Heather Farmer | Growing Sport Science from the Ground Up

As Director of Sport Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Heather Farmer spearheads comprehensive integration efforts. This includes ensuring every stakeholder, from sport performance staff to academic advisors, has a seat at the table. Farmer also outlines developing an internship and graduate assistantship program to meet staffing needs and offer opportunities for practical experience. She recounts how leveraging relationships — not data — has been her key to scalability. Additionally, Farmer recognizes that to make an impact, she must meet athletes and sport coaches where they are, which she uncovers through “highlights” and “hurdles.” She suggests that sport scientists with strength and conditioning backgrounds, like herself, are uniquely equipped to excel due to their communication skills. Farmer and McMahon also discuss avoiding “analysis paralysis” and how to incorporate data to elevate the student-athlete experience — an unignorable factor as athletes bring an element of “self” in the age of name, image and likeness (NIL).

Reach out to Heather by email at: heather.farmer@unlv.edu | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or LinkedIn: @ericmcmahoncscs  

“I can carry 8 - 10 undergrad interns. I have graduate students, PhD students who wanted that experience. And boom, now all of a sudden, we've got a full operating department. These guys became pivotal. We live tag 6 - 8 teams every day on campus… They get to see what they're doing in action versus just that blind data collection.” 8:15

“We want to align with the coach. Whatever your vision is, we are spearheading that. We are making sure we're traveling together.” 18:20

“So, for them, I gave them, what was the internal workload score of the day? What was that intensity? What was the external workload of the day? What was that intensity? And we look at one recovery metric, and those are the only five things we look at for that team. And is that because that's the best and that's the absolute scientific principle of high performance? No, but we also have to make sure that we talked at the beginning about meeting coaches where they're at. Where can I get the buy-in and the understanding?” 23:40

“I don't want to just grow, grow, grow to meet certain thresholds. I want to grow, grow, grow and make sure those experiences are at such a high level. As sports science continues to grow throughout all of the levels and we're bringing everyone together, I think you'll see more sports scientists being hired at different schools across the country. I think it just takes time, just as the other sport performance pillars did.” 27:25

[00:00:03.16] Welcome to the NSCA Coaching Podcast, season 8, episode 8.
[00:00:08.41] So for them, I give them, what was the internal workload score of the day? What was that intensity? What was the external workload of the day? What was that intensity? And then we look at one recovery metric. And those are the only five things we look at for that team. And is that because that's the best and that's the absolute scientific principle of high performance? No, but we also have to make sure that we-- we talked at the beginning about meeting coaches where they're at. Where can I get the buy in and the understanding?
[00:00:38.43] This is the NSCA's Coaching Podcast, where we talk to strength and conditioning coaches about what you really need to know but probably didn't learn in school. There's strength and conditioning, and then there's everything else.
[00:00:49.11] This is the NSCA Coaching Podcast. I'm Eric McMahon, NSCA's Coaching and Sports Science Program Manager. And today, we're going to talk about building sports science programs from the ground up. We have Heather Farmer with us, the Director of Sports Science from UNLV. Heather, welcome.
[00:01:06.99] Thanks, Eric. So excited to be here. Appreciate you having me on.
[00:01:10.05] Yeah, I had the opportunity to meet with you out at UNLV. It was a couple of years ago now, really just seeing how sports science was getting integrated at a pretty large university with a lot of different sports teams. At that time, you were in the weight room. And you have a strength and conditioning background. It's led you into this role that you have. And really excited to unpack some of that. So if you would, tell us about your role at UNLV and how sports science is integrated into the athletic department.
[00:01:43.13] Yeah, so I'm coming up on year eight at UNLV. Spent the first five years as the assistant director of SnC here. So got to slide into this new director of sports science role for the last three years, which has been really fun. Talking a lot about building from the ground up, we literally started from absolute ground zero and have built everything around it. So UNLV kind of taking that on. I've had two different athletic directors in that span. So seeing both of them kind of come in and welcome the growth and development of our Sport Performance Department has been huge so that we can continue to do this.
