A common phrase groaned across campus amongst Marlborough athletes goes something along the lines of “Ugh, I had Lindsay yesterday, so I can’t get up from this chair,” or “I have Lindsay today, I’m going to die.” These utterances refer to head strength and conditioning coach Lindsay Yocum, who can often be seen walking down the hallways and in and out of the gym after school. Yocum runs a tight ship when it comes to conditioning, leading the athletes in a variety of strenuous workouts.

Next school year, Yocum will become a full-time employee of the Marlborough faculty and staff. With the imminent completion of the long-awaited Arden Project, Yocum will be able to expand her expertise beyond the limits of the existing athletic teams at the School.

“Athletes will have some flexibility to go out and do workouts under her guidance.” —David Collicutt

Since her first day at Marlborough, Yocum’s routine has been to arrive toward the end of the school day, go through several different workouts with different sports teams that focus on conditioning, proper workout techniques and injury prevention, and then leave. It all started in 2012 when Yocum began working with the winter sports teams: basketball, soccer and water polo. Afterwards, as demand for Yocum’s work with the student-athletes grew from students and coaches, she began to work with the spring and fall sports teams, expanding her job to become year-round at Marlborough.

“Expanding the athletic program and expanding some of the things that I do to the rest of Marlborough is something that is going to be in my job title for the future,” Yocum commented.

This means that, come next year, Yocum will be found instructing a unit of seventh- and eighth-grade physical education classes, called Introduction to the Fitness Center, on how to use new gym equipment properly. Yocum will teach similar programs for older students so that non-athletes will be able to utilize the weight and cardio rooms alongside athletes.

She will also teach the Personal Fitness class that physical education instructor Flavio Ribeiro now teaches. Yocum will recreate the curriculum to form a mixture between a class period with multiple students enrolled and an independent special studies program of individual student athletes.

“It’s not just dealing with strength and conditioning, but adding in some of the components of nutrition, sports psychology, recovery, working with the sports medicine department and both of us working together to improve sports performance in general,” she said.

Yocum will also be in charge of managing the new athletic facilities, which includes supervision of the facilities, coaching and organizing informational seminars that better educate coaches, students and parents on the important aspects of sports performance.

Beyond her additional duties, Yocum also said that she is planning on making changes to J Period next year: instead of training athletes by team, as she has done in previous years, she plans on training athletes by age group.

“It makes more sense developmentally to run it by age level, or grade level. So instead of training J Period with your team, you’d be training with other seniors, or with other juniors. And I think that’s going to promote a lot of inter-athletic pride and hopefully get some students that may not normally train together to appreciate each other’s sports and hopefully go watch each other’s games,” Yocum said.

Athletic Director David Collicutt, along with many student-athletes and coaches, is one of the many supporters of Yocum’s strength and conditioning program and is looking forward to the more personalized approach next year.

“It was an obvious decision to bring her on for more hours so she can connect with more of our programs,” Collicutt said.

Collicutt said because Yocum will be on campus during the school day, she would be more available to work with student-athletes who might need a more flexible workout schedule than simply working out at a certain hour after school.

“Every year is a constant flux of learning new modalities [and] just staying on top of what’s current as far as strenth and conditioning goes.” —Lindsey Yocum

“Athletes will have some flexibility to go out and do workouts under her guidance at a time that’s more convenient to them,” he said.

Yocum said she looks forward to expanding her expertise to the rest of the school in order to make sure the student athletes are fully prepared for their upcoming seasons.

“Every year is a constant flux of learning new modalities [and] just staying on top of what’s current as far as strength and conditioning goes. And so I’m always kind of adjusting, but I’m definitely in the process of developing programs and accessibility for athletes, so as soon as the doors open we can start training and everybody can be on the same page and hit the ground running,” Yocum said. π