Michigan Wolverines basketballhead strength and conditioning coach Matt Aldred texted head coach Dusty May, whom he worked with at Florida in 2017-18, in March to congratulate him on his new job. Days later, he reached out again to express interest in being his strength coach at U-M, and weeks after that he was hired by the Wolverines.
“I’ve got a three-month-old, Lucy. And I would be feeding her at night, bottle feeding, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about him here,” Aldred said of May on the ‘Defend The Block’ podcast. “And I couldn’t stop thinking about, honestly, would he take me? Is that something that I think he would entertain because of our relationship and prior work experience?
“And then let’s say this was a Sunday night. I wait until Wednesday. I just texted him congrats. I’ll wait. And then it got to Monday, and I was like, ‘Ahh, gotta text him.’ So I text him on the Tuesday, and I was like, ‘I would be really interested in this role.’ And then our conversations kinda flowed from there.
“They had to fill a roster, which they did exceptionally well. And then when they were filling the roster and we had a conversation at the start of April, and then my mind went to, ‘How would I train these guys?’ How to I train [center] Vlad[islav Goldin] and [forward] Danny [Wolf] and make sure these two seven-footers are available for every game? And this is before [I was hired]. The dopamine goes, you start to foresee. And I was like, ‘How would I train them? That would be amazing. What resources would you have? What’s the weight room like?’
“And then the weeks pass, and we reconnect and we got it done. And then my mind can really be like, ‘Oh, alright, OK, you gotta really think about it because it’s actually your job.’”
May was the reason Aldred had interest in leaving Furman — where he was strength coach for six seasons — for a new home, but he’s also loving being at Michigan.
“Dusty could’ve gone anywhere in the country,” Aldred noted. “For the last two years, he’s been the biggest name in the coaching carousel as it was, and he was extremely happy at FAU. So it could’ve been me texting him, ‘Hey, congratulations for X school or this school.’
“And so I’d love to say it was Michigan that drew me to this place, but it was really Dusty and working for him. Now, the fact that it is Michigan is the absolute biggest cherry on top of the nicest bit of cake you could want. It was everything tied in to make it like, wow, this is a knockout punch.
“But it was really him as a person and what I knew he’d be about. And then the school is an unbelievable place, location. I just feel so blessed that it wasn’t just with him, but it’s an incredible place like this.”
Last offseason, Aldred became the only strength and conditioning coach to be named assistant head coach at his program
“I think if it wasn’t for this opportunity and to work with Dusty, I would be so happy to still be there,” Aldred said of Furman. “And [head] Coach [Bob] Richey, I owe a lot to him. With that title change that last year, it was something that we both wanted to do. We all read Good to Great [by Jim Collins] as a team study, and we read hedgehog versus fox. We were trying to say, ‘Let’s be the only ones. Let’s be the only ones in the country with this for player development, with this for how we treat our players, with this with culture.’”
An Eastbourne, England, native, Aldred began his career at University of Alabama Huntsville as a graduate assistant, before becoming assistant strength coach at Florida in 2017-18 and making the move to Furman.
Here are more highlights from Aldred’s appearance on ‘Defend The Block.’
On Dusty May calling him one of the most ‘curious and inquisitive’ coaches
“I would say how it helps me is I didn’t play the game. I never played basketball. I played when I was 12, but that really doesn’t count at this level. So I really have to learn and understand the game as best I can to help the athletes that I work with. I’ve grown to love the game. I’ve been around it a lot these last seven years.
“So I think you have to be curious by nature, you have to be inquisitive, if you want to strive to be the best, if you want to impact a team, if you want to work with the best athletes, if you want to do big things in your career. You have to learn as much as you can about it. So that just was speaking to coaches, watching practice, watching more basketball on TV, learning, reading.
“It’s funny, I took the year 2020 of the shutdown to reach out to probably 20, 25 of what I felt was the best strength coaches in the country for basketball. I was at a mid-major school at the time, and everybody was very gracious to get on the court with me, and the amount of knowledge I learned there and could apply and then refine my process was just phenomenal. I really have just had an interest with that side of it.
“My family is all teachers, so I feel like the learning is kind of embedded in me — to read, consume and then to try to help others, to educate others. I love it when athletes ask me the why. I encourage it. I say, ‘You can ask me any time, hey, why are we doing this? Why aren’t we doing that?’ Ask, because the more you ask, the more you understand, hopefully the higher intrinsic motivation you have to do the exercises and the more trust you have with me.
“We got programs in front of me here, we got 12 guys, we got probably seven programs going at the same time, so it’s really trying to get their buy-in. And I think me having a real big knowledge base and understanding and learning helps that, because I don’t have the performance background to compare to. I played soccer; I definitely didn’t play basketball. So having to learn is really what I love.
“To Dusty’s point, I think that’s why we connect so well. He loves to read, he loves to be consumed in new information. We’re both … I’ve got two sets of his notes here, the coach’s guide to teaching and the playmaker’s decisions. I love seeing stuff from my head coach that I can learn, I can understand, because this has to be an echo chamber of culture for what he wants.
“And really one of the coolest quotes I saw about the staff is that they’re all exceptional teachers. So wanting to come on to this staff, I just felt like the stars aligned. I felt like it was just absolutely perfect for me to be here with him and them. For the first few weeks, it’s reinforced that.”