[00:02:18.20] So started over in that SnC realm, which I'm a big believer in that everybody's got a little bit of sports science in what they're doing. So starting with that scientific theory of, how do I make this athlete better? Let me dive in, do some assessments, do some diagnostic testings. I'm going to hypothesize how I think I can improve that athlete, put in some different programming, whatever that's going to be, and then we assess again.
[00:02:42.21] So realistically, I think everybody kind of touches on it, whether or not they realize it or not. So how we wanted to dive deeper and expand on that was, how can we do that on a much more global level, big picture? Can we bring in other departments to link all that in? But growing sports science kind of stemmed from the question of, how do we take all of these small moving parts, integrate them together, and see what kind of develops from there?
[00:03:07.54] Do you feel like you get a lot of integration with maybe the academic departments as well in your role? Or is this something that has really grown more on the athletic side?
[00:03:18.74] That's an awesome question. So I'm actually super proud. One of my big missions when I took this role was, again, bringing everyone to the table. So I talk a lot about the round table theory. So we don't do rectangle tables. We only do round tables. We bring in everybody that touches the student athletes. Different teams have different cadences on how often we meet. But we do these sport performance meetings. So we're bringing in our sports psychologist, our sport nutrition-- sport dietitian, sorry, our sports med, our actual coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, sport science.
[00:03:47.91] But we're also bringing our academic advisors to the table because when we discuss all things student athletes, we want to know that side of the coin as well. So they're bringing insight where we're at academically. Are there certain athletes that are struggling much more? Maybe our attention needs to shift. They are student athletes, after all. So they're always at the table. They're always welcome, and their input becomes valuable. So when we say sport performance, it's everyone that really touches that athlete and is around any of the development that's going to help them succeed.
[00:04:18.87] So I like how you've basically said everybody at that roundtable is part of the sports science equation, even the position coaches or the academic advisor. But your job is to do that on a full-time basis. You're way outnumbered in terms of the number of athletes that UNLV has. Share a little bit about your staffing model. How has that grown? Obviously, you came from the strength side. You had a strength and conditioning role, maybe dabbling a little on the technology sports science side. When it formalized, you didn't have a lot of staff right away. How are you managing that now?
[00:04:59.17] Yeah, I'll back it up to realistically how we got started here. So I got moved into the SnC role for women's basketball when Lindy La Rocque got here. And for those of you following along, that's one of the biggest and most up-and-coming coaches in Division I basketball. So she came in with a preface of we are going to be great-- not good, not OK, we're going to be great. So I got moved over with her. Expectations were high. She is data and performance-driven.
[00:05:25.87] So she gave me the green light to say, how do we elevate this program? So again, SnC at the time, like you said, dabbled in the technology. But she said, how do we become better? So we sat down. We hashed things out together on where we can elevate that. And sports science and wearable tech and some of the forced play testing, kinetic feedback was our initial let's start here and see what we can do.
[00:05:46.94] So with me being the strength and conditioning coach on the team, it eliminated one person at the table because I got to dual role there, so it was easy to navigate. We bring everybody in, and I could make changes. Again, it was me, so I got to wiggle there. So we grew it from-- had that first year, huge success. Lindy hasn't really stopped winning since then. So other coaches start to see that and say, hey, how can we elevate?
[00:06:11.45] So then the role of sports science came in. So our entire administration said, hey, we have something here. We have something great. How do we take this model and move it on to that larger scale? So that's where they slowly transitioned me. I unfortunately had to eliminate some of the teams off my SnC roster so that I could take on more of a sports science role with those teams. But we started to grow that from there. So every semester, we've added a team, we've added these performance team meetings.
[00:06:36.73] So very quickly, it became apparent I need a little bit of help. How can we do that? So I'm super fortunate to have some mentors really throughout the country at different settings. And a lot of the things they said to me first was you've got to build relationships. So numbers are great, analytics are great, data is huge, but if you can't leverage relationships, you're going to quickly outgrow your scalability.
