Beyond the Numbers: Strength Coach Brandon O’Neall
2/1/2023
by: Kim Goss
The life and lifting methods of Brown’s Trainer of Champions
“We lift things up and put them down!” is not a motto you will hear in the Zucconi Strength and Conditioning Center at Brown University. The mission of preparing college athletes for high-level competition requires knowledgeable strength coaches who can teach and motivate. Such a challenge also requires a charismatic leader, and Brown University has one of the best in Brandon O’Neall.
O’Neall took over as Brown’s Head Strength and Conditioning Coach in 2011. What he got himself into was juggling the workouts of 1200 athletes in 36 varsity sports and 12 club sports. And because you don’t train a quarterback like you would a swimmer, he has the additional challenge of designing sport-specific workouts.
Before getting into the specifics about what O’Neall does at Brown to help athletes fulfill their physical potential, let’s look at how he got here.
From Gridiron to Lifting Platform
Born in Cedar Falls, Iowa, O’Neall grew up loving sports. In high school, he played football in the fall, wrestled in the winter, and sprinted across the soccer fields in the spring. Many factors contribute to athletic success, but the sports motto that captured his attention was “All things being equal, the strongest athlete will usually win.” To learn more about the Iron Game, O’Neall says he read bodybuilding magazines. “At the time, I believed those magazines were the holy grail of training.”
O’Neall’s next step as an athlete was enrolling in Central College, a Division III sports program in Pella, Iowa. He became a four-year starter on the football team, where he was recruited as a wide receiver and later earned a spot as a kicker. “I found a way to get on the field and I never let go!” says O’Neall, whose team won back-to-back conference titles in 2005 and 2006.
O’Neall’s gridiron experience at Central also gave him a different perspective on how athletes should train. “When I got to college, I realized what training as an athlete truly is – along with being coached by someone who was educated in it.” Wanting to learn more, O’Neall majored in exercise science.
O’Neall graduated with a BA in exercise science and earned his master’s in kinesiology at Western Illinois in 2009. Graduates in these majors tend to go in one of two directions, strength coaching or personal training. What’s the difference? “There are aspects of both professionals that overlap, but with strength coaching, it’s more athletically based,” says O’Neall. “Most personal trainers don’t love the strength coaching realm because they don’t get to set their hours or pick their clients, but I like that aspect as you never know what you’re going to get!”
College academics in exercise science tend to focus on theory. To get more into the hands-on practical side of strength coaching, O’Neall rounded out his coaching education by earning two prestigious strength coaching certifications. One was from the National Strength and Conditioning Association, considered the governing body of the profession, and the other was from the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Association. These certifications have continuing education requirements that keep O’Neall abreast of current trends in strength coaching.
O’Neall’s extensive studies paid off, as he went on to coach at Dartmouth College, the University of Maine, and the University of Iowa. In 2011, Brown’s head strength coaching position became available, and O’Neall jumped at the opportunity.
Pumping Iron – Only Faster!
When O’Neall came on board, Brown’s athletic administration recognized that their weightroom was too small to accommodate all the teams that wanted to lift. This insight led to the development of the Zucconi Strength and Conditioning Center. The center is named after ’55 Brown graduate and Hall of Fame Inductee David John Zucconi. “Dandy Dave” was a former two-way football player involved in many projects to benefit Brown Athletics.
Strength coaches will tell you there’s no such thing as a weightroom that’s big enough, but the Zucconi Center made a strong case for being the optimal size as it was four times the size of the previous facility. This begged the question, “What would O’Neall put in it?”
O’Neall organized the weightroom around 18 heavy-duty “Do-It-All” lifting stations. These stations contain a lifting platform, a multi-function power rack, and an adjustable bench. This design allows athletes to perform all their primary exercises in one location. This feature was critical to managing traffic flow, enabling athletes to perform more work in less time so that more athletes could train.
To safely perform explosive movements such as power cleans, O’Neall ordered Olympic barbells, rubber bumper plates to protect the platforms (which are from Turkey and look awesome!), and special-purpose pulling blocks for each station. He added 300 high-quality dumbbells and 400 pieces of floor equipment for more sport-specific training and rehab, including eight glute-ham machines critical for preventing hamstring injuries.
Quality equipment is one thing – workouts are another. “We don’t have a cookie cutter program where it’s like herding cattle, everybody in and out. At Brown, you’re going to be well taken care of. You’re going to be coached, you’re going to be evaluated, and we will help you continue doing what you like to do, which is to compete in athletics.” One more thing – O’Neall has a secret weapon that gives Brown athletes an edge.
That secret weapon is a high-tech training tool that is just beginning to catch the attention of the strength coaching community. It’s called velocity-based training (VBT). VBT involves computer-aided technology that measures barbell velocity. O’Neall says he has coached at colleges that had velocity-based training devices and those that didn’t, and he liked the ones that had them better. “It’s tough to replicate the type of workouts I wanted my athletes to perform if you don’t have the immediate feedback, those measurements, the VBT provides.”
This feedback has value in increasing an athlete’s movement speed and helps O’Neall and his staff monitor each athlete’s conditioning level. From here, the coaches can personalize the workouts to peak for competitions and ensure they use the optimal weights each training session. Thus, if an athlete moves a barbell especially slowly, a sign of excessive fatigue, they will know to use relatively lighter weights for their remaining sets. “And if they are moving really fast, we will load them up!” says O’Neall.
The Brown Experience
It’s been said in sports that “talent prevails,” which is why so many colleges spend considerable time, effort, and dollars on recruiting. Ivy League colleges put academics first, and the high academic standards at Brown reduce its athletic talent pool. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that Brown attracts “pure” athletes who play sports for the joy of it, not to go pro, earn shoe contracts and appear in insurance commercials. “That’s what I love about the Ivy League and Brown. It’s a student-athlete experience, and you get people who want to be highly successful in both realms. They want to excel in academics, and they want to excel in athletics.”
With so many athletes to train, O’Neall has to be creative with scheduling. Most teams will train in one-hour blocks, three times a week. If a class project interferes with an athlete’s workout, O’Neall offers open workout times. “Our schedule is tight, but we have to be lenient. I often ask athletes struggling with their schedules, ‘When can you train?’ and we try to make compromises.”
Another aspect of the job of a head strength coach is working with Brown’s sports coaches. O’Neall encourages the coaches to observe their workouts and offer feedback. Likewise, he coordinates with the sports medicine staff to ensure his workouts complement what they prescribe to get athletes back in the game.
Despite his considerable responsibilities at Brown, O’Neall does have a life! Beyond the weightroom, the O’Neall family resides in Chepachet, Rhode Island. He and his wife Jordan have two sons, Benton and Maddox. O’Neall often lets his boys visit the weightroom and interact with the athletes. “I think it’s great for them to be around Brown University athletes because Brown athletes are leaders and role models.
Asked if raising a family and juggling his responsibilities at Brown can be overwhelming at times, O’Neall replied, “Yes, but it’s amazing how you make things work. I love my children, and I am glad I was coaching before I had kids because it gets you ready – seriously, I treat my athletes the same way I treat my kids.”
What is Coach Brandon O’Neall’s sales pitch for athletes considering Brown University? “Honestly, Brown isn’t for everybody, but I love Brown because it attracts the type of person who is willing to explore and try different things and is a hard worker. Coaching those types of athletes makes my job really fun!”
