s episode, have Charles Kenward, Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach with Incarnate Word University. Charles, thank you so much for coming on, Dude, I’m stoked. I’m stoked to have you on. ⁓ we were talking about this pre-show a little bit. But for those who are listening,
Charles Kenward:
Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.
Samson:
I do have to describe that you have a beautiful mane of hair. And I didn’t know it when we were talking on the phone and then you popped up and I was like, wow, those are some luscious locks. So I love it.
Charles Kenward:
You
I appreciate that. I’m trying my best. I have to do something to it every now and then. I think it’s time to trim the ends.
Samson:
Well, the headphones are giving it a good look. It looks like a lion’s mane in the most powerful way. very, very appropriate for a strength coach. Well, okay. We’re not here for the hair though. We’re here for you and to hear your story. So could you just give us a background of your career and then what’s led you to incarnate work?
Charles Kenward:
haha
I appreciate that.
For sure. ⁓ So my name is Charles Kenward. I was born and raised in San Antonio, which Incarnate Word is in San Antonio. So I feel like I’ve kind of come full circle. ⁓ My mom was actually a professor at Incarnate Word when I was a little kid. And I spent a lot of my time on campus, even like as a toddler, as like a little kid, like sitting in her classes. ⁓ I very much love the academic area of it.
So Encarnate Word has been super cool. My mom got a PhD there. So it’s been like a full, I went around and I came back. I got my first degrees at UTSA. I started with my bachelor’s and my master’s at UTSA. And then I did like my graduate assistant kind of stuff at UTSA, working with football and basketball and cheer. And then after that, I went to Eastern New Mexico University and I did all of the Olympic sports at Eastern New Mexico University.
And for a time we didn’t have a football strength coach. So was kind of in charge of football as well. I was the only strength coach on the entire, on the entire campus for a small period in New Mexico, which was a lot. had 17 teams and it was my first full-time job. was 22 years old dealing with every team I possibly could kind of just thrown into the fire. ⁓ day I walked in, it was like, okay, here’s baseball. There’s 60 of them. Have fun. So that was a learning experience for sure.
And then after Eastern New Mexico, I went to Lynn University in Florida. And that’s right outside of Boca Raton, like across the street from Florida Atlantic. And when I was out there, I did all of the big team sports, I guess you’d call it, like men’s basketball, men’s lacrosse, baseball, the ones that have like more athletes on the team. ⁓ That was also a good experience. Lynn had some unique weight room propositions. Like some of our, some of our actual lifts were done like outside. had a rack.
We had three racks next to the soccer field. So we spent a lot of time like outside in the Florida weather. And that was definitely a learning experience for programming with less equipment, I guess is the best way to put it. And then I got a call that I could incarnate where it had an open spot to do men’s and women’s basketball. And I was like, I could get to go back home. I get to be near my family and I get to do basketball. have less teams, better pay. I’m like, I’m on my way.
So I got to come back home and I’ve enjoyed the last two years at Incarnate Word going into my third now.
Samson:
Dude, what an awesome story. That’s incredible. What was it like for your mom to find out that you were going to be going back to Incarnate Word, especially with her being a professor there previously? Yeah.
Charles Kenward:
Oh, she loved it.
Her first question was, is the Chick-fil-A on campus still there? I think that was my first question to my now boss too. That was very much, like it felt like home. It really did feel like home. She also taught some classes on campus at UTSA. So when I originally applied to UTSA, that was kind of part of it. But I feel like incarnate word kind of suited us both a little better. It’s a little more intimate of a community.
Samson:
Hehehehehe
Mm.
That’s awesome. And I mean, I can’t imagine, like you said, growing up on campus and then being able to come back one day. You know, did your mom ever expect you to be a professor? Because my family is full academics. One of my sisters is a professor and she actually cried when I said I was going to be a strength coach. was she expecting you to follow in her footsteps at all?
Charles Kenward:
Yeah.
You
Yeah, she ⁓ still kind of wants me to every now and then.
⁓ She will ask me if I want to like teach some nighttime classes or something like that. She’s like, well, you got basketball during the day. And then at night, you know, they’re always looking for professors in the Kines department to teach like the physical education kind of classes. I took a coaching basketball class in college, so I’m sure that they would have some adjunct professors to do stuff like that. She is still kind of asked me every now and then like, when are you going to when you gonna start teaching?
Samson:
Did I still get that all the time too? She’s always like, when do you get your PhD? And she got hers when she was 61, right? And so she went back to online school and then finished it up. And I’m like, I’m gonna do it when I’m 61, like get off my back. Exactly, exactly. We certainly have enough space for this. Well, I mean, that’s awesome that you were able to stay so close to home and then especially with UTSA and then eventually come back on to home. I mean, I’ve got to ask kind of the glaring question that comes to me is,
Charles Kenward:
Mm-hmm.
We got time, we got time.
Samson:
What was your experience like being the only strength coach? mean, especially with having, was this at Eastern New Mexico, correct? Yes. And so you had every Olympic team and then you also had to take over football. I mean, how did that process even begin? And then how did you approach it?
Charles Kenward:
At Eastern New Mexico, yeah.