[00:06:59.91] So I immediately went to work on, how do I build an intern program on campus? So I reach out to our academics. All of us have gone through the traditional undergrad where we learn these things, internships, maybe a graduate assistant position. But I think oftentimes what lacks is that hands-on experience. You go through your entire coursework, and they teach you in theory, but what happens when you're staring a hundred swimmers in the face and you're trying to really conduct a weight room or you're trying to figure out how to actually test 30 soccer players that have come in?
[00:07:32.76] In theory, when you're in a research lab, you've got one person at a time. But I think where sometimes academically-- I don't want to say fall short, because it's not their own fault-- but where the current model in the US setup falls short is, how are we getting hands-on practical applied experience? So that's where I went to work, and I met with all of our academic teams and said, hey, I have the hands-on experience. I can offer you that. I just need the humans. So how can we collaborate, connect?
[00:08:00.02] All of a sudden, I started getting all of these applications for students who wanted that experience. It doesn't hurt that UNLV has a rich history and people love the athletics here, so that's obviously a draw. But just immediately, I can carry 8 to 10 undergrad interns. I have graduate students, PhD students who wanted that experience. And boom, now all of a sudden, we've got a full operating department. So these guys became pivotal.
[00:08:26.34] We live tag six to eight teams every day on campus. I can't do that. I can't be at practice. So these guys are in the thick of it. They are out on the sidelines. We're running-- we've got four or five different wearable techs on campus. So they've got computers. They've got iPads. They're giving coach real-time feedback. That's not an experience you're getting everywhere in the country. So we're able to really bring those guys over, and they are immediately impactful, which is a lot of fun.
[00:08:52.85] And they love it. They get to see what they're doing in action versus just that blind data collection. They're seeing the athletes run around. What is training load? What is high-speed distance? Well, I'm looking at it, and I get to see it and how it varies from athlete to athlete, jump counts, all of the good stuff.
[00:09:08.34] So we built from the one team, added the rest of the teams, added the interns, and then over the last year really diving into, how can I create almost a GA position? So we have two GAs in my department right now that are actually academically funded. So really big on, how do I make these relationships and, again, create impactful moments? I was able to provide that hands-on experience as a sports scientist that they were looking for in academics, wants to train them up in their realm.
[00:09:39.03] So now we have these dual-role sports scientists that spend half of their time doing sports science research in our Innovation Lab on campus and the other half with me, where they're actually meeting with coaches and teams and providing that feedback. So scalability is a big one, but you've got to know how to leverage relationships and bring in those people that you can keep things turning over.
[00:10:00.18] It's nice to see there's a lot more opportunities now for students that say they want to become sports scientists and a lot of times they might end up in a traditional exercise science program because we don't see as many sports science degree programs yet. These are just on the rise.
[00:10:20.70] But it is great to see that departments like yours are able to pull talent, pull students from these academic departments, give them that experience, put a laptop in their hand, get them on the sideline with the team, get them communicating with coaches just to understand maybe what those daily interactions are like. We are at a place in the field where, if I were to say on the strength and conditioning side, what is practical experience? Well, it's coaching, it's teaching, it's managing a platform or a rack.
[00:10:57.54] In sports science, it's a little bit-- it's a little bit different. There's a lot of logistical or equipment, setup, teardown, cleaning, charging, funneling data to the department or how that's going to be analyzed.
[00:11:12.34] So there are some really technical and practical skills that these sports science interns, fellows, GAs need to learn to become productive members of a sports science team. And it's nice to see that a department like yours is really embracing that and also giving you just another layer of support for yourself and the role that you have.
[00:11:40.46] You touched on this a little bit of the variety and scalability across different sport programs at UNLV. What's your approach of-- you're working with a new coach or a new sport, determining what level of sports science you need to implement with that program and just the full process of getting that in place that might be different from another sport that you have?
