University of Hawai'i football added the final element to the staff under head coach Nick Rolovich in early January, with the addition of new strength and conditioning coordinator for football, Bubba Reynolds, who has been working for the past 40 days behind the scenes to elevate the weight room work for the Rainbow Warriors to the next level.

Coach Reynolds took a few moments out of his day to sit down with UH media relations for a question and answer session, providing some insight into his approach and what Hawai'i players and fans can expect from his tenure with the program.

Q: Welcome to the Hawaii Football 'Ohana coach. Now that you've gotten some time in the program, let's just start off simple, why University of Hawaii? Did you have much of an impression of Hawaii before you took the job?
A: Coming from Southern California, I grew up watching Hawaii. My sister has lived on Maui for the past 14 years, so I have family over here and I've always been somewhat connected with the islands. I grew up surfing in Huntington Beach and with the "Eddie" going on this week, that's something my dad always talked about, and it's definitely been a big part of my life. I came to Hawaii moreso for coach Rolovich; I believe in what he's doing, I believe in him as a person, I believe in him as a coach and I believe that the message and the desire is completely there. It's great working for a guy that will allow me to do my job to the best of my ability without hindering me at all and believes in me and what we're doing here at Hawaii.

Q: From working at Nevada, you've obviously worked alongside both head coach Nick Rolovich in a coaching capacity as well as recruiting coordinator Jason Cvercko. How did those relationships factor into your transition here?
A: It made it easy. With Jason and Rolo already being here, it just made my transition simple—letting me borrow the car, having a friend there to bounce stuff off of that's already been here, or to have Rolo come grab me to go to a baseball game and introduce me to people and show me what 'Ohana is and what living aloha is.

Q: You started out as a collegiate athlete and moved into the strength and conditioning field during your fifth year, what made you want to pursue a career in the strength field?
A: I always loved the aspect of developing young adults. It started out that I wanted to be a teacher, but realized that working with younger youths wasn't really my cup of tea, so I began to work with athletes. I always loved working out and strength and conditioning, but it was the developmental aspect that really drove me to want to work in collegiate athletics, to develop young people into something greater and help them envision what they can become.

Q: Is there a simple way to describe your approach to the training that you are implementing for the Rainbow Warriors? What are some of the core philosophies when it comes to your program?
A: I'm movement-based and I care about technique; I care about how they're moving and if they have the right amount of mobility in order to do certain lifts. There's such a thing to me as strong enough. We're not here to make lifters, we're here to make football players and better athletes. I'm here to keep guys healthy in the weight room and healthy on the field.

Q: What separates your program from others, especially from the regimen the players had been working in?
A: Allowing them to understand why they're doing certain things. I told all the guys when we met for the first time that I want every one of them to have a minor in strength and conditioning. It's important to understand concepts of time under tension, why proper technique is so important, why we're pairing this mobility exercise with this certain lift, why we're doing our running technique starting from the ground up and why we needed to start over. I don't mind slowing things down—if we don't have time to teach them now, when are we going to have time to teach them? Once you have more understanding, you'll have a whole lot more buy-in and we've already seen it in the short 40 days that we have. Everything has a purpose behind it.

Q: Obviously physical toughness is a big part of your coaching, but how important is it to develop mental toughness?
A: Mental toughness is such a key component and that goes back to that "why". Everything needs to have a purpose. We need to get them comfortable with being uncomfortable, being able to push through the ordeals that we put them through, but at the same time getting them to understand why we're doing it; building to challenge them as a team of individuals to come together.

Q: Since your arrival, you've obviously been able to set a program and get in with the players during winter workouts, give us an idea what you've had the team doing during the winter as you prepare for spring.
A: We've gone back to the basics. I don't think you're going to see anything new across the nation; everyone is going to squat, bench and do Olympic movements. We've been doing a lot of tempo stuff, whether it be pause squats or ecentric squats, getting some time under tension for more hypertrophy work, a little bit of volume, but mostly we've been working on technique. We will be pushing more toward top-end speed stuff, change-of-direction, where we're trying to get our bodies prepped for spring ball to keep us out of the training room and in the weight room.

Q: There are different points of emphasis for different conditioning cycles, but how is conditioning right now going to from the summer?
A: This is kind of a technique hypertrophy to get bigger phase. As we get into summer, we're going to get more into Olympic movements and our strength phase, lower rep ranges, higher weights to get as strong as we can possibly be through the summer. Probably about a month out from season, we'll start converting all that strength into power with more top-end weightlifting range, but still working on the speed of the movement. Right now, we're engraining the movement pattern, then we'll strengthen the pattern, and then allow that movement to work through a range of motion with great speed and emphasis.

Q: Then how does it change when they're back in the fall? During the season, do you have to manage guys differently so they don't overdo it?
A: That's the question for every coach. Being able to manage athletes and manage stress, as strength and conditioning coaches, that's what we do. We definitely understand that with the amount of travel that we do here, coupled with the amount of schoolwork and stress that these guys are putting themselves through, we have to have a different type of program than everybody else in the nation. Nobody is doing what we're doing. Continuing to educate them about eating properly, hydrating and about mobility so that come Saturday, we're ready to go.

Q: Even in high-level athletes, you'll see it, but how do you motivate guys who aren't big fans of conditioning?
A: Continue to motivate their peers and develop leadership. You can push athletes to a certain point, but nothing is more valuable than peer pressure, in a good way. Being able to empower our student-athletes and empower our leaders to do the right thing and bring people along with them.

