When you talk to Todd Forcier you would swear that he was from some small farming community in the Midwest, not from a suburb of Seattle. The same values that have been handed down from generation to generation by so many of us Midwesterners can easily be found in Todd’s bloodlines. It appears that we do not have a corner on the market. His belief in hard work and family are a very part of his being and he is not afraid to share just how important they are in his everyday life.

Two of the most important people in Todd’s life have always been his grandparents, Verna and Ray. Their home was but 100 yards away from Rick and Jill Forcier’s house where they raised their three children. The family was so close it was almost as if they all lived together.

“I basically grew up with mom and dad, grandma and grandpa,” Forcier says. “Grandma and grandpa were always our babysitters. When I was working, it was either in my dad’s yard or my grandpa’s yard. If I split wood for my dad, I split wood for my grandpa. One of the biggest influences in my life has been my grandpa. He’s a tough guy. Both my dad and he had great work ethics. My grandpa was never afraid to drop the hammer on me. I don’t have a tattoo and I don’t have an ear pierced because I know that my grandpa would kick my butt. And I know that for a fact. My parents just wouldn’t talk to me again, but my grandpa would kick my butt. I wouldn’t give up the way that I grew up for anything in the world.”

Todd began working at an early age and that, too, helped form the man that now serves as the Basketball Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Dayton.

Todd relates, “We had a 1200-acre Black Angus ranch right next to us. Every summer after I turned 13, I would buck hay, split wood and brand cattle. I grew up in the outdoors. When I think back to those times, they really made me who I am today.”

As with most individuals that make their living in the field of sports, Todd was quite an athlete growing up, as were his brother and sister.

“All of us kids were basketball freaks,” he says. “That is all my brother did. He didn’t play ball in college, but went right into coaching, just like me. I played baseball, wrestling, basketball, football and track. My sister played collegiate volleyball and basketball on a scholarship to Seattle Pacific. She grew up playing sports with us. We would send her into the house each day crying after playing basketball against us on our dirt court. We would finish covered in dirt and mud.”

Todd brings a type of football mentality to his basketball coaching. He was an all area type player on both sides of the ball, but his real love was basketball.

“Football was really my game but I love basketball. I only loved game days for football. I was one of the strongest kids on the team and I loved knocking people around. I loved the adrenalin from playing the game. Some of my fondest memories from high school were the games. When the season was over, that was it for football. I hated the drills, I hated the practices, I hated the stinking uniforms. Basketball, I would play all of the time. I loved being in the gym and just shooting around.”

It wasn’t long before his true love for basketball took over his life. Forcier realized at an early age that the only way that he was going to make a living in the sport that he loved was to become a coach. Shortly after entering college, he got the break of a lifetime with the Seattle Supersonics working for his mentor, Bob Medina.

“I made up my mind when I was a freshman in college that this is what I wanted to do with my life,” Forcier says. “I was 18 years old and got the opportunity to work in the nutritional program for the Sonics. It was monitoring their supplements and charting their progress and giving feedback to the trainers. My brother was there in the same capacity and he started doing more work on the conditioning side and I followed suit. It fit like a glove.”

Although working in the NBA is the pinnacle of his profession, Todd realized with the help of his mentor that sometimes you have to step backward to move forward.

“I decided to leave the NBA and move to college athletics with the help of Bob Medina,” he recalls. “I was in the NBA and want to return there, but he convinced me that I needed more experience to get one of the top 29 NBA jobs. I’m glad I made the move because I’ll take a look at some of the old workouts that I created and ask myself, ‘What was I thinking?’ You continually learn to do things better and this experience has been great for me because it has taught me so much.”

Despite his young age, experience has taught Forcier that every situation is different and every athlete has different needs and levels of capability. It is only through research and trial and error that he has become the coach that he is today. His education was one that touched on several areas of the body and how it functions.

“Kinesiology is the study of human movement. You study anything from anatomy to physiology to exercise physiology to body mechanics to chemistry. You learn how and why the body reacts as it does and what you have to do to make it better.”

When dealing with the human body there are certain knowns and unknowns. It is within the framework of his sports and medical type training that he must put together individual programs.

“Every program is different,” he explains. “The program that I would put together for a point guard is different than for a power forward.

