By Jourdan Rodrigue, Digital Communications Intern
Hundreds of athletes stream in and out of the Carson Student-Athlete Center and its various departments every day. Each has separate goals that are specific to their respective sports. Their personal differences mirror the variances in the sports they play.
But there is a place underneath the six-story building that has been constructed within its very foundation. In this place, all of Arizona State’s athletes are on the same team.
It’s the home of the Iron Devils. Its black walls are accented with iron and steel and Sun Devil gold, and its overseer is decorated Sports Performance coach Shawn Griswold. Griswold, who was brought to Arizona State by football coach Todd Graham, is lauded by Graham as “the best strength and conditioning coach in America” and is responsible for record-setting physicality, speed, and injury prevention within Sun Devil Athletics over the past two years.
The football team’s strength and conditioning regimen especially focuses on “the five-year plan” that prepares players for championships and then mirrors NFL combine exercises all throughout their time at ASU to ready every single student-athlete for what they’ll see at the next level. And at the core of each workout are exercises to prevent injury and strengthen valuable tissues.
“Health is our number one goal,” said Griswold. “We’re really low on missed starts and we focus on building up the muscles and ligaments that keep athletes healthy.”
Part of this focus stems from the restructuring of the entire sports performance department after “Coach Gris” took over in 2012.
“Coach Graham (and the rest of the Athletic Department) really bought in to my program and essentially gave me the ability to do what I wanted with this place,” said Griswold. “Graham truly believes in the positive effects strength and conditioning has on a team. Not all coaches see it as the foundation of everything athletes do. I got really lucky that he does.”
Griswold remodeled the room and updated the equipment with the help of a generous donation from the Dickey family, including racks that he designed himself to stay true to the “Iron Devils” motif. The room also contains nods to ASU hero Pat Tillman on each piece of equipment and the walls with the “PT42” decal painted in gold on the black iron.
It seems to be an austere place built on sweat and straining tendons. The black shirts the sports performance crew wears feature a skull that only adds to the intensity.
But athletes themselves know a thing or two about intensity, and Griswold and his crew’s gift for shaping athletes as well as his vigorous regimens has caused every single sport at Arizona State to trust implicitly in the Iron Devils program.
“The best part of my job is seeing how these kids buy in,” said Griswold. “They come in here and work their butts off. Taylor Kelly will come in here and work out and right next to him will be some divers or a third-string guy. They all give so much to be the best athletes they can be.”
Each athlete has a sport-specific workout program monitored by Griswold and his associates The athletes trickle down to the weight room either individually or with their respective sports on a daily basis, all the while preparing themselves for the physical and mental strain they’ll face in that black-and-gold room. From divers and offensive linemen to sprinters and point guards, every Sun Devil sweats together as one unified team, and at that team’s core is solid iron.