So our head strength coach at the time, he was there only, I want to say he was there for like six or seven months. He got there in like early July and then his first thing to do was to hire an assistant because he would have been in the same position doing the same thing. And then he got a call that he could go closer back to home and do only football as well. So he was just like, not to throw all this on your plate, but I got to go. And I’m like, I fully understand. You know, you get to be near your family. You get to do football, you know.
Eastern New Mexico’s D2, so it was a D1 job and it was definitely something that was a good thing for him. And I’m like, okay, fine, like I’ll figure this out. And I think the best way to describe it was I had a lot of help from the coaches, not in the weight room. They didn’t come into the weight room much. They didn’t really tell me what to do, but it was definitely, we had to have good relationships for me to be able to.
be trusted with that many teams at one time. So I spent a lot of time with the coaches. Eastern New Mexico is a real small town, really small town. Portales, New Mexico, I think the total population is like 8,000 people and the closest big cities, Lubbock, it’s about an hour and a half away. So that’s pretty much all we did was we went to work and then after we got off of work, I mean, I spent time with the coaches going over to their house, know, building good relationships so that when they came into the weight room, they felt like their athletes were in good hands with me.
And I felt like I really knew what they wanted and I didn’t really have to overthink it so much. think just trying to keep things simple was the best thing. And Eastern New Mexico, as small of a school it is and kind of out in the middle of nowhere, it has a great weight room. It had eight racks that were front and back. So 16 rack spaces and then like a huge dumbbell wall that went from five to like 130.
It kind of surprised me when I first got there in all honesty. I didn’t think a D2 team would have a better weight room than a lot of D1 schools. And it was amazing. So it kind of gave me the freedom to do what I wanted and the freedom to really learn. I think that’s what the experience as a whole was, was just to learn, kind of grow into my position and to develop as a strength coach.
Samson:
What I love about that experience and what’s unique to me from all the other stories I’ve heard, because this stuff is not super rare in strength and conditioning, unfortunately, where all of a sudden you have to take over and ⁓ add on more to your plate. Now your scenario is a little bit more rare with having to do football and all these other teams. But what I love about this experience is you getting kind of the crash course and how to speak with your head coaches, because that is one of the few things that I see that almost every young strength coach really struggles with.
is, okay, I know how to talk with the other strength coaches, it’s my first year, second year, whatever it may be. I’m comfortable with the team, but at the end of the day, it’s always like the head coach is kind of like, they’re like, oh my God, head coaches call me. How do I act? Put on a little bit of a front and everything. I love that you got the experience of going over to their houses, being able to build relationships with them and developing that trust process. I mean, feel like that must have been very valuable for you very early on.
Charles Kenward:
100%. There wasn’t anything else to do in the town. So that was kind of what we were stuck with. But I really do think that was the best way I could have learned. And I mean, I see that too, that a lot of young strength coaches have a hard time interacting with their coaches and not just in a like, what do I do? What do I say kind of thing? But they feel like they’re constantly being judged and they feel like if they’re not constantly doing the perfect thing, then they’re going to
The head coach is going to try to take over or something like that and all head coaches want the best for their teams. They really do. So having a good relationship with your head coach is something that I learned on early. And I think I still carry that to this day. The first thing I do whenever I have a new coach that I have to go talk to or a new coach that I have to meet, I don’t feel like you can coach anybody or you can have a good relationship with anybody until you at least know their middle name. Like you have to really know the people that you’re working with.
Samson:
I love that. And it’s so interesting because it can almost become the strength coach versus the head coach in these scenarios, right? Like you say, they operate out of fear, right? Like they feel like, okay, if I don’t do my job, then like you said, this may never happen, right? But the head coach is gonna take the team out of my hands. They’re gonna judge me 100 % on everything that I do. But as you said, clearly that’s not the case.
Charles Kenward:
Sometimes it feels like that.
Yeah, you really just have to build relationships. mean, if you know your head coach and you know what they want and your head coach really knows you and trusts you and, you know, not that they don’t know what they’re talking about. We got master’s degrees in exercise physiology and they got master’s degrees in coaching their sport. You know, we have our thing and they have their thing and our job is to compliment them. And it has to really be
Compliments like they have to trust that we’re trying to compliment them and not take over anything. I’m not coaching basketball That’s not my job Like I’m here to make your basketball players better athletes and the more they trust me the more It all works out for both of us
Samson:
But you did take that coaching basketball course, so you could potentially assist if you needed. ⁓
Charles Kenward:
I did, yeah. I did.
I I grew up in San Antonio, so I grew up watching the Spurs and the ideal basketball Spurs, like the perfect, perfect game. It’s different kind of, ⁓ different kind of mindset, I guess. I get the idea, but it, you know, I stay out of it as much as I can.
Samson:
I think that’s a great call. ⁓ You know, I totally understand because trust me, like I say, I’m an insult to the game when I play. There’s a reason I’m the weights guy. But it’s so interesting you bring up the Spurs too, because that’s like the pinnacle of every team I ever go to is like, look at how they share the ball, look at how they play basketball. It’s a basketball without any agenda. Like that’s an exciting time. So I’m sure your coaches love your background of being able to watch the Spurs.
