Have you ever wondered what it’s like to train as a college athlete? Or maybe you ponder how  they  exercise to perform at their best? College athletics requires high strength and speed — so how do these athletes get in exceptional shape?

Head Performance Coach/Assistant Director of Legends Center Shane Miller and Assistant Performance Coach/Director of Legends Kendra Cooper (‘23) are responsible for training Luther’s contingent of student-athletes. They are fairly new additions to the athletic department, with Miller joining last January and Cooper starting this fall. Miller spoke about community when asked about what he enjoys about his new position.

“Just the connections you build with the athletes, being that 60% of our student body is athletes,” Miller said. “If I drive to upper campus to sign paperwork or whatever, I drive by ten of my athletes on the way and get waved at. Just the connection you build with the people around here, it’s all a really solid group of humans.”

Miller recently finished his Masters of Science and Management at Warner University shortly before coming to Luther, and Cooper is a recent Luther graduate. Both coaches train nearly every team in Luther’s athletic department, excluding men’s and women’s track and field.

Coach Miller is in charge of wrestling, swimming and diving, football, softball, cross country, and women’s basketball. He writes lifts for athletes to do in their free time, and leads them through scheduled team training sessions. However, his favorite thing to see is his athletes succeeding in their sport.

“Seeing [a wrestler] shoot a double leg and throw [their opponent] over [their] head because [they’ve] gotten strong enough to do that,” Miller said.“Watching a softball player launch a nuke over the fence, all of those things are what really makes this job worth it.”

Miller also hopes to pass on skills to help people sustain lifelong fitness. Having formally been trained in Olympic weightlifting, he has passed on his knowledge of coaching and the weight room to his eleven interns. The student interns assist both Miller and Cooper in getting ready for lifts, helping run warm-ups for teams, and demonstrating specific movements. Beside helping both Miller and Cooper, the interns also have training sessions where they get to soak up information from the two experts. This semester, Miller is having his interns cover field work.

“[Field work focuses on] how to make people faster, how to make them jump higher, how to change  direction quicker [or] what top end sprint mechanics look like,” Miller said. “It’s probably my favorite part of the job, is teaching that group of kids to be better than me someday.”

This fall, Cooper officially joined the Athletic Performance staff  alongside Miller. Cooper is a Decorah native, a 2023 Luther graduate, an NFCA All-American softball player and former Legends Center intern — coincidentally, with Coach Miller. Cooper coaches men’s and women’s tennis, women’s golf, baseball, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s basketball and volleyball.

Cooper got the chance to talk about her aspirations as a strength and conditioning coach last fall, in a interview with Darin Swenson of LA Communications. Cooper told Swenson that as a result of her time spent as a collegiate softball pitcher, she learned she wanted to continue being connected to sports in her future career.

“I think it’s helped me learn more about what an athlete needs and wants from coaches,” Cooper said. “Hopefully my experience helps me better myself as a future coach.”

The young leaders of Legends Center have made an impact on Luther athletics already. If you ever enter through the doors of the weight room, you’re likely to hear coaches cheering or yelling, weights clanking, music blaring, and people working hard. Not even a full year in, these coaches have taken over the gym and have hit the ground running.