The requirements and needs for those two positions are vastly different. Point guards would do more exercises that deal with motor learning like balance, eye-hand co-ordination, speed, agility, and quickness with their feet. We utilize quicker movements and a lot less volume of training. They will do fewer sets with quicker repetitions. The bigger guys like Sean Finn and Yuanta Holland will do more strength training. The energy requirement for that position is huge. You have to be strong and really hold your base. You need much more raw strength verses speed and quickness.”

Every position has its needs, but you have to be careful not to do too much in areas that could cause a player to actually lose some of his edge as Forcier explains.

“There are certain positions on the court that you have to watch how strong they get. With the four and five guys, there is no limit on strength but you have to be careful on the balance between upper and lower body strength. The ones and twos on the other hand have to be careful not to lose flexibility and quickness. We don’t want David Morris bench-pressing 500 pounds because it is not going to help him to be a better basketball player.”

Not only does he have to worry about the difference between individuals on a team, he has to be prepared for the differences in men and women. Although most would associate strength training to the men’s side of basketball, the women could not compete at any level of competitiveness without taking advantage of what a strength coach can do.

“Women’s and Men’s programs are different,” says Forcier. “Their bodies are different. The level of soreness that occurs is different, recovery times are different. Hormones play a big part in that. I try to keep the programs the same, but the volume and repetitions are different. With the women, I try to do more injury prevention methods, especially the ACL and other knee injuries. We tend to do more balance drills with the women. We do a lot of drills with their eyes closed to assist in that area. We try to help them in game situations like coming down with a rebound and maintaining balance. We spend the majority of our time on the men with strength while the women are more 50/50 strength and conditioning.”

In addition, the programs that players use during the year change. As we all know, if you are going to excel in a sport, it has to be viewed as a full time job. There is no vacation from basketball when the summer rolls around. The best players use the time away from the season as an opportunity to get better for when it really counts. With this in mind, a strength coach must have a program in place that utilizes the time available in the best possible way.

“There are still questions that no one can answer concerning how to balance the strength needs with the ability to run up and down the court for 40 minutes. My philosophy on the ability to get the legs in shape for that type of endurance is that it has to happen in the summer. There is no other time of the year that I can train their legs. Once school starts, they are playing six days a week and the knees are always soar because that are always running and jumping. Endurance can only be created in the off-season. When the season starts, we have to taper it back and try to keep them fresh. We go from 2-3 days a week of heavy leg training in the summer to one in pr3eseason to none during the season. We move to more flexibility and stretching.”

The season is long and at times can get overwhelming in the players minds. The schoolwork, the travel and the pressure of playing in front of 13,000 paying customers can be draining. The last thing that they need is to feel like every workout is the same.

“You have to be really creative and come up with several variations during the season to keep everybody at their peak,” he says. “We really don’t run in the summer because the guys are playing just about every day. In the preseason we run about three times each week. We have moved to more agility and speed training once the preseason starts. We have them do sprints followed by short periods of walking. We try to mimic what happens on the court where you run and jump with short rest periods.”

Sometimes players forget that their time away from the court or the weight room can be just as important as their time there. Because of that, Forcier has to keep their minds on the total program, not just the physical parts.

“There is so much involved in putting together the complete program. The player can be working out like crazy, but if they are not eating right and resting enough, they won’t get were they need to go. They are wasting their time.”

As with every other coach on Oliver Purnell’s staff, Todd Forcier has his place and knows it well. Although he would never think to talk X’s and O’s with Purnell, he is not afraid to jump in when he notices something in practice within his knowledge base.

“Oliver and I communicate on issues that pertain to my area of expertise. We’ll talk about a player’s strengths or deficiencies, such as this player needs more strength or conditioning. I’ll tell him if a player ran the floor well. I’ll sit down and talk to him everyday.”

Although, Todd loves what he does and has designs on continuing the move up the ladder, he is smart enough that there is life off the basketball court.

“I have more balance in my life than I ever had,” he tells. “I’ve seen other people work so hard that it affected their personal life such as divorce and that showed me a lot. That made me realize that you can really love your profession, but you have to make a decision, “Is it really worth it?” I make sure I take days off, but I still make sure that I am doing the necessary research. There are guys out there that lift two or three times a day and eat MetRex bars for lunch. I’m not afraid to eat a chicken soft taco for lunch.”

It will be nice to know the next time I hop inside a Chipotle for a quick lunch that there is hope for even me in the long run.