Adam Fletcher Q&A on summer workouts: 'I feel really, really good about this team'

Mar 16, 2024

Lead basketball reporter Derek Piper catches up with Illini basketball strength & conditioning coach Adam Fletcher to discuss summer workouts as Brad Underwood's team gears up to head to Spain later this week for its foreign trip.

DP: How is the summer going? What’s been your focus or points of emphasis with this group?

Fletch: Obviously, it’s a different summer with the foreign trip and the 10 practices. For the returners, they’re used to sort of the in-season lifting mode and our practices are very intense right now, much like if we were preparing for games in early November. For them, it’s mostly the same as what they’re used to. We’re not necessarily looking to add a whole lot of strength, not saying we haven’t done that, but’s it’s certainly a different focus. We’re just maintaining the strength that we have built through the spring and just kinda holding on to it and making sure the guys feel as good as they can for when they get to the practice floor.

For the new guys, they are experiencing a little bit more strength work right now, especially the freshmen. Gotta make sure we’re building those guys up and put them in a position where they’re gonna have the opportunity to physically be ready to play for us this year. That’s always the quickest accelerator for freshmen is getting their bodies ready as well as you can during an eight-week period in the summer time and get them prepared for what you’re going to see with our schedule and in the Big Ten.

You've gotten a full summer in Ubben post renovation. What’s that been like and what has been noticeably different for you with the resources you have now?

Fletch: I was talking with some of our coaches… This is the first offseason since really before COVID that has really felt normal again. The renovations were started, so our weight room got condensed and they were kinda building around us the entire time. And then, last offseason, we couldn’t be in our facility at all so we were over in the FICE weight room, and a lot of times, in the older section of that. And our guys embraced it. We had another great summer last year, but you just never felt like home.

This has been the first spring and summer in a while that I’ve had the consistency of where our guys are training and the equipment we’re used to using. For us, that’s probably been the biggest thing. We’re back to our equipment. We’re back to what we know and what we’re very comfortable using and what we’ve had a lot of success with.

The biggest thing for us is the space. We can train multiple athletes much more comfortably. When you take the old weight room and you times it by four and you have that type of space, it just makes the workouts flow much faster. You’ve got more equipment, you can get guys through exercises in a shorter amount of time, which is important. And the other thing is the recovery piece. I really believe that our recovery room, which is attached right to our weight room, is one of the best in the country, if not the world. I think we’re able to give guys recovery tools that you just don’t see in other facilities. That’s been a big piece for us. Just keeping our guys feeling good, making sure they have the access to the hyperbaric oxygen to the infrared sauna to the cryotherapy. It’s very important that our guys are able to recover at a quick rate, especially this offseason with the practices and the demanding weight lifting and conditioning.

Kind of big picture... You’re coming up on your ninth year with the program. How much has changed for you in your summer programming over that time?

Fletch: Well, we started with three racks. From an equipment standpoint alone, we’ve almost quadrupled what we had. Those early days, we were very limited in the equipment that we had. It wasn’t that we couldn’t get good work done, but we were just limited by equipment alone. Now, with the new equipment that we have, that gives us the ability to have more exercise selection. So, we’ve been able to get more creative in individualizing workout programs for our guys. When all you have is a rack, three barbells and dumbbells, it’s a little bit challenging to individualize the way that you need to for a specific guy.

The technology that we’ve added with the force plates has really driven a lot of that. When I first got here, we didn’t have the force plate technology. Now, we do. That drives a lot of our exercise selection. If you’re a strength-based guy, meaning if you need more speed work, we can see that and we can get you to that quicker. If you’re a speed-based guy and you need more strength work, we can see that and we can get you to that quicker. The science of it has certainly changed a lot, which has given me the ability to be more specific in the way I program each individual.

The other thing I’ve done is added a lot more movement stuff. I think if you look at our teams early on — the Malcolm Hill, Maverick Morgans — really, Tracy Abrams opened my eyes to this because we were doing so much with him bringing him back from the Achilles and the ACL. It really opened my mind on how much more movement work we needed to do.

If I’m critical of myself early on, I feel like we were almost kinda creating blocker-movers. They were big and strong, which isn’t a bad thing, but when you want to play the style that Coach Underwood wants to play of getting up and down, you’ve certainly gotta reassess the way that you’re training your guys. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve done. I think if you look at our recent teams and our guards versus our previous teams and our guards, I think our guards are much quicker in short space, which I think a lot of that drives from our movement training that we’ve been doing.