[00:12:08.18] Yeah, absolutely. We have really a wide variety of coaches here. So we have a couple coaches on staff that are first-time head coaches. And then we have some that have been here for most of their careers. So I'm at a university where you've really got to understand who you're meeting with, who you're talking with, and what their kind of background is. So as a personal philosophy for me, whether it's strength and conditioning or sports science, I always like to know where someone's coming from.
[00:12:32.88] So I have the habit of if it's a sport coach, maybe calling their previous SnC coach to see what that looked like. So what are they going to expect from me? What went well? What didn't go well? Is there a roadmap? We're a tight knit team in the sport performance realm, so I haven't really encountered anyone who wasn't willing to share some insight with me. But it always helps that roadmap. I want to know the person who's coming to the table more so than, again, the X's and the O's.
[00:12:56.81] So I sit down with them, and I'll ask them, where are your highlights? What are the things that are going really well for you? But then where are your hurdles? So we'll start to hash out the hurdles list. So these are the things that either we've struggled with or they would like to do better. Now that we've got that list, I'm going to dive in and say, well, where can I be impactful? So you learn very quickly. If you just come and you tell them what you're going to do, the door gets closed.
[00:13:22.81] I like to use the analogy of when you have family over for Thanksgiving, it's really frustrating when they do the dishes and they try and put things back where they think they should go and where it goes in their house. Nobody likes that. So I can't go into this person's house and say, here's what I'm going to do, here's what we're going to change for your program. It doesn't align like that. So if I let them write the list for me and then we talk about how I can be impactful, it grows from there, because it's different.
[00:13:48.57] When we took on with women's basketball, Lindy was all into anything and everything that would enhance her program. She is really stats savvy as well, so I could talk nitty gritty numbers with her, versus some of the coaches on staff. Hey, just tell me the big highlights. Give me things in red, yellow, green, high, medium, low. It looks very different, so really establishing what they're looking for. We have some that are more interested in training load.
[00:14:15.40] So we've got a team on campus that has a substantially high roster number, more so than most of the teams that we play against. So the biggest concern for that team was how do I make sure that we're not undertraining this group or overtraining this group? How do we make sure that everybody is collectively being taken care of from a training load standpoint? We had another who felt like their training load was really on point, but as it pertains to return to play, we want to make sure that the true reintegration, that gap between where everybody kind of hands the athlete back to the coach, can we clean that up and really make sure that we hit all of the targets prior so that when they reintegrate to training, we're not worried about 30 things, we're only worried about two things?
[00:14:55.32] Different teams just have different demands and asks, and it varies. I think when you get a lot of these first-time coaches who just don't have the experience either, you have to really tread lightly. So first, you just show them some of the stuff that you can do. And it blows my mind every time. We go into that meeting in year two and we say, what do you want to see different? What do you want to enhance? And all of a sudden, now they're giving you the feedback because they get it. The light bulb goes on.
[00:15:19.48] But we have to be able to bring it to whatever their level is. If it's a coach who wants all of the details and the numbers, that looks very different than somebody who has no experience with this and just needs some entry-level education. All of our coaches are wicked smart. They just come from different backgrounds. So you have to be able to translate to where they're at currently.
[00:15:40.29] So in these roundtable meetings, when you're meeting with different staffs, do you feel like you have to be able to showcase your program and maybe package it in a way that, hey, this is what we do across different levels of sports just to introduce the concept of maybe this is sports science? Here at UNLV, you have access to all these different things. What's your elevator pitch on that? How do you convince people they need to invest in your department?
[00:16:12.83] The biggest thing I really try to express-- from a micro level, what we're trying to do with sports science here at UNLV is bring everyone together. So we are the data hub. We are the filter. So everything runs through this department. That doesn't mean that I am the overseer. I'm just taking bits and pieces from what all of our professionals are doing. I'm very fortunate, where we have-- I mean, I will toot our own horn. We have some of the best in the country here. And we've worked really hard to do that. We've built this program over the last really five, six years. It's blown up.