Charles Kenward:
haha
Absolutely. We’ve had the blessing to, I’ve been thrown into a couple of pickup games with the Spurs. They would come up to the convo at UTSA when I was like a GA working with the men’s basketball team. And the Spurs would like play pickup games with our guys. you know, like the John T. Murray used to go up there and ⁓ Kelden Johnson used to go up there. And it’s been a pleasure to be able to meet those guys and see their mindset around the game. Like basketball is very…
You got people that want to share the ball and got people that want to do it all themselves. So to see both ends of the spectrum has been amazing.
Samson:
That’s awesome. Well, now you have to be able to tell people like you dunked on Tim Duncan, right? I mean, like even if you lie, you know, right? ⁓
Charles Kenward:
I wish. I can dunk. mean, I think
I can dunk pretty well, but Tim Duncan is a Tim Duncan’s a different animal. I mean, he’ll be sitting. He’s such a friendly guy. You see him around San Antonio everywhere. How New York they talk about they see Maury Povich everywhere. It kind of like the running joke. You’re not a real New Yorker until you’ve seen him. It’s the same thing here in San Antonio. You’re not a real San Antonio native until you’ve seen Tim Duncan with his family at a random steakhouse or
Samson:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Charles Kenward:
just walking around downtown. That dude’s everywhere.
Samson:
That’s awesome though. And I mean, I would be, I’d be lying so much though. I would just be a hundred percent lie. And I’d say, you know, I crossed up mine in Janobili, like just making up the most ridiculous stuff. But that’s why you’re a better person than me. But you, you also bring up a really cool point, which I want to touch on quickly is that that is one of the things I love the most about basketball is you will see because of the ease of access to the sport, right? All you have to do is have some sneakers and a ball and a court, right?
Charles Kenward:
Hahaha!
You ⁓
Mm-hmm.
Samson:
And so a lot of the pro players will end up going either to local schools or they go back to their previous schools. I saw this a lot at Texas Tech, you know, where we would have ⁓ red Raiders who graduated and then would go on to play in the G league or the NBA. And they come back to the school and they’d actually be able to play, right. And they’d be able to impart all this knowledge down to these players who are trying to get to the next level too, where, know, and the, my experience with football is they would come back and, know, they would obviously spend time with the players, but
Charles Kenward:
Mm-hmm.
Samson:
there’s something a lot more intimate about actually playing pickup or just running through some drills with an actual professional player. I like that part about basketball. think it’s very cool.
Charles Kenward:
Yeah, I do too. I love that. think Lonnie Walker gave me my welcome to the league moment watching Lonnie Walker play pickup. Like he flew past somebody and dunked him. Like, yeah, I never could have, I never could have played basketball at a high level. But I think that on that same note, the intimacy of basketball is what makes me like basketball so much more than football. I mean, when there’s only
Samson:
Yeah.
Charles Kenward:
15 players on a team, like I know everything about them. I know their middle names, I know their dog’s names, I know their brothers, their sisters, their mom. I don’t think you can get that close with football teams. And there’s 120 of them. It’s hard to know every guy’s real name sometimes. You you hear a nickname and you’re like, okay, that guy’s that. And then you’re doing breakfast check and you’re like, who is he? You’re like, what’s his real name again? But with only 15 basketball players, I mean like,
I know everything about them. They know everything about me. Like we can, we could be super close friends in a way. And I feel like basketball is also a different mindset as far as training goes in that same logic. By the time they get to college, most of them haven’t lifted a weight before. So building that super tight knit relationship with the basketball player is super important for them to like really trust it. Like, Hey, we actually need to lift weights if you want to, if you want to be at the top of your game, if you want to go.
to the league one day, you have to start lifting weights and here’s how you’re going to do it. So they trust me and I can trust them that they’re actually going to do it once we have a tight relationship.
Samson:
Yeah, you bring up a great point about the sport of basketball. It’s just so few people. And so you have no choice because you spend all this time with these people to really learn about every single person. And then if you’re a relationship driven coach or relationship driven player to start, then you’re really, really going to know these things very well about each other. It’s the same reason I said I will only work with basketball for the rest of my career. know, something may change at some point where I’m forced to work with somebody else who knows. But as long as I’m allowed to make the choice, I’m picking basketball for that exact same reason.
Charles Kenward:
Mm-hmm.
Samson:
And it’s the exact same thing that I saw in football too, is you had your position group and you can develop really great relationships with them. But I’m a selfish guy. I want to know the whole team and I want to know everything about the whole team that I can because I want to be able to, like you said, get the most out of those relationships. Is the first question you always ask, what is somebody’s middle name?
Charles Kenward:
Yeah.
I mean, after I learned their first name, I do. I asked their middle names and obviously when we bring players in or on recruiting visits, we give them our little spiel of like, this is how we train, this is kind of that. And then I give them two questions and I learned one from an interview that I actually participated in. Somebody asked it to me, he said, what’s your middle name? And if you could be any kitchen appliance, what would you be? And you’d be surprised the kind of answers that you get, but…
Samson:
Fair enough, fair enough.
Charles Kenward:
I think when I first answered it, said an oven just because it’s so versatile, like it could do anything. You know, can fry stuff on the top, you can cook stuff inside, but you can learn a lot about a person by what they answer and like why they answer it kind of thing. some insight into the person before I ever try to coach them at all is important.