Q: With increased emphasis on the importance of strength and conditioning in football, even at the high school level, do freshmen come into the program now with a better strength understanding? Is there still a shock in the difference between high school and college or are players more acclimated these days?
A: In some cases yes, and in some cases no. I've seen some kids come in where the transition has been easy coming from a great high school program, but I've also seen the other side with no experience or poorly-taught individuals, where it's almost harder to break bad habits. That's been the challenge across the nation when you have a lot of kids coming in with poor technique and you have to break down that pattern to re-engrain it and get them moving correctly before we start loading that pattern.

Q: The team was plagued last season with an injury epidemic. How does that factor into changing the program you might have had them do in their offseason workouts? How can your role in the weight room help to bring those numbers down?
A: I think training athletes like weightlifters can lead to them getting hurt. We're not trying to continually load the bar out. Do we need strong, powerful athletes? Yes, but not at the expense of movement. We need to get these guys not only moving better, but also being able to absorb force and become more body aware.

Q: With that said, we've got a number of players coming back from injury, what is your approach and philosophy to working through the different stages of rehab?
A: That's a huge part of my job. We have to take those guys and make sure we have the stability back in the knee, the mobility back in the ankle, while also strengthening the other side so there's no kind of shifting or rotating. Even that same aspect we'll take with the rest of the team is re-engraining that pattern from the top down and regaining not only stability, but also the confidence to go out there and push.

Q: It's been hinted the offense could be picking up the pace a little bit this year, and obviously conditioning is a big factor. In what ways can you alter the program help them get up to speed and be the best-conditioned team on the field?
A: Speed kills more than anything, so our speed development emphasizes conditioning the right energy systems at the right time, building a strong, broad aerobic base and then allowing it to come from there. We're able to recover a lot better. It doesn't really matter what we do in the play, but more what we do between plays, where our ability to recover needs to be very high to keep up with the pace of the game.

Q: How much of what you're targeting in training has evolved? How quickly do methods change and how do you work to stay on top of the new programs to help the Rainbow Warriors?
A: I'm constantly reading. I take every opportunity to read research, read good books, or reach out to professionals in the business and my mentors to see what they're doing. The foundational aspects of stength and conditioning are there, but it's evolving every single day. They're not reinventing the wheel, but they're creating a way to make it spin better, and that's what I'm trying to do here.

Q: Back to a more personal aspect of your career, you made mention of your mentors, who have been your mentors as a coach?
A: Drew Peterson is an original mentor, he was my strength and conditioning coach at Humboldt State and somebody I still talk to often and has been a tremendous figure in my young adulthood. Elisa Angeles and Tony Rolinski of Notre Dame have been tremendous people in my life to teach me what strength and conditioning is and the value and importance of what we do. Kyle Sammons was a colleague of mine at Nevada, who is now at the University of Washington. That's just some of the great mentors that have forced me to think outside the box and forced me outside my comfort zone to make me a better coach and better person.

Q: Do you have a favorite quote that you apply to your work?
A: One that has stuck with me over the past year is, "how you do anything is how you do everything", and I try to get that into the guys. It's not just going to come on game day, it's going to come from those little things that we accomplish every single day. How you do in school, how you are as a person, reflects your character and the outcomes in your lives.

Q: Through your short time here, it's been noticeable there are guys who have put on some notable weight; can you elaborate on any guys who've gotten immediate gains and performance improvements stemming from how your program is structured?
A: You could literally put 95-98 percent of the team into that boat. If I had to name a few, Dylan Collie, Damien Packer, Leo Koloamatangi, Fred Ulu-Perry, Ikaika Woolsey and all the quarterbacks; those guys have been amazing.

Q: What would you say are your biggest goals for the Rainbow Warriors as a team through the coming months?
A: To accomplish the little things. The work ethic has been there, they're going to get stronger, they're going to get fast, but it's the little things, undstanding the importance of attention to details. Coach Rolovich said it the other day, a football game comes down to 5-to-7 plays that made the difference. We need to make sure those plays are in our favor. I'm positive there are games last year that came down to 5-to-7 plays not in our favor that maybe cost us some Ws.

Q: What are the areas of improvement in strength and conditioning that will have the biggest impact on the success of the team next season?
A: Number one is their ability to move and bend effectively and efficiently. People are going to look at that and say, 'coach, what are you talking about?' It's simple, their ability to get into a deep squat, their ability to create angles to be able to push from. Once that comes, the strength and everything else will come with it. Technique trumps all. It doesn't matter how big you are, how fast you are, if you have great technique, you're going to have a fighting chance. Building on that, your ceiling is tremendously higher.

Q: Finally, it's not your given name, how did you come to be Bubba?
A: I'm the youngest of four, I have three older sisters, and I was little baby brother bubba. When I got into preschool, I didn't answer to anything else. My sisters called me Bubba, my parents called me Bubba and my mother asked the teacher if she could too because that's the only thing I would answer to. Somehow it got switched in my school records and it's stuck with me my entire life, even on my high school diploma. Legal documents are under Joseph, my grandfather's name, but everybody knows me as Bubba and it would be confusing if I went back the other way.

Coach Reynolds and the rest of the new University of Hawai'i football staff are getting geared up in preparation for spring football practices, beginning March 29, 2016. Stay tuned to HawaiiAthletics.com for more stories about the program during the practice sessions.