On his time working with Dusty May at Florida
“It was an incredible professional year for me. It was my first year in college basketball. So going back to that curious, inquisitive nature, I was really just understanding the sport at that point — point guards, bigs, wings. I really had no idea. And we had a really good group of assistant coaches who are now head coaches, a really good head coach [Mike White].
“And [May] was just always someone I was drawn to with his energy and just genuine nature in the weight room. He would come train either before or after practice, and I would be in charge of training him, so I got to know him on a more personal level. And then from there, I felt like he was very approachable. So I would go up into the offices, I would say hi to the assistants, and I would just sit down at his desk and go, ‘Hey, I got a couple of questions.’ And he would say, ‘Yeah, go ahead.’ And whatever he was doing, he always had time for me, and it would be questions about positions, questions about the game.
“I think that really resonated with him as well, with just me being a young coach but wanting to learn. I wasn’t prideful. I wasn’t, ‘Hey, I know it all.’ I want to be a learner. I do not want to be someone that walks in the room and thinks they have all the answers. I’m constantly trying to seek better practices and better ways of doing things. I think that connection really helped. I think he probably liked my demeanor, as well. I’m a pretty normal guy. I want to be very normal in how I treat people, which is with the utmost respect and how I want to treat others. But I want to be exceptional and supremely driven in my career, and I feel like we both have that.
“We were out on the practice court for the first time the other day, it was the first time I’ve seen him coaching. I’m like, ‘Wow, you flip a switch.’ There’s some serious focus and intensity, which I love. There has to be. You have to help the room, you have to be that alpha on the court as a head coach to take the team for a session. And then we come up here afterwards and I train him, and he’s just a completely different guy. But I think that’s so natural. I think that’s what the best people do.
“I heard a quote on a podcast, it was like, ‘Be tough when it gets tough.’ Even for me, I’m pretty mild-mannered. But when we do a strong man competition, we’re gonna get after it. If it’s a game and we gotta be really focused, we gotta fit the environment.
“But I do think that first year with him left an impression, and we just genuinely stayed in touch. I was so happy for him when he got this job, and I remember I waited a couple of days, and I was like, I’ll text him to say ‘Hey, well done. This is awesome.’ And then from there, obviously we had some discussions about this role. But I was just so happy for him. He deserves everything that he’s been given in his career and will continue to get.”
On his to do list at Michigan
“I’ve been doing a decent system at Furman the last six years. Our injury rates were good — they were low. Our performance metrics were good on things I value. So it was really kind of, how can I put my system into this? What equipment do they have? What technology do they have? I’m big into technology. I think that’s where this industry is going as a strength coach. I think it’s awesome that Michigan is essentially close to getting a sports science department. I think it’s absolutely fantastic; I think that’s what needs to happen at this level.
“So it’s really thinking, what pieces of technology do they have and what can I get? Because I want to use the same system I’ve used, because I know the metrics inside and out. If I have a Week 1 staff meeting with Coach May, I can tell him exactly what the practice loads would look like and inform his decision-making there. It was really looking at getting force plates, some tracking system on the court, heart rate. And then we’ve got a full-time performance dietician. That’s amazing as well, after spending so much time and place at a mid-major level.
“But it’s really like a mental model, a system of how I want to operate. It’s, I know I want to do individualized training, but you’re working with 12. You’ve got 16 players — 12 new guys, scholarship guys. So it’s like, ‘Wow, I’ve gotta learn about what they’ve done, previous history, injury history, what they want to achieve, who their favorite NBA player is, what their physical goals are. So a lot of it after the initial, ‘Hi, how you doing, nice to meet you,’ and I could sit down and do this work is, ‘How could I individualize these programs as quick as I can for these guys?’ Because I want this to be the best experience they’ve ever had, in terms of player development in the weight room and on the court and I want it to be a relationship where they feel like they’re in the driver’s seat and I’m in the passenger’s seat. I can’t be in the driver’s seat for players. I can’t be dragging them in here for these sessions. They gotta want to come in here, so we gotta make this a place of development, not a place of pain and struggle. Yeah, it’s gonna be hard, but anything you want to do in life that’s worth doing is gonna be hard.
“So I think when my thoughts were thinking about Vlad and Danny, it’s like, ‘Now, let’s see what equipment we have. How can I train them? Are they on board with how they feel I can train them? Is Coach on board with that? Can I get their feedback on, hey, I want to do this or, I like this, this is good, let’s keep that going?’
“All that stuff’s important to me, because it’s a player-coach relationship and I want them to value this place so that when we have an off-day such as yesterday and today, I can expect 90 percent of the team can be here. And I really hope that 95-100 percent of the team will be here in future off-days, where they know I can stretch them on the table, I can scrape them on the tool I’ve just got. I can do some ability work with them. They can just do core. Alright, let’s just do core — I’ll pick two, you pick two. Let’s do some cardio. Let’s do some top-up sessions, because if you add those up, they make a big difference in a season where essentially we have six months until we play a game.
“The resources here are, obviously, very impressive. And so it’s been great to lean on what the athletic department has given me and what I’ve asked for, but also different departments.”
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