Strength Scientist

Beneath the south stands of Bobby Dodd Stadium, hip-hop was pounding, as usual, in the Yellow Jackets weight room. The reverberating bass was punctuated by the thunder of weights slamming down.

In an office off of the back of the room, apples, bananas and oranges sat in a tidy pile atop Steve Tamborra’s desk. Beneath the desk, canisters of protein powder were stacked neatly.

Tamborra, in his 10th year as strength and conditioning coach of the Tech baseball team, watched out his office window over a group of players. They were just beginning one of Tamborra’s lifting routines.

“Christmas break was long this year,” Tamborra said with a smile. “Four weeks. That’s a long time to get out of shape.”

There was little doubt the players would soon be in top form. Tamborra has helped baseball coach Danny Hall turn out a steady stream of Major League Baseball prospects. One of those, Mark Teixeira, Cls 02, is on the cover of Complete Conditioning for Baseball, a much-respected tome penned by Tamborra.

Tamborra said he’d always been interested in writing a guide to weight training, and when the publisher approached him he was excited to get started.

“I had a ghost writer, and without him, I would’ve died,” he said. “I’m very glad I did it, but it wasn’t fun. I’m not a good writer.”

While he might not be the next Henry James, Tamborra knows his way around a weight room as well as anyone. Always a fitness fanatic, he went to Florida State and received undergraduate and graduate degrees in exercise science.

He wanted to be a personal trainer but had a bad experience while working part time at the campus recreation center as an undergraduate.

“I hated it,” he said. “It bothered me that I was more passionate than my clients.”

That led Tamborra to start working with the Florida State football program, which was excelling under coach Bobby Bowden. Tamborra later started training baseball players as well before being recruited to Georgia Tech.

What Tamborra realized at Florida State and brought to Tech was the need to watch players closely during practices and games. He designs weight-training programs to simulate the motions of the game.

“You have to understand the science of how the body moves,” he said.

What he learned about baseball was that it hardly differed from other sports. The training consists largely of squats, Olympic lifts, core work, lunges and pull-ups.

“Every sport is a power sport,” Tamborra said. “In baseball, it’s your ability to repeat explosive events, to put everything into one swing or throw.”

For as much time as he spends around athletes, Tamborra doesn’t consider himself a big fan of sports. It’s the culture of athletics and the personalities of the athletes that he enjoys.

“I like the kids,” he said. “I love giving them a routine and seeing them challenge themselves. Baseball’s terrible to watch unless you have a vested interest in the kids.”

One of the most important parts of his job is to get to know the players, he said. They come to Tech to play baseball, not to lift. And so he has to find ways to motivate them.

Tamborra joked that outside of the weight room he doesn’t do much beyond spend time with his wife and three children, watch movies and shoot guns at a range. But he is very involved in the Georgia Tech chapter of 925 Athletic Ministries, a Christian organization for college athletes.

“We’re not just interested in developing them physically, but spiritually too,” Tamborra said.

All The Right Moves

Tamborra said he often sees nonathletes lifting incorrectly or doing lifts that offer little benefit.

“You see people doing things, and you think, ‘Why would you do that?’” he said. “Just because you read it in a magazine — listen, those guys are bodybuilders. You shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing.”

His advice is to understand what you’re doing in the weight room by either reading a book on training written by an expert or taking lessons.

Tamborra recommends using simple lifts like squats, Olympic lifts, pull-ups and abdominal and back exercises.

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