Samson:
Yeah, I love that question. you know, I’m going to give you the one I always ask too, right? Because this one to me, I think is, it makes people think and it also shows me a little bit of a parallel about how they see themselves versus what they think they should be. Right. And this one is always, if you could be any animal in the world, what do you think you would be? And then what would you want to be? And so the difference between the two. And it’s so interesting about, I would say,
Maybe because I know the purpose behind myself asking that question, I’m the only one who gives the same answer for both, right? But you see a lot of times that people will say very interesting things like, ⁓ I would be a lion if I could, but right now I think I’m probably a sheep. You know, the very cliche answer, whatever, know, nobody ever says something like that, but it’s so interesting to see the parallels of how they view themselves and what they want to be. And it’s just so interesting to me. So you can, you can steal that question if you’d like to.
Charles Kenward:
Mmm. Yeah.
I might. I think it’s a fun way to get out of the monotony of recruiting sometimes. Just to throw people off a little bit. know, recruits, go on three or four visits and then they’re like, I got to go look at another way room. I got to go look at another cafe. And they’re like, well, if you were a kitchen appliance and they’re like, what?
Samson:
dude.
But you know, you’re right, because these guys go on so many visits and the strength coaches aren’t doing anything radically different. There’s nothing there that’s like, okay, this strength coach is in, if we’re being a hundred percent honest, we’re probably not the reason they’re committing either, right? We can be the reason that it could hurt their chances or help their chances, but we’re not going to be the end all be all. So I love the way of splitting it up. And what we do is a hundred percent of the time, just focus on the fact that my wife is the dietitian. And so.
Charles Kenward:
No, yeah.
Absolutely.
That’s nice.
Samson:
We just bring that up and then they’re always like,
that’s cool. You know, and I’m like, yeah, yeah, there we go. Yeah. I know you don’t care about any of the force plate stuff or whatever we’re doing. I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t be interested either if I was a player. ⁓ so you obviously relationships are very, very big piece of what you do. What are the key things that you focus on when building those relationships? What are the first few things that you want to do? And then how do you continue to develop them across the years as you get to know people better?
Charles Kenward:
Hehehehe
Yeah.
think the first thing you have to know when you’re going to be coaching an athlete is you really have to get to know the person before you get to know the athlete. know, especially in the weight room, I don’t always get a chance to go out and watch practice every single time. Sometimes I do, and I love it when I can. Sometimes women’s basketball coaches have thrown me in practice as a practice player, and then you really get to know them as an athlete. You know, you get in their face a little bit, you go back and forth, and you can tell who’s who, but…
Knowing the person first is like super important to know their values and their morals and like what makes them drive and what makes them tick. And then when it comes to getting the extra little bit out of them in the weight room, you know what makes them tick. if it’s in the nicest way, it’s like if they’re, if they love their family, it’s like do this for your family. And they’re just like, okay, I can do that. you know, some people have a super high.
drive and they need to be going, going, going, going like they’re arousal state. They want to be way up. And then some people, they just need to be relaxed and they just trust that like, they’re like, I got this, you know, and you’ve to know if they had the high arousal kind of person and low arousal kind of person on Mac’s day. Am I going to crank the music up for this person or do I just need to let them go? I just need to let them be them. And I think knowing that first and foremost is super important. And then the more time you spend around them over the years, the more you really learn about them. Like you learn
their dog and their cousins and like you learn all that stuff as they go what kind of video games they play and things like that and then just in normal conversations because I feel like we spend so much time around them it’d be a disservice them to not know that stuff and I tell all my athletes is the second they step in the weight room on their recruiting visit I want to be a teacher before I’m a coach I want to teach you why you’re doing what you’re doing how to do it before
I ever try to coach you and you give me feedback and I give you feedback and if I can teach you good and correctly to begin with, there is less major coaching to do as we go along. And the more time we spend together in the weight room, it’s going to be more nitpicking the little things like when you’re doing an RDL, if I teach you to do an RDL correctly the first time, then three years down the line, it’s not starting over with how to do an RDL. It’s just like, remember to keep your chin down and that’s it.
You know, it’s, it’s minor coaching versus major coaching if you teach correctly to begin with, but they know when I tell them that I’m a teacher, that I’m not just a teacher right now, you know, coaching and teaching and basketball is right now, but it’s not going to be the rest of your life. You know, if you’re the best basketball player in the world, if you’re LeBron, you’re only going to play it. So you’re 40 and then what you’re still going to hopefully be lifting weights and taking care of your body and doing some sort of cardio and
all of that kind of stuff. So I want to teach them how to do all of that stuff as we go. So throughout the years, they know that they could always call me and like, Hey, I have a question about how to do this, how to write a program, how to do a certain exercise that maybe they saw and they want to try. And like, I’m always open to that. I I’m going to teach you anything that I know. I’m an open book for the rest of your life. You’re free to call me at any point. So they really have to be.
bought into what we’re doing in the moment for them to feel comfortable with that later on down the line. I I’ve had players that come over to my house and after they graduate, I’m like, here’s a book, go read it. So they know that anything that I’m telling them is for a reason and I wouldn’t tell them if it wasn’t. I really just try to be as helpful as I possibly can with the knowledge that I’ve gained because the knowledge that I’ve gained is, it’s useful for me, but it’s not for me. You know, I want to be as helpful as I possibly can.