[00:16:43.71] So if we already have that level of expertise, I'm not reinventing the wheel. I'm just making sure what this pillar is doing and collecting is being translated to what this pillar is doing and collecting. So we bring it all together. So that's kind of how we start the roundtable is, let me make sure that everything that's being collected or analyzed or verbalized is getting distributed to everyone at the table.
[00:17:04.85] I found really early on, especially in my SnC world, specifically, we were doing certain things that were fantastic, but it didn't match what our sports med was doing because we weren't communicating. Or sports med was doing something that was awesome that I would have loved to have integrated into my program as a whole, but I didn't know they were doing those things. So that's where, again, my personal philosophy is let's bring everybody to the table and start there.
[00:17:27.91] So when coaches see that their performance team is all in and one-- my staff will laugh when they hear this because this is one of those hills I'll die on, but everybody used the word holistic after COVID. Everybody. We're going to be holistic. We're going to-- but who is actually doing that? Who is bringing everyone in? Who is ensuring that every single bit of information was relayed across the table? So we have really prided ourselves. If we're going to put it on the letterhead, we mean it.
[00:17:52.78] So everything gets discussed in these meetings. And you'll find sometimes student athletes just give different parts of themselves to different members of the staff. We have sports psychologists, but man, some of our sports med, some of the stuff that gets shared with them, you'd think that they also were sports psychologists. But if we can bring all of that info together-- so that's my elevator pitch initially is, hey, the goal here first and foremost is to get everything out so the coaches have one clear picture.
[00:18:21.03] And we want to align with coach. Whatever your vision is, we are spearheading that. We are making sure we're traveling together. And then they say, OK, I've got a little bit more trust in this group because I know that everything they're doing funnels together in one common pathway. So once they're bought into that, then we're able to say, OK, here's why we're doing this, because it matches your vision, your philosophy. Here's why we're doing this. It matches your vision, your philosophy. We're making sure that we pivot where we need.
[00:18:48.08] But that's the big thing, is you've got to make sure that they trust you. And when coaches' jobs are on the line based on wins and losses, that trust is the end all, be all.
[00:18:58.90] I love that. I love that approach of everyone together. I think that really sums up the mission of sports science. And when you're adding a layer that can be viewed as maybe an oversight or quality control layer of a department, it's important that you have that and that you come in and you're not just a new staff member that really casts a negative presence on, hey, I'm in charge now or whatever it may be. You're actually bringing a positive voice and maybe some new skills and resources into the mix.
[00:19:35.65] On the data side, you mentioned there's a lot of live feed data collection going on in your department. Data can be overwhelming. And it does take an additional level of training and skill to be able to sort through a lot of information.
[00:19:52.13] I joke with a lot of strength coaches now that, hey, we're kind of past the chapter of our careers where you probably went to grad school, got that master's degree, and took that stats class. But then for most of your career, you were able to block that experience out, and a lot of strength coaches didn't really enjoy their stats classes. But now that that's a very important skill set for coaches, sports scientists, even sport coaches to be able to at least ask the right questions and know what performance indicators are for their sport and be able to dive into the needs analysis.
[00:20:29.18] What are some of the big performance metrics that you get into probably around workload management or injury prevention? These are big topics. We don't have all the answers here. What are some of the approaches you take to this?
[00:20:45.90] Honestly, I think I'm pretty fortunate. There's benefits coming from all the different pathways that lead to sports science. But having an SnC background, Strength and Conditioning, specifically, I think gave me a leg up on the communication piece above all else. So being able to sit down with the rest of the staff and navigate, OK, What are the KPIs we're going to look at together? because I speak the language, I understand what each of these different sport performance pillars are doing and evaluating, it really opens the conversation so that when we look at KPIs and what our performance indicators are going to be, I know where they're kind of going, even if they can't verbalize exactly what they're looking for.
[00:21:24.22] So I know in this field-- and the NSCA has done an awesome job of plugging in, OK, here's some of the different common pathways. So you can read and look into all of this now. It's no longer I have no idea how to get here. There's positives from coming from that research background. But realistically, you've got a lot of strength coaches moving in. And I'll underline in bold-- I know I'm pivoting a little bit here-- but have the confidence and have the faith because you almost have a leg up because you speak the language of everyone else. So that's the initial-- that's the initial thought for me is let's sit down and talk about this together.
