UNM weight room offers competitive, unifying atmosphere

Behind the court, behind the field, behind the track is the All Sport Weight Room where Lobo athletes condition and strength train as extensions to their sports

by VANESSA STROBBE

Sweat pours.

Iron clinks.

Nearly 100 student-athletes exhaust their bodies.

On the first floor of the L.F. “Tow” Diehm Athletics Facility resides the All Sport Weight Room for the University of New Mexico Lobos. This 10,000 square feet of squat racks, dumbbells and medicine balls serves as the behind-the-scenes training facility for all UNM sports teams.

Open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, the weight room houses a constant flow of 17 varsity Lobo teams throughout the day. Twenty-seven multi-purpose lifting stations sit among walls covered in full-length mirrors topped by a red and black collage of former UNM athletes. An elevated room oversees the equipment and lodges the offices of four full-time strength and conditioning coaches.

Doors are closed to the public, and only the athletes witness the work put in inside the facility.

“Strength programs are the bowels of the athletic department,” said Mark Paulsen, director of the UNM strength and conditioning program. “That’s where the hard, under-the-nasty, sweaty-bar work happens. Nobody knows you’re there. It’s a place you really have to want to be to get better.”

Photo courtesy of golobos.com

The UNM All Sport Weight Room houses 27 multi-purpose lifting stations.

The facility is open to all UNM athletes year-round so training can continue in the off-season. Paulsen said the facility is steadily being used more because head coaches are better understanding the importance of training their athletes in the weight room.

“There is a direct correlation between the hard work in [the weight room] carrying over to the athletes’ performance,” Paulsen said. “Because of the influence of the head coaches, that correlation is more and more reflected. The weight room has become an extension of the track, the football field, the baseball field.”

Senior all-American pole vaulter Robert Caldwell says the weight room at “Tow” Diehm provides an athlete the opportunity for success that a public gym could not.

“It is a critical location for all athletes because it provides a heaven where the athlete can put his mind into the body, which in turn, will break many limitations,” he said. “[The weight room] serves the purpose of one thing: to get become a better athlete. Public weight rooms only provide distractions and limitations.”

Funded by a $547,000 donation from Pepsi-Cola West, the All Sport Weight Room was built as an extension of the football stadium in 1995. Meant to attract recruits, the weight room also offers a sense of unity to the before-then segregated athletes.

“You struggle through practice day in and day out sometimes thinking you’re the only one going through it,” said Samantha Hughes, a junior on the softball team. “But when you walk into the weight room at 6 a.m. and see athletes from other teams doing the same thing, you know you’re not alone.”

After the construction of the football Indoor Practice Facility past fall and the near $50-million expansion of The Pit beginning this year, UNM President David Schmidly and Athletic Director Paul Krebs have also indicated a near-future renovation and expansion of the weight room.

Paulsen said adding a wing onto the east side of the building along with Mondo surface flooring would be the most likely of the changes.
“We want to make it far more multi-purpose in terms of agilities,” Paulsen said. “We’d like to move away from just the weight lifting and make it a more movement-oriented place.”

Whatever changes, however big the weight room gets, its role will still be the place of the hard work no fans know about, the sweat no pictures capture, and the pain and determination only the athletes will feel.

Written May 1, 2008

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