Samson:
I’m sure your mom loves the teaching aspect of your coaching approach.
Charles Kenward:
Yeah, yeah she does. She tries every time I talk to her about it and she was just like, so you could get paid a little bit more if you were in academics. She’s like, just pick up a night class, couple thousand dollars.
Samson:
Hehehe
Typical, that’s typical mom. It will never go away. I promise you.
Well, you you say that you start off with teaching a lot so that coaching can become easier. You know, how does the teaching evolve for you from, say a freshman to a senior? ⁓ Is it, like you said, more of the life lessons, teaching them the lifelong fitness aspect, or is it a little bit more of just the coaching aspect? How does that approach change from freshman to senior year?
Charles Kenward:
I with freshmen, it’s literally just the bare basics. It’s the bare minimum. Well, not the minimum, that’s the wrong word, but the basics of how we do things, why we do things, the things that we do specifically, and then the reasoning for them. But the reasoning for them, we can tell them in the moment, but that’s not gonna last. It’s just kind of, here’s how we do it, why we do it, do it. And it’s, we’ll take a couple of days before the start of our semester.
before the start of our official lifting times. ⁓ Everybody will just sit down in the weight room and I’ll go over every single lift that we’re planning to do for the semester and the variations of the lift that we’re planning to do semester. I’ll have them sit there with a notebook and a pen, take any sort of notes that you want to and ask any sort of questions that you want to. we did that as interns at UTSA. And I think a lot of schools do that. They do that with their interns. Here’s the lifts that we do and why we do it.
And I found that super valuable for me. You know, I was never a college basketball player, but if I wanted to know how the basketball team was going to lift, I mean, I wanted to know exactly what the strength coach wanted and why he wanted that and how that affected basketball. So when I sit them down and do the exact same thing for the team, teaching them like they were going to teach a strength coach or teaching them like they’re going to teach somebody else. By the time they get to seniors, the seniors know what’s going on to the point that they can teach the freshmen.
And when they have a freshman at their rack, you know, there’s one of me and there’s 15 of them. So no matter how cognizant I could possibly be of everything that’s going on, there’s 15 of them. If there’s four people lifting at once, you know, I can’t possibly watch every single person all the time. So the seniors being there, like they know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, how it’s supposed to be done. They can help me out too. They’re just an extra set of eyes that they know that lifting is super important and they know they’re going to be doing it forever and they can help the freshmen.
trying to get into that mindset as well.
Samson:
And so teaching to you is basically doing it so well that those you’re teaching become teachers themselves.
Charles Kenward:
Absolutely. If I can’t explain why we’re doing something to you, we shouldn’t be doing it. If I’m not able to give you a solid reason and you don’t fully understand the reason and you couldn’t explain that reason to somebody else, then you haven’t learned it well enough. So I really think it’s super valuable for the seniors to be able to teach it because like teaching helps you remember it yourself. You know, the more you can explain something to someone else,
the better you know it. That’s what I really believe.
Samson:
Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. And one of the quotes that comes to mind is something from one of the certification exams I’m studying for right now, right? It’s a whole philosophy. They’re over in Wichita Falls starting strength, right? But one of the things that they always say is when one teaches to learn, right? And the whole aspect of when you go down for the certification exam is even if you don’t want to be a coach and let’s say you came down, you know, I think out of every group, there’s probably 30, 40 people.
for each conference and then 10 of them are trying to become, or maybe even five, just starting strength coaches, right? But everybody else has to coach every single other person there. You don’t get to go through and lift and just get coached and not get to do it yourself, right? Because like they say, when one teaches, two learns, right? I might teach you how to do one specific technique, one specific aspect, but I’m learning myself because again, if I can repeat those things and if I can say them, then it means I…
I truly understand it. And so I love that progression for you to be able to see a freshman who is a sponge and absorbing all these things is essentially drinking water through a fire hose, trying to figure it out. To then a senior being able to disseminate that information down to the younger players and help them out when they first get to campus.
Charles Kenward:
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. I think when I went through the USA weightlifting course, the first time I went through it, I was like 19 years old. I was probably 20 years old because it was during COVID. I had my things scheduled to do the week of spring break. I was going to go to Dallas during the week of spring break to take my USA weightlifting course. And then it got canceled because that was when COVID started. And we did the whole thing over Zoom and like they still
certified everybody and they’re like, we stood in our bedrooms with PVC pipes on camera, doing snatches and muscle cleans and all that kind of stuff. And I mean, that was a lot of fun, but I feel like we didn’t get the full aspect of like how to teach a person in person, know, getting hands on with them and like touching a person like, okay, knees back, you know, flat back. And like, you’re actually moving the person, like how you have to do sometimes in coaching. Some people don’t respond to just.
how do you do this and you speak it to them, it just doesn’t make sense. You actually have to put them in that position for them to feel it. I think that’s something that we try to do with a lot of our players and it’s easier for the players to get hands on with each other than it is for us. If it’s a women’s team, we can’t always do that. Men’s team sometimes you can, but if it’s a women’s team and you’re like, here’s how an RDL is supposed to feel and then you have the seniors like, okay, slide over like this.
turn your feet out, all that kind of stuff, then it really helps them learn and helps them feel it all too.