Guys are also getting a lot more time on the court in the summer with the changes in the NCAA rules since when I started here. So, I’ve had to tweak how I approach conditioning to make sure that we’re not doing too much because that’s when you start to see those over-use injuries.

I think those are the biggest changes since I got here. Going into my ninth year, I’m like a dinosaur. I think every position has changed in the league except for three. Jon Sanderson at Michigan has been there. That’s obviously who I started under. (Bill Maxwell) at Iowa has been there the entire time, but every other team in the league has changed their strength & conditioning role.

While we’re on it, I might as well ask you… Fans hope you never go anywhere. Did you see yourself being here long term as a landing spot? How has that played out for you?

Fletch: To be honest with you, when I took this job, I had no idea that I would be going into my ninth season. A lot has changed since I’ve been here: A coaching change, an athletic director change. There’s been a lot of change, and with that change, it has provided myself and my family the opportunity along the way. It’s just worked out.

I truly believe — I tell people all the time — there might be a coach that’s as good to work for but there’s no one that’s better. Coach Underwood has given me the space and really allowed me to do what I wanna do as long as he and I are communicating and I’m still staying within his philosophy. But man, he’s given me a lot of freedom and that’s really all you can ask for.

And then, the Champaign community. We’ve got a daughter now and we’re raising her. I really love it here. I certainly don’t see myself leaving any time soon, if ever. This place is special to us. It’s special to my wife and my family. I love this place and I think anyone that’s been around me knows that’s how I approach it.

We show up to work and we’ve got a great opportunity and situation. We’ve got a great administration that supports us. The entire sports medicine, strength & conditioning, nutrition department is probably one of the highest-supported in all of college athletics. When you think about the whole picture within the realm that I work, there’s just a lot of resources that allow us to be pretty unique in what we can do.

That’s great stuff. I wanted to ask you about a couple of guys in particular. You mentioned getting guards quicker. I was talking with Ty Rodgers earlier in the summer and he said he’s been working with you on being able to defend some smaller guards, now that he's going to be at the point. What’s that process been like and what have you seen from him there?

Fletch: It’s something that we’re continuing to work on. This is an every day process and the thing I’ve told Ty is ‘look, you’re not just gonna show up tomorrow on the practice court and be a Trent Frazier-type of defender’. Certainly, I think Trent Frazier is the gold standard for what an on-ball defender can look like in this league and we know what that road map looked like for him. Obviously, Ty has a different body type.

A lot of it is basketball specific. A lot of it is Ty just getting reps at learning how to guard guards. The way you close out, the way you close out in space, being able to utilize your length. So, there is a basketball-specific side of that. You might think that the fastest guy is the best defender and that’s not necessarily the case because the fastest guy may not be smart. If he’s not smart, he’s not using his angles right. So, there’s a lot that goes into it much more than just athleticism.

But from the athletic standpoint, it was very important that we got Ty Rodgers’ hips more mobile. He was a very tight through his hip guy, so getting him to be able to sit down and be able to absorb through a full range of motion and maintain balance — that’s really important when you play defense. It’s one thing to sit down and say ‘yeah, I can achieve that position’. It’s another to be able to have balance in that bottom position. Working on his core strength and his balance have been a big part of that.

He’s made very big jumps. I think it will allow him to be a more efficient on-ball defender. The other thing is just his overall athleticism. I think if you look at him from last year, he was obviously an explosive guy. But this year, he’s touching 12 feet on the vert touch, which is certainly one of the highest I’ve had since I’ve been here and we’ve had some guys who can really fly. His total athleticism has gotten better, he’s gotten stronger, he’s gotten more balanced. I think if you look at him last year, and I think you’ll be able to see a difference this year, a lot of times on his close-outs, he’d be falling forward or catching himself falling backwards. His feet were never just too sure of it. That’s where you can’t necessarily put a number on it, but with movement training will come more balance and I think on the court this year our fans and certainly our opponents will see a difference in Ty’s ability to defend and maintain his posture.

Brad’s told me that Sencire Harris has taken a liking to the weight room this offseason. I know adding strength was a big thing for him after his freshman year. What have you seen out of him?

