Where Matador Athletes Get FIT: Hit the rack at SISD’s state-of-the-art student fitness training center
Since 2016, Gary Berkley has helped student-athletes at Seguin High School prepare for their endeavors on the athletic fields of play.
Coach “Berk,” as he is known to his students, is a Virginia native. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Corporate Training and Development from Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, Texas, and a Masters in Corporate Health in Wellness from California University of Pennsylvania. Berkley is also a 24-year Army veteran, having completed his service in 2014.
During his later years in the Army, Berkley worked with leaders in the military medical field and with soldiers in the Wounded Warrior Company. Berkley also served as a drill instructor. He says he uses the experiences of serving as a mentor for military personnel in his work with student-athletes.
“A lot of my background was training soldiers,” Berkeley says of his time in the Army. “So, it actually just rolled right into what I do now because I was so used to helping younger soldiers in the advancement of their careers. I served as a coach, teacher, and mentor.”
Berkley now serves as the strength and conditioning coach as well as a health science teacher at Seguin High School. As the strength and conditioning coach, it’s Berkley’s job to make sure his Matador students are ready for competition, whether the sport is football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, or any other sport played at the school.
“I do a needs analysis for each sport,” Berkley said. “For football, we work more with strength and power. In basketball, soccer and volleyball, those sports use more endurance. So, I have to vary my training programs.”
Seguin High School athletes train year-round during both the on and off seasons for their respective sports. Berkley says their strength and conditioning routines are adapted to have athletes be at their best when their sport is in season.
“I observe how athletes respond to training,” he says. “We want to make sure they are not over-training so by the time they hit their in-season and playoff season, they are hitting their peak performances. So, we do a lot of modifications so we’re not getting athletes injured or sick.”
Berkley gets support from the school district to keep up with the latest technologies in strength and conditioning. One of the technologies used to help student-athletes train at Seguin High School is the Catapult One Sport GPS Tracker. The program involves athletes wearing a high-tech harness with a device that records their movements in practice and competition.
“It monitors throughout the game,” Berkley says of the tracking unit. “And that’s how we get real-time measurements on speed, workload, impacts, things of that nature to make sure that we prevent injuries and things like that for the athletes.”
The measurements are seen by Berkley and Seguin High School coaches, and the results are then shared with the athletes. The sophisticated devices use GPS satellites to record player movements and can check vital stats like their heart rate during games and practices.
In addition to the physical nature of strength and conditioning, nutrition plays a role in developing Seguin Matador student-athletes. Berkley says he talks to athletes about what they eat and helps them plan their food intake to best benefit their individual goals.
“We have some athletes who are trying to gain weight and some who are trying to lose weight,” Berkley says. “So, I will sit down with an athlete and talk to them about what they are eating, and I’ll have them journal what they are eating for a week.”
Helping with muscle recovery also goes into keeping athletes in tip-top shape. Berkley works alongside Sarah Anderson, who leads the Seguin ISD student trainer staff, to help in that process.
“I’ll talk to the training staff if maybe (an athlete) needs an extra ice bath or more time with the trainers to help their muscles recover,” Berkley said.
Having a training staff and a strength and conditioning program is something more and more high schools are offering to their student-athletes. In the past, outside of lifting weights and running, students were mostly left on their own to monitor their conditioning. Berkley says there has been a shift over the last few years for schools to be more proactive when it comes to student-athlete strength and conditioning.
“About seven percent of high school athletes actually go on to play at the collegiate level. And a major part of that is your strength and conditioning,” Berkley says. “I think most schools want to try to help student-athletes earlier rather than waiting until they get to college because in most instances, for those young men and women who go to college without a great (high school) strength and conditioning program, they’re behind their peers. So, over the last four to five years I say there’s been a bigger call or a bigger influence for that to happen.”
The strength and conditioning program offers a head start for athletes who want to compete on the next level. As the head of the program at Seguin High School, Berkley offered the habit-forming advice he gives to his students to those who want to get a start on their own conditioning program or have already started one.
“I would say it’s more of a lifestyle. Just day by day, the more that you commit to it, the more that you dedicate yourself to it, the easier that it gets,” Berkley says. “The more your confidence grows with it, you start to see your goals come to fruition. And that’s what I love the most about working with athletes. I see them at their starting points and then we get them to a point where you see their bodies start to mature. You see them start to build self-confidence and start to conquer things that might have held them back in the past because of the resiliency they’ve built from working out.”
Through his career in the military and in education, Berkley has traveled from his native Virginia to Georgia, Missouri, and other parts of Texas. Teaching and working with Matador athletes over the last seven years,
Berkley says he likes being in a community like Seguin.
“I enjoy the hometown feel,” he said. “It actually reminds me of the small town that I grew up in Virginia. So, when I first came here, it sort of felt like home. Knowing that I did not want to move back to Virginia, I decided to stay here. So, I really enjoy Seguin.”
Coming to Seguin after serving for more than two decades in the Army, Coach “Berk” continues in his service to help young men and women get stronger.
“I’m just here for the students.”