Samson:
Yeah, it’s just such a productive process for everybody, right? And in a large part of the athletes I work with want to be coaches when they graduate too, right? You know, they may say, I want to go pro for as long as I possibly can, but that’s not realistic for everybody, right? So then they end up, you know, saying they want to be a coach afterwards. And so we’d be doing them a disservice if we didn’t help them understand how to actually coach these athletes in the future.
Charles Kenward:
Mm.
Yeah, absolutely. think playing the game gives you a head start and then the more you can learn from your coaches while you’re still playing the game, it’s like you get a leg up on the game and you get a leg up in life. I mean, your coaches can be coaches of the game, but they’re also just people too. They’re going to be mentors for your life. Anytime you have any questions on basketball, 30 years down the line, hopefully you can call your basketball coaches. If you have questions on health and fitness 30 years down the line, you can call us.
Samson:
Hmm. I know. love that. You said one other thing that I thought was really interesting there too, which I agree with. And I’m honestly on the, let me explain it first and then I’ll explain my viewpoint. Okay. Instead of trying to get all big brand here, you said that, you know, a lot of times coaches will explain stuff to athletes. And in that moment, it doesn’t really matter, which I am on the other side where I’m always like, you know what? I always talk to athletes or like a specific movement, why exactly we’re doing this specific movement. I could be able to explain it to a freshman.
And then sometimes I give them almost too much of an information overload. So I’m on the side where I’m like, I always try to explain, I always try to tell them exactly what we’re doing. And I’ll never forget one time I had a player after I started speaking with them and tell them exactly what I would do it. They’re like, coach, I don’t need to all that. Like just, just tell me what we’re doing and then I’ll do it for you. Cause I trust you. Right. You know, I think it’s interesting that you bring that up because
Charles Kenward:
Yeah.
Yeah.
Samson:
I think a lot of times when people focus on teaching, they focus on, like you say, regurgitation or being able to explain exactly why we’re doing something when the athlete doesn’t really care. The teaching aspect to me comes in from, okay, how do I get this person to care about what we’re doing and then understand and really synthesize that information for themselves? So just because we’re doing a floating ankle series because I want to prevent ankle sprains as much as possible because we had six ankle sprains or whatever last year, right? It doesn’t really matter to them. All they need to know at the exact moment when they’re first starting out is, okay,
This will help me and I will probably be a better basketball player for it. But then as they learn more, you can start to go kind of deeper into the weeds instead of just blasting them with information at the start when they don’t really need to know that stuff.
Charles Kenward:
Yeah, and I definitely feel like that’s a, that’s an end of the year kind of conversation. The more you push deeper into February, you push deeper into March, they don’t want to lift weights. They want to play basketball and then sometimes they don’t even want to play basketball anymore. They’re tired. They’re wet ready for spring break. They’re like conference tournament. And then I can be on a beach. And when it comes to, okay, but next year we’re playing basketball again. So you get a week off and then you have to go do this on your own now. And it’s not.
you’re not going to be with me every day, you’re going to be spending May, June, July somewhat by yourself. At least if they know why they’re doing it and they have some real faith in why they’re doing it, they will do it without questioning it or even if they do question it, they’ll still understand like, yes, this is good for me and increases the buy-in and increases their actual ability to wake up in the morning and like, I don’t want to, but I’m going to do it anyway because I know it’s good for me.
That way when they get back to us in August, they’re not way out of shape. We’re not starting from ground zero. We’re starting from almost where we were, at least at the end of last season.
Samson:
Yeah, that quality and motivation is just so much better. And you see better results. And that’s where the actual long-term athletic development plan comes in. Because I think that’s where sometimes people can get lost is it’s not long-term athletic development if you’re starting from the exact same spot every single year. Yeah.
Charles Kenward:
Yeah, yeah,
absolutely. ⁓ I’ll have those conversations with them in February and March and you know, February, March, our lifts get shorter, we get closer to the end of the season. It’s more like let’s get in, let’s get the important stuff done, let’s get out. But I’m still keeping the rest times the same, you know, we’re gonna spend 30 seconds doing a split squat iso and then they’re gonna rest 30 seconds before they do the other side. It’s like, hey, what do think we’re doing this? And
I love to hear the answers that they spit back at me. It’s like sometimes it’s just some crazy stuff. And then sometimes some of them, they’re taking some kinesiology classes, like, does it have something to do with attendance? I’m like, that guy, that guy’s right over there in the corner. And when he kind of explains himself, then everybody else, it doesn’t always have to just come from me. If it comes from them and they understand what they’re talking about, then they’re like, ⁓ okay. know, hearing it from a player and not just hearing it from a coach, it’s, you know, the senior drag up the freshmen. You always hear like you bring somebody in the gym.
If you go into the gym, bring somebody with you, have them bring somebody with them, and then you’ve got everybody buying in. So that helps a lot with like team morale, team chemistry, and, you know, team buy-in as a whole.