[00:21:56.11] And then depending on the sport, it absolutely varies. So for instance, we look at workload management for our volleyball program. So we're looking at some of their internal and external metrics. We overlay those together, but I wouldn't say that the internal workload is going to be as critical or as high up on the list as our soccer programs that are out there and covering long hours of practice. And we've always got the heat factor to plug in. So that's a whole small additional component when we talk about internal external workload for them.
[00:22:26.74] But realistically, we have to decide as a whole because paralysis by analysis is a real thing. Year one for me, when we switched over-- and again, we've got five different wearable techs on campus, so we've got a wide variety. But you talk about some of these higher components-- I guess I don't want to dive too much into which company is which, but some of them will offer you 300 metrics. And when you're looking at that initially and you're trying to narrow it down, it's like, holy cow.
[00:22:55.20] So we try and start with 5 to 10-- five meat, maybe 10 if we're looking at potatoes. So we're going to collect all of this. We're going to analyze all of this. But also, what can I explain to a coach realistically? So we're going to dive down into that. Workload management is a huge one for us. Looking at how they equivalate that external workload is going to be a huge component, not just the overall.
[00:23:19.45] So we started with some lower-level wearable tech that just gave us one encompassing detail of external workload, and that was a great starting point. So truthfully, I would always advise don't get lost in the name on the tech either. So with one of our more prominent sports on campus, I'll tell you that we went with one of the lower levels of technology because I had to get them started. They had no idea.
[00:23:39.82] So for them, I gave them, what was the internal workload score of the day? What was that intensity? What was the external workload of the day? What was that intensity? And we look at one recovery metric, and those are the only five things we look at for that team. And is that because that's the best and that's the absolute scientific principle of high performance? No, but we also have to make sure that we-- we talked at the beginning about meeting coaches where they're at. Where can I get the buy-in and the understanding?
[00:24:06.67] Once they have that, then we can transition to, with basketball, where we're looking at every single detail. What's the jumps? What's the jump stratification of intensity? What's our change of direction? Are the athletes hitting speed thresholds that we want them to throughout the season and make sure they stay quick and agile? So it varies not only by sport but by the staff that I'm working with because all these numbers and analytics are great, but if they get thrown over somebody's head, nobody values and gains from that.
[00:24:35.50] Yeah. Yeah, with so much data and information, and you touched on this, weighting metrics by importance, that becomes a fundamental task of the sports science data management staff. And then, what are the manageable outcomes? You said 5 to 10 variables or whatever it is. Making the process manageable for your staff to implement and communicate in a meaningful way. And then lastly, where does that lead us?
[00:25:07.01] The program this year might be different from the program next year, and we need to think about that evolution. So what I'd like to ask is, where do you see the biggest impact with sports science now? And where do you see it taking us, particularly within collegiate athletics?
[00:25:25.57] I think obviously we're improving. Every year, collegiate athletics, professional athletics, the threshold gets a little bit higher. So that's also what's really exciting about what we do is it just continues to elevate at all the levels, whether that's at the youth level, collegiate, professional. The bar is always going a little bit higher and a little bit higher. So I love the chasing feeling of, how do we get better? So as we added-- I'd say 10 years ago, sport dieticians on staff weren't the norm. And now everyone's striving to get one. Sports psychologist is huge.
[00:25:58.82] So while sports science is, I'd say, definitely still in the early, beginning stages of that development, what we're able to do, you've added all of the horizontal growth for these pillars. But how do we make sure that all of those now come together for the vertical? So the sports science growth takes us to, how do we take everything we were doing and make it into one unified response? We're going to individualize performances better.
[00:26:24.86] We're going to make sure our rehabilitations are better. The reinjury rate at these high performance levels is so absurd. And that's where I think we have to really stop and evaluate, how can we make these things better? We can identify the problems. As we've created larger teams, there's larger workload management gaps on teams in the collegiate setting.