Fletch: Another guy that’s continuing to make strides. It’s definitely a work in progress. We’re not where I want Sencire to be and we’re going to continue to work to get him there. Same thing as Ty, I’m constantly wanting more from our guys. Sencire is going to be another one of those guys. He’s made progress, but I know that there’s another jump that he can make.

Defensively, he’s obviously a pest. For him to be able to maintain multiple bouts of effort, we’re going to have to continue to gain weight. He’s done a good job and I think that he’ll continue to progress in that area, but it’s a process. It’s like Trent Frazier, I’m gonna go back to him again. Trent just stayed with it and stayed with it and continued to make gains. Eventually, everyone just started talking about him in that area and I think it’ll be the same thing for Sencire. It’s just going to have to be a steady climb for him. I think in our practices you can see it.

Dain Dainja obviously looked different from when he showed up to the start of last season. Now, it looks like he’s maybe trimmed up even more.

Fletch: Dain, initially, dropped a bunch of weight, which was important for Dain. That was something that we had to do for him to get him moving better. This offseason, the biggest thing for Dain and what I think is going to show up is he’s added strength. So, the number on the scale hasn’t moved in terms of ‘oh, he’s lost another 25 pounds’. Dain’s lost 65 pounds (since arriving at Illinois). That’s a lot of weight to lose. But what Dain’s doing now is that his scale number is staying the same, but he’s going back and he transitioning by putting more muscle mass on.

Obviously, muscle weighs more than fat. That’s why you’re seeing another body transformation in Dain without having lost more weight. He’s starting to get a more defined jaw line. It’s almost like getting rid of that ‘baby fat’ type look and with that, has come more explosiveness.

One of the areas that we’ve worked on with Dain is balance. Dain was a ‘fall forward’ guy. He could sit back but he was always falling forward. I think if you watch him last year playing, a lot of times he was over top of his toes and he just didn’t have great balance there. When you’re trying to hold off a guy on the block or you’re holding a seal or you’re holding a rebound, if you’re able to get tilted forward, that’s a problem. We’ve worked a lot of posterior chain work with Dain to get him more balanced on his backside, which I think is going to show up on the court.

Dain is an extreme, extreme angle player. When you look at guys, you can’t just put them in a box. There’s obviously freak athletes who can jump through the roof. And then, there’s guys like a Luka Doncic where they use their angles and their body and their balance. Dain’s kind of on that post player that’s extremely skilled that can hold angles and maintain balance and seals, so we just wanted to work on that area for him to make sure that he can stay balanced. I think a lot of times last year, he was falling away on his finishes. I don’t wanna say shying away because I don’t think it was purposeful, it just wasn’t an area of strength for him. He’s worked extremely hard on it. It’s certainly shown up in practices and I hope it translates to the games.

I wanted to ask you about the new guys. Let's start with the three grad transfers. I know Justin Harmon hasn’t been here long. What specifically are you trying to tap into with those guys?

Fletch: Justin, I love the kid. He’s a great teammate, good to have around, fun in the weight room. Just overall, a joy to train. For him, it’s lower body strength. He’s top-heavy in the way that he moves, so we’re just trying to establish a strength base in his legs. When you see a guy that moves the way he moves, you can see that he’s kinda relied on his upper body strength as a dominant mover for him in the way that he defends, which is important. You see a lot of guys in our league defend that way, but you’ve got to be careful because that can also put you in foul trouble.

We’re just trying to get a base underneath him, get his legs feeling strong, get him feeling good in that area. He had some patella tendonitis stuff in his knee and that kinda limited him in the way that he moved with his legs. We’ve gotten that under control and really just added a lot of strength to that lower half, almost to the point where we’re not really focused on his upper body because he is so strong in that area. It’s the guy that never lifted legs, so that’s where we’re at with him.

He’s embraced it. The first few weeks with it, it was like ‘golly, this isn’t very much fun’. But now that’s he’s kinda gotten through that rough patch, he’s starting to feel it a little bit on the court.

What about Marcus Domask and Quincy Guerrier?