Samson:
No, for sure. And you’ve obviously got a great process for relationship development. That’s obviously key. You know, and you say as a friendship, right? Because it is a friendship at the end of the day. You know, it is, it’s people who like, I’ve got a former player who just texted me this morning and, you know, he asked me for some workouts, but then we spent, you know, the next 20 minutes talking about all the stuff related to his life and everything. And it’s somebody that is going to be a friend for life. But how do you walk that fine line for yourself? You know, where ultimately when somebody’s with you,
Charles Kenward:
It is.
Samson:
you do want to approach it as a friendship, but also at the same time, there still has to be a little bit of a sense of authority as a strength coach. How do you make sure that you kind of maintain that sense while making sure that they care about your athletic or sorry, your relationship development too?
Charles Kenward:
Well, I know that when we’re building our relationship together, that the more that I can get to know them and the more that they can get to know me, the more that they’re going to trust me. And they will still work hard with me. And I make sure that they know that. Like you’re not here to have fun. You’re here to get better as a person and as an athlete. And when it comes to actually doing this stuff, like I’m going to be hard on you.
but I’m going to be hard on you for a reason. Like, here’s your reason, but you still have to do it. It’s still gonna be hard and it’s still gonna be stressful. Like, I’m here to die with you. You you’re gonna struggle with me through March, April, May, and then when we get back, like August and September, they’re not gonna be fun. Like, we’re going to do a lot of running, we’re gonna be tired, we’re going to be sore, we’re going to be stressed, but then when you get to basketball season, everything’s gonna get easier.
because you died with me over the last couple of months. And towing that line of like, yes, I am here to help you and I’m here to do it in the nicest way possible, but it is still going to be hard. Like they have to just really trust that I know what’s best for them. And when they know that I am really like giving my whole heart into doing what’s best for them, then they’ll do it no matter what it is that I ask.
Samson:
Have you ever had an experience where an athlete may have pushed back on the relationship development piece where they may not have, you know, ⁓ seen the importance behind the relationship that the strength coach and the athlete have, and then have you ever been able to turn it around with that athlete?
Charles Kenward:
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ A lot of times we’ll get, when I was working in Florida with a baseball program at Lynn, we had a Cressy sports performance up the street and a lot of those pitchers go to Cressy and then they come to our weight room and they’re like, well, we’re not going to lift right now. We’re going to go to Cressy later. And like, well, you know, I know you, those guys at Cressy, may not necessarily know you as well as I know you. When you go up there,
Are they going to give you a program that’s tailored to you? Like I’m trying to do my best to, cause I know your injuries. I see you every day. And sometimes it’s more just reminding them like your best interest really is the person that you see every single day and the person that knows everything about you. It’s like coaching them as a person first and like teaching them as a person first. Like when you go pay a private trainer or something like that, that person does want to help you.
but you’re only going to see them for two months of the year. You’re going to see me for the next four years. So we’re going to have to build that relationship at some point and, know, completely taking aside the person from outside of strength training sometimes, or outside of cardio sometimes, like, Hey, let’s go grab lunch in the CAF and like learning more about the person. And I’ve done that before. We’re just like, Hey, let’s just go have lunch together. Let’s go sit down in the CAF or like there’s Chick-fil-A on campus. Let’s just go walk over to Chick-fil-A together and like learn about why do you prefer
this kind of training or this kind of training or what don’t you like about what I’m doing versus what you could be doing somewhere else. And learning that kind of stuff will really help clear up some questions over what they may be asking or if like any sort of doubts or concerns like, I don’t want to do this for this reason. I don’t want to do this for this reason. At least if they give you the reason, then you can address those topics, but it definitely takes a good relationship before you’re able to get to the point where they’ll honestly answer those questions. But I think honesty is the best.
case on either side. Like I’m telling you everything that I’m doing my best. I’m telling you everything that I know. There’s a lot of things that I don’t know. Maybe you want to see someone else because they know something that I don’t. That’s okay. You know, I’m here to learn just as much as you are. You’re learning from me. I’m learning from everybody else. I’m learning who you are. Everybody’s a learner. Everybody’s a teacher.
Samson:
Yeah. It’s almost as if communication can solve almost all problems, right? Yeah. And, know, the one thing and I don’t know, this is the one thing that I can’t, I do think it gets a little convoluted with private trainers and we have a bunch of listen to podcasts. So please, I’m not trying to insult you whatsoever, but when it comes to relationship between strain and conditioning as a collegiate career, and then as an actual private career, I’ve noticed a lot of times that
Charles Kenward:
A lot of problems. A lot of problems. Yeah.
Samson:
the incentive for the private trainers to keep them on as clients drives a little bit more of their programming. And it drives a little bit more of a bias towards what they feel like the athlete might enjoy. ⁓ Whereas the same time as the collegiate strength coach, we have the benefit of, you’ve got to work out with me no matter what. So, you know, there’s going to be some things that I know for a fact you don’t like, and we’re just going to have to do them. ⁓ And I think that
Charles Kenward:
Yeah.
Samson:
comes from exactly what you’re saying where I get to see you every single day so we can build a better relationship so I can ask you to do those things versus on the private side, you may see them ⁓ two times per week and it takes a lot longer to build that relationship.
