This is the time of year when most basketball players get tired and fight nagging injuries.
Not Lauren Ware: The Arizona Wildcats’ freshman forward is still bouncing around and chatting like it’s the first day of class.
She’s not alone: The 10th-ranked UA (14-2) will take on Cal (0-13, 0-10) on Friday afternoon feeling comparatively fresh.
Some of it is because they see how close they are to reaching their goal of making the postseason run.
The rest can be credited to a new approach to strength and conditioning by Adia Barnes and new performance enhancement coach Jaime Fernandez.
“Having our team conditioned is essential for what we do, because we press,” said Barnes, the UA’s head coach.
The Wildcats didn’t participate in their typical offseason training program because of COVID-19. Instead, Fernandez — who has worked at UA since 2017 with the track and baseball teams — spent time getting to know his new team and evaluating them in terms of things like mobility. He only had three weeks in the weight room with his new team before the Wildcats transitioned to in-season training.
The time he spent getting to know the Wildcats was invaluable. Fernandez asked them where they wanted help.
Barnes said it’s exactly she was looking for in a new coach.
“I think a lot of it’s the relationships,” Barnes said. “I think your strength conditioning coach has to be someone that the players trust (and) has to be someone that the players want to get better with. They should be going to the strength and conditioning coach saying, ‘Hey, let’s do the ab challenge. I’m not that fit yet, but I’m going to work extra.’ They should want to work extra.
“That’s how I was. When I was here and Carla Garrett was here, she kicked my butt. But I was strong as an ox. I wasn’t injured. I didn’t miss games, all those things. I think my expectations are very high in that area, which probably isn’t easy at that position. I think Jaime has been a great addition. I think that he’s very consistent; he’s got a great temperament. Those are important things to me. … The girls like him, so when you like someone you want to work for them.”
Jaime Fernandez
Fernandez’s in-season plan is simple: maintain strength, maintain health, and then, if possible, gain some strength. He also works on movements they aren’t doing on the court, to keep them flexible. The Wildcats lift heavy weights, but don’t do a lot of repetitions — Fernandez doesn’t want players to get sore.
Then there is injury prevention. This season’s team has stayed healthy: A few players have suffered concussions, Marta Garcia twisted her ankle and Bendu Yeaney banged her shoulder against an opponent. Last season, the Wildcats watched as four players — including star point guard Aari McDonald — suffered ankle injuries.
Barnes thought last season’s team may have done too much too early. To help overcome that, Fernandez changed the Wildcats’ conditioning plan. The first day, they ran on the turf inside the Cole and Jeannie Davis Sports Complex. The next day, the Wildcats did “circuits” inside the weight room with battle ropes, medicine balls and other things.
Fernandez also introduced a new heart rate monitor — Firstbeat. At first, the Wildcats used the device to get a base number for the work they did in workout sessions. Now they track their loads during games.
“He listens to us and our bodies,” Ware said of Fernandez. “He gives us a target range, so our bodies won’t be tired the next day. It helps a lot.”
Barnes pays close attention to the numbers in practices — especially when it comes to players, like Trinity Baptiste, McDonald and Sam Thomas, who play significant minutes.
“There will be a day where Adia will tell me, ‘Hey, I don’t want them getting over this amount of load today.’ I’ll notify her in practice or she’ll come over and check,” Fernandez said. “If we hit that number, and then she’s like, ‘I just want her doing bike (work) or doing some mobility or something else.’ … That makes my life a lot easier — I get daily data from it from practices and stuff.
“As far as weight room, one of the biggest things is with all my workouts, I try to have what we call a three-dimensional movement — it’s movement on all planes of motion. Because basketball is in many planes — it is rotational, it is lateral, it is straightforward. I’ll have one or two exercises that are in all the planes of motion, and that the girls are going through a full range of motion. One of the biggest things for injury prevention is being able to get those joints through a full range of motion under load and under control.”
Fernandez said Thomas, the Wildcats’ senior forward, has gotten stronger and is enjoying the weight room more.
Ware has seen the biggest changes this year, Fernandez said, and should be the strongest player on the team by the end of next season. On the court, Ware is going harder and holding her position even better.
“Early on in the season, I felt like she would go up in the post with a very narrow stance,” Fernandez said. “One of the things I tried to bring or focus on was like, hey, ‘If you notice when we’re squatting in the weight room, we have a wider stance and you’re able to drive the bar up faster.’ It’s one of the things I touched on — ‘Maybe if you widen your stance in the posts, you’re going to be able to control your body better and go a little bit harder, a little bit stronger.’”
Ware, who is coming off an ACL injury, said putting in the work in the gym wasn’t a big adjustment.
“The month we spent in quarantine (when we first got here) prepared me for this,” the 6-foot-5 inch forward said. “We were easing into stuff and that helped me and the other freshmen as it was a smooth transition. We didn’t go straight into lifting crazy weights. … The coaches were worried about me jumping into high-intensity activities. They eased in and it prepared us.”
Rim shots
- Madi Conner and Aaronette Vonleh, members of Arizona’s 2021 recruiting class, have been nominated for McDonald’s All-America honors. The list of more than 700 boys and girls will be narrowed to 48 athletes at the end of February. The McDonald’s committee has canceled the all-star games, which are usually held in the spring. Cate Reese is the only McDonald’s All-American in the program. Barnes believes that Ware would have been one last year if not for her knee injury. Conner enrolled at the UA last month after graduating early from high school.