Fletch: Quincy is a guy that we’re really just working overall with him. We’re trying to change body composition with him. He wasn’t big, but we’re just trying to get him a little more lean. I’ll go back to Giorgi (Bezhanishvili) and a lot of people didn’t realize this, but if you go back and watch him you might see it. He was an elite runner. Just put an immense amount of pressure offensively on other teams because he would rim-run like crazy, you always had to account for him in transition. Certainly, Quincy is a different type of player than Giorgi but we want Quincy to become that type of runner. To do that, we’re gonna have to trim him up a little bit and that’s been the main focus with him.

Him and Coleman (Hawkins) have really had the same type of focus. Coleman played behind the play a lot last year and if you look at the way he played his sophomore year versus his junior year, some of that was schematics but some of that was he just got into this rut of playing behind the ball. What makes Coleman elite is what makes Quincy elite and that’s being elite runners for their size. Getting Coleman back to that mentality is important and then, it’s getting Quincy to that mentality. He’s never ran like he’s running right now.

Marcus is kinda like a utility. I kinda liken him to Da'Monte Williams a little bit. Da’Monte was extremely stout and could handle his position. There were times he was on Lamar Stevens. We were putting him on everyone. He was guarding EJ Liddell. I think Marcus has that ability because he has a unique strength set. He’s a very, very strong kid. We’re gonna play to that strength. Sometimes, you can take a person and try to turn them into something that they’re not. With Marcus, we gotta be careful there because that is his strength, so let’s keep his strength his strength.

He’s got great balance. He’s like a stump. You can’t move him. When you’re getting down there with some of the fours in our league, he’s got great leverage, he can get up underneath ‘em. That being said, we’re also working on his ability to close out in space. We know there’s going to be long close out situations just due to the nature of where he’s playing. So, he’s gotta be able to control his body and slow down and change direction quickly. But we do want to keep his strength his strength, so I think it’s important we do that.

When you were talking about running with Quincy and Coleman… Brad said something this summer about running the heck out of Luke Goode. A shooter’s ability to constantly move is weapon. Is that something that you have in mind with him?

Fletch: Yeah, if you think about the Detroit Pistons a while ago and Rip Hamilton. I got to know their strength coach pretty well. It was probably nine or 10 years ago when I spent some time with him. He talked about Rip and his ability to run. He said: ‘Look, his biggest strength was his ability to run. It wasn’t that he was the strongest guy in the weight room or that he was an explosive athlete. It was that he knew in his mind that he could outrun anyone any day of the week.’ You put that type of pressure on a defense for an entire game, there’s gonna be a time when they’re going to break down. That’s where we’re trying to get Luke to.

Luke is an elite runner, but he wasn’t able to do that a lot last year just based on what happened to him in that Kansas scrimmage. So, he wasn’t really able to get to that spot where we know he can get to. This offseason, we’re happy that we’re able to get him back to that space. He’s shown that in practice. He can run. We’re telling him there’s a lot of opportunities in those corners and I think he’s going to be able to run for a long time at a very good pace, which is going to make him challenging to guard.

The last two guys that I wanted to hit on are the freshmen. I know Drayvn Gibbs-Lawhorn is pretty athletic. What are you seeing with him? And then, Amani Hansberry too.

Fletch: For Drayvn, his agility — and the way that I define agility is not just going up to a cone and doing a false change of direction. It’s the ability to read what’s happening around you. His ability to make reads is very, very, very special. He can see the floor and anticipate really, really well. Somebody will want him in their backfield playing defense. He can just read what’s happening on the court. That’s something that’s really hard to train. It’s kind of like hand-eye and visual awareness. He’s got probably a top three that I’ve ever seen.

When you have that type of unique skill set, if he can get the physical tools and then obviously understanding our system, I think he’s got a chance to be a very elite defender and then a guy who can make reads offensively for us. From that side of athleticism, he’s very special.

Obviously, you can see his explosiveness. He’s made a good jump on his vertical. He sent me a couple videos of some dunk stuff he was doing the other day and he texted me and was like: ‘Coach, I’ve never jumped like this off of two feet.’ The reason why two feet is important is because in high school, you can play off one. At this level, if you play off one, a lot of times it’s a turnover or you’re just getting walled up and you’re not able to finish. The fact that we’re getting him a base off of two feet is gonna really help him in the position that he’s ultimately gonna play for us.