Charles Kenward:
Yeah. And I think having the environment that we have, we’re so lucky that we get to train all 15 of our players at once. It’s not just you. If somebody’s over dining in the corner throwing up, you know, you’ve got another 14 that are picking them back up and getting them back under, uh, getting them back under the bar, getting them back on the line, whatever it may be. It’s, it’s definitely more of a community versus, uh, I was a private trainer for, for a long time. I worked at a Gold’s like fitness manager kind of thing. And if it’s only one person by themself,
they’re not gonna work as hard as if everybody around them is also working super hard and they all bring each other up.
Samson:
Yeah, that’s a great point. And that’s exactly what we mentioned earlier too about why we love basketball so much. It’s a team, it’s a community, and you have to work together.
Charles Kenward:
Yeah, it is.
it 100 % is. We would travel over this last season whenever our women’s basketball team would travel out of state. So we went to New Orleans a couple of times, we go travel to Northwestern State, like not to Tosha, Louisiana, or like North Texas. We’d be gone for three or four days at a time. The players would leave their dogs in my house. Sorry, I don’t mean to, but my great Pyrenees is in the background barking.
Samson:
No,
we love Hear the Dogs, don’t apologize. ⁓
Charles Kenward:
Yeah,
she’s loud in the background and she’s like the kind of she’s young. She’s only two years old, but she feels like the team dog mom at this point. Whereas like all of the players will leave their dogs with my girlfriend here at our house and my dog Millie is like, okay, now here’s what we’re going to do. And like she’ll run them around the backyard and they all play together. And you know, it’s a community for basketball, but it’s a community outside of basketball too.
Samson:
which is exactly why we love doing this job, Yeah. Okay, well, my final question just to make your mom happy, okay, if you could teach one class, what class would you teach?
Charles Kenward:
Exactly, 100%.
I would enjoy teaching an anatomy class. think I took a musculoskeletal anatomy class in college that the professor that we had quit early on in the semester and they gave us a replacement, a replacement professor that was straight out of his master’s program. I think it was probably the first class he ever taught and nothing against him. I mean, he was doing his best. He just got thrown in the fire and it was a large class. There was probably 200 students in there.
Samson:
Okay.
Charles Kenward:
But for him, was like people were failing every test. I think I was the only person that passed like one of his tests and everybody started asking me like, well, how did you, how did you study this? I’m like, well, I studied the same stuff when I was training for like my personal trainer certification or when I was studying for my personal trainer certifications, like it’s the same kind of stuff. And we ended up like skipping those classes to go rent out a study, room in the library. And I would teach like 15 to 20 of the, the people in that class.
here’s what we’re going over, here’s probably the questions he’s gonna ask about it, here’s how I’m gonna explain it to you in the nicest way possible. And I thoroughly enjoyed that. I mean, at the time I was actually, my leg was broken. So for me, it was kind of fun to talk about because it was like, yes, we’re talking about the tibia and the fibula and the ACL and the meniscus. And I’m like, y’all wanna see? It was like, it was a lot of fun because it kind of made.
It made sense in a smaller environment like that, we could be kinesthetic versus in a class of 200 people. It’s kind of harder to like, they’re talking about your rotator cuff and there’s always going to be one person somewhere in the room that’s like going swinging their arm around, making some circles. They’re trying to feel it, know, teaching stuff that can be physical at the same time, I think is just more fun because you can actually understand it by doing it. I like understanding things by doing them.
Samson:
Yeah, no, I love that. And I apologize. I totally doomed you because now your mom’s going to talk about anatomy all the time.
Charles Kenward:
That’s okay. That’s okay. She teaches
⁓ statistics and calculus So she has her like she has her math end and then my dad comes as the same thing with engineering So I kind of picked something somewhere in the middle I mean I do a lot of stuff with like VBT and all that kind of stuff so I use the math side and then I use the physical side with the mechanics and like biomechanics and things like that, so I Just like to combine things the more I can learn about all the things it better all be
Samson:
Okay.
Well, look at that. They perfected and formed the exact strength coach from each side.
Charles Kenward:
Exactly. That’s why I
tell them, they’re like, you just pick things up and put them down. I’m like, yes, but with science.
Samson:
It was exactly,
trust me, there’s a lot more to it, but that is also at the same time, essentially what I do.
Charles Kenward:
It is, it is. I teach
other people how to pick things up and put them down.
Samson:
Yep, exactly. Well, that’s awesome. Well, Charles, man, thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming on the show. It’s been great to hear more about your story. And I really appreciate you diving into the teaching versus coaching. It’s such a great topic and something that a lot of coaches do, but they don’t really understand and have the framework behind what they do. So I appreciate you diving into that.
Charles Kenward:
Yeah,
I appreciate you having me. It’s fun to talk about. If any way I can help anybody, that’s what I want to do.
Samson:
Well that’s my next question. What would be the best way for people to reach out to you if you have any further questions or follow you on social media?
Charles Kenward:
Yeah. So my email is kenward at UIWTX.edu. K-E-N-W-A-R-D. Strange last name. That’s a very unique one. My Instagram and my Twitter are the same thing. Coach Kenward, just at Coach Kenward. So if anybody has any questions, please feel free.
Samson:
Hehehe
Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much, Charles. I appreciate you.
Charles Kenward:
I appreciate you having me.