[00:26:47.09] Title IX is fantastic. And obviously, I'm a big advocate for that. But sometimes I'd say the downfall becomes we just start adding more and more athletes to one team instead of expanding. So with obviously football usually being the drawing sport, I want to ensure that if we're going to add-- what do we carry?-- 35 women's soccer players, and you're only playing 11 at a time, I want to ensure that everybody's collegiate experience is at such a high level, both playing-wise, but also how they're being taken care of.
[00:27:16.26] So if we've got that many women on the team, I need to make sure that everybody's getting my attention. I don't want to just grow, grow, grow to meet certain thresholds. I want to grow, grow, grow and make sure those experiences are at such a high level. So as sports science continues to grow throughout all of the levels and we're bringing everyone together, I think you'll see more sports scientists being hired at different schools across the country. I think it just takes time, just as the other sport performance pillars did. And you're going to see elevations in performance, in what individuals can do, in what teams can do.
[00:27:46.02] I'm hoping we'll continue to see the reinjury rates decline. I think we're doing a good job on the initial injury rates. Hopefully we're giving it more attention, but we've got to make sure that when we put these individuals back out there, they're all good. So just really continuing to elevate as a whole. You've added all of this expertise. How do you ensure that all of that expertise is getting funneled in one direction and not on its own siloed pillar?
[00:28:11.72] Yeah, I love that, integration, everyone together. And the fear is when you add all this different expertise, it puts the ball into the athlete's court of, OK, now I can go ask my strength coach, I can ask the sports scientists, I can ask the athletic trainer. And the fear or the challenge would be is they trust one department more than another, or they like what they're getting from one department versus another in terms of the feedback or input that they're receiving.
[00:28:47.58] And so that integration, that shared collective voice is really important to this. You mentioned Title IX. Obviously, there's tons of changes going on within collegiate athletics in general right now. How is that impacting, maybe on a broader scale, collegiate athletic departments, sport performance staffs, sports medicine, maybe related to recruiting and just some of the expectations that athletes are coming in with?
[00:29:15.48] Yeah, absolutely. So what's really exciting in some of the changes, particularly as it pertains to, like, NIL-- so bringing in these athletes who are all invested, obviously, in the development of the team, they want to be a part of a team, but they bring an element of self that we didn't necessarily see before. Sometimes it's not always-- it's not always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it's too much self. But when they bring that in, the autonomy and the ability to have these conversations with them elevates.
[00:29:43.99] So more so than ever, I have athletes who constantly come by my office and want to look at their own data. They want to understand what we've collected. They want to know what their game analysis looked like. Outside of, Did I score a goal? or, Did I not score a goal? they want to see all of that information. So while this was the generation that grew up with the iPhones in their hand, and we all kind of looked at them funny for it, these guys are so analytical.
[00:30:09.04] We do our baseline diagnostic testing at the turn of every semester and then throughout the semester as well. But this is the group that wants to see every detail of every data point I've collected. And selfishly, I love my job when I get to discuss these things with the humans that we are collecting. The coaching aspect will forever and always be my favorite part. So when they come by and we get to talk about here's what you're doing--
[00:30:34.90] One of my favorite examples, I have a women's basketball player right now who came in as a freshman and had the skill component but physically lacked a few details. She just relied on the fact that she was really good for so long. So we met with the coaching staff. I met with her, and we said, hey, let's go to work on how we can improve some of these things. We did the test. Here's what you crushed. Here were some areas of improvement. And if that girl didn't absolutely put her head down and just go to work on all of those-- specifically around the testing that we did. What can be improved? And how can we improve it? We did a whole plan.
[00:31:08.53] And watching her in the conference tournament this year just be an absolute standout from a physical performance-- again, she always had the skill, but seeing those things come together-- I know that's a tangent, but it just excites me that they want to know, they're bought into it. And then they will chase it and go straight to, How do I improve these things? So highlight for me, we retest her, and I say, hey, not only did you improve, you are at the top. You are at the top of the leaderboard in these things that we assessed and said, hey, this is a downfall for you-- hands down the best part of what I get to do.