He’s gained a lot of weight. He’s up to 180 pounds, so he’s gained 15 pounds since he’s got here, which is very, very unique and quick. He’s consumed with it. He weighs in in the morning. He comes back when he lifts weights and he’s weighing in again. He’s got a very, very passionate drive to be great and that’s something that excites me. He’s very coachable. He’s a great teammate. He’s the freshman that’s taking the initiative to do the small things. He’s just really willing to fit into our locker room and I think guys have taken a liking to him quickly.

What do you think about Amani?

Fletch: I love him. Again, the unique thing about our freshmen this year is that they’re extremely coachable. Amani is certainly the same way. Amani’s got an unbelievable chip on his shoulder. He’s just a fierce competitor. Amani is a body composition guy, meaning we’re working on changing the way his body ultimately looks. We’re trimming off some of that young look and we’re going to transform that into looking more like a man. That’s body fat, that’s adding muscle mass.

Amani is an extremely great mover. I think from a high school standpoint, I think he probably worked with some of the best high school trainers in the country, honestly. He was very unique in his training patterns. He moves very well. Now, if we can add some strength to that, that’s going to help him accelerate a lot quicker.

Moves great, great mobility, great hand-eye coordination. These are things that are very, very hard to train and coach, so I’m very fortunate those guys have that coming in. A lot of times for a big, you can spend two years just trying to teach him how to catch. When I think about Kofi (Cockburn), that was one of the things that we spent the most time on with him was just trying to catch the ball. Amani’s got great hands, great visual awareness. So, we’re just going to change his strength and get him as close as possible to playing with the physicality that you need in this league.

Two more for you. There’s been a lot of talk about making sure the team chemistry is right, the culture is right this year. I know a lot of that starts in the summer when the whole group first gets together. What have you seen with this group there?

I know the time that you spend with them is good for bonding and stuff like that. Is that something that you’ve specifically talked about with the team or that you’ve emphasized differently this year?

Fletch: No, that’s something that can’t be forced. Someone may tell me the opposite, but I don’t think a corporate program has ever gone to a one-day seminar about becoming a team and everyone felt like: ‘Yeah, we’re a great team now. We did the water balloon toss and this is great.’ I’m sorry, I just don’t believe in that.

You get unique personalities. I think when you get unique personalities and you get a good amount of time to gel, then I think you get a really good team. What I think happens is sometimes you take for granted that you had Trent Frazier for five years and Da'Monte Williams for five years. Then, you lose guys who were ultimately the culture-holders and those guys are gone. And you have an influx of new people — whether that's old new people or young new people — just all new guys and you have an entire new locker room.

That’s the area where it’s about finding the norms. I use this analogy: You form a team and then you have no idea what you’re gonna have. Then, there’s ‘storming’. That’s a process where you figure each other out. Like ‘you respond this way to that and you like to be coached this way’. That’s the storming phase. And then, you start to establish norms. So, it’s form, storm, norm.

When you have guys that come back like a Terrence Shannon, a Coleman Hawkins that went from not having a Superman/Batman role to having it for the first time, there’s a storming phase that just ultimately happens. Trent Frazier was crying on the end of the bench at Eastern Illinois. No one talks about that. We talk about Trent Frazier securing the rebound to win the Big Ten championship at home against Iowa. That’s a process, man, and you can’t force that process to happen.

The thing that I love is we’ve got Ty Rodgers, the ultimate competitor. We’ve got Terrence Shannon back, who’s got unbelievable experience and understands Coach Underwood now. We’ve got Coleman Hawkins that went through a year of storming — just a challenging year. You get the pressure of becoming that person. You’ve got a guy in Luke Goode who had an injury that’s had it taken away from him. You get a different perspective. Sencire Harris. You’ve got norms in that locker room. So now, when those new freshmen come in, there’s no confusion. There’s a level there.

There’s no culture issue, but you’ve got to establish norms and a consistency. I feel really, really good about this team. This has been an extremely, extremely fun group to coach because I think there is an order and there is an understanding of what we are. Last year, it was a unique experience of a brand new team of people that really had no idea of what it is. We’ve got norms now and it’s been very fun to coach and to watch continue to take form really through the spring and now into the summer.

Alright, last one. How is your Spanish as you gear up for the trip to Spain?

Man, I gotta be honest with you, I think I stopped that in 11th grade. It’s going to be just fine. I’m a man of few words anyway. So, I’ll be pretty quiet for the most part.