Divisions: Upper School
Teaches: Strength Training with a Purpose
Tara Griffiths is a Strength & Conditioning coach at GFS. In addition to supervising in the Fitness Center and working with GFS Athletics teams, she teaches the Strength Training with a Purpose class. She comes to GFS from a college athletics background: she's worked at Duke University, University of Texas at Arlington, and mostly recently, Swarthmore College. There, as Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach, she designed and implemented training programs for a wide range of varsity teams.
I pursued athletics and fitness as a career path because... growing up, I was always an athlete. I went to college originally for physical therapy, but after my first clinical, I realized it might not be for me. Because I was also a college athlete, I was in our weight room a lot, and started to think that I might really like working with athletes. Athletes always want to get better, and I enjoyed the idea of working with people who were really invested and excited about doing what they’re doing.
It sealed the deal for me when... during my last week working at Duke, when I was trying to decide if I was going to go to grad school for this, one of the football coaches there, Coach Feeley, told me, "If you're a strength coach, you're gonna help so many people." And that's really been one of the best parts of this job: I really care about the people and love being able to help kids develop.
My Strength Training with a Purpose class... is my first GFS class ever! It's a small group, and I'm teaching them how to create their own weight training program. Because it's a smaller class, I can teach them advanced lifting progressions and we can get into more complex things. And, since they're all interested in this topic and really put in the time, they get to the point in the class where they're consistently using the barbell and doing Olympic lift progressions.
You learn a lot of skills in the weight room... that aren't necessarily just about your sport. You learn how to fail often, how to be comfortable pushing yourself, and how to be a good teammate. And, in the Fitness Center, because of the culture Head Strength & Conditioning Coach Matt Sheehan has created, the kids feel comfortable trying new things.