[00:31:42.37] In the same way you picked on the word holistic earlier of how we put this into a department structure, you're sort of saying-- we say another word that we could pick on is athlete-centered. And as coaches or in college athletics, including the athlete in the athlete management process has not always been the norm.
[00:32:06.89] And the fact that that athlete can come into your office, ask for their testing, their information, hey, What does this mean? Or is this a big deal? This is high, this is low, whatever it may be-- they want to get better. This generation or these generations are-- you said it, they're more skilled at funneling complex information on their phones, their tablets, their computers. They're getting pumped up with ads and spam and all these different things all the time. They're constantly having to say what is good information and what is bad information.
[00:32:43.07] Obviously, that's a complex process, and maybe that's a role of these sports science departments, is helping athletes manage their information for themself, helping the departments manage information collectively across sports, across leadership. Some really big touch points there, but I thought your point on holistic, the term holistic-- and I love picking apart terms that we use all the time, so I'm really glad you said that-- but when you were mentioning this, the term athlete-centered came to mind, and I'm like, you know, maybe we don't share enough with our athletes.
[00:33:18.90] Absolutely. And that's been one of the things-- I've talked to a couple of the tech companies-- I think that's a wave that we'll see come in, is, how can we best deliver this? And again, just to hang a quick right-hand turn, how do we best give them that information? They leave a game, and they can get their stats online. But as we develop as a sports science career path and where we're taking this trajectory, how do we get that information back to them?
[00:33:47.04] They love when their one RM goes up. They chase it. They love to see my max back squat has improved. I know that. I feel that. I see that. But I I'm constantly seeking ways to provide that information to them, and I don't want to just print it off every day and hand it to them. So I think that that's an area that hopefully we'll see follow suit in how we can best deliver that information to them as well.
[00:34:11.28] I mean, phones are a perfect analogy or example of this, but technology as communication tools, whether we're talking about our phone or we're talking about DBT, force plates, whatever it may be, if the information doesn't leave the device and we can't get that information out or it doesn't communicate well-- or motivationally, maybe the athlete can't see what that information is-- we're just as limited as we were before. The information isn't accessible. And so that's really, I think, an important takeaway when we're diving into these sports science topics.
[00:34:47.68] Heather, this is awesome. I got to learn a little bit about your program when I sat down with you at UNLV, but it seems like things have really taken off the last few years, which is so exciting to see. For anyone who wants to continue this conversation and reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?
[00:35:07.67] I would love anyone and everyone who wants to grow, discuss. I'm always happy to share highlights, things that I've done that maybe didn't go so well and hurdles. So email is going to be best. And that's just Heather.Farmer@UNLV.edu, So nice and easy there. But I am 100% open door to positives, negatives. I'm pretty open to sharing all the things that I've encountered so far.
[00:35:32.18] Cool. Yeah, we'll throw that in the show notes. And really hope everyone enjoyed this episode today. It's a time we are getting thrown into the fire with all this data, all this information-- sports science, whether we're coming from the strength and conditioning side or maybe we're in the academic world or data and technology. So it's nice to talk about integration and how in the real world that can actually look at an institution like UNLV.
[00:36:00.96] So, Heather, thanks for being with us. Everyone, thanks for tuning in. And special thanks to Sorinex Exercise Equipment. We appreciate their support.
[00:36:08.50] Thank you so much.
[00:36:09.61] Thanks for listening to another episode of the NSCA Coaching Podcast. We value you as a listener just as we value your input as a member of the NSCA community. To take action and get involved, check out volunteer leadership opportunities under Membership at NSCA.com.
[00:36:29.26] This was the NSCA's Coaching Podcast. The National Strength and Conditioning Association was founded in 1978 by strength and conditioning coaches to share information, resources, and help advance the profession. Serving coaches for over 40 years, the NSCA is the trusted source for strength and conditioning professionals. Be sure to join us next time.

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