[BasketballAlum] newsletter #2

[James Kuronen]

We have changed Strength Coaches for our Men's Basketball team and we 
thought you'd be interested in hearing from him. Following is his 
message to you:

Dear Basketball Alumni,

It is with great pleasure that I am emailing you. The administration at 
UMD has allowed us to add a few new strength coaches to the staff which 
in turn has allowed me to restructure my schedule. I will now be 
handling all of the strength and conditioning duties for the Men's 
Basketball team. I took over the team workouts two weeks ago and the 
guys are really responding to a different system.

We train four days a week and the schedule can be very intense at times 
for the guys. We start our work week on Monday mornings at 5:53 AM. We 
go outside for an hour and train Dynamic flexibility, speed, agility, 
Plyo's and then we condition for about 15 minutes. After that we come 
inside and lift for about an hour. In the lifting workouts I am trying 
to teach the guys how to Olympic lift for explosiveness and then we 
move into our strength stuff. Basically we follow that routine everyday 
just at different times during the day. On Tuesday's the guys come in 
at 6:08 AM again and we just lift, then at 12 noon they go up in the 
gym and play for a hour. On Wednesday's we let them sleep in and we go 
at 12 noon for 1½ hours. Thursday's we get started at 5:53 again and go 
for 1½  hours. Friday's they have no structured workout but they play 
at 12 for an hour or so.

During the season when we start playing games the guys will lift with 
me twice a week on different days which will change weekly based on the 
game schedule. Most of these workouts will take place on Sunday 
afternoons and Tuesday evenings late after games. That sounds crazy 
even to me but, considering that we play several Tuesday's and then 
Friday and Saturday nights using a two day rest period before games 
forces us to utilize those Tuesday evenings for production.

I tell you guys these things because I love to hear the stories of how 
teams in the past were structured related to strength and conditioning. 
I will be at every Basketball Game that my schedule allows and I would 
love to chat with any of you, so please stop and introduce yourselves.

I stay very active with my emails and also would love to hear from any 
of you that have questions. That is a very open ended statement and I 
hope you use it literally. If you have any questions about your own 
personal fitness or maybe a team your working with, please fill free to 
use me as a resource.

It is Saturday morning at 10:00 AM and three of the guys just came in 
to do a recovery workout. That is very exciting to me. Even though 
people tell me my size, appearance and demeanor, can be intimidating at 
times I get very close with my athletes and I can already tell that 
this is happening with this squad. I am a heart and passion coach along 
with being a great competitor. Saying that, I guarantee that you will 
see a squad on the floor this year that competes every second of the 
game. Coach Holquist's teams have always done that. My goal is to build 
a 350 engine instead of the 305 from the past.

I hope that gives you a little insight into who I am and what I am 
about. I look forward to seeing all of you at Romano. In closing I 
would like to thank Coach Kuronen for all of his help in the strength 
and conditioning workouts. He does not miss any, and I have even caught 
him coming when the guys are not around and trying the things the team 
is doing. His dedication is admirable. JMAY

Justin May, M.A., CSCS.
Head Strength and Conditioning Coach
University of Minnesota Duluth
218-726-6230


Butch Kuronen
Assistant Basketball Coach
University of Minnesota Duluth
218-726-6199 (office)
218-591-7618 (cell)
jkuronen at d.umn.edu