🎙️ 🏀 Upside Video Chat with Brijesh Patel, Associate Athletic Director, Director of Athletic Performance at Quinnipiac University (NCAA).

Today we have the honor of interviewing again Brijesh Patel, Associate Athletic Director, Director of Athletic Performance at Quinnipiac University (NCAA).

Brijesh Patel is the Associate Athletic Director and Director of Athletic Performance at Quinnipiac University, where he built and now leads the school’s comprehensive strength and conditioning program after becoming its first full-time strength coach in 2008. A University of Connecticut graduate, Patel began his career with early hands-on mentorship under respected strength coaches and gained experience at both major Division I and mid-major programs, shaping a philosophy centered on reducing injury risk, developing better overall athletes, and educating them for long-term growth.

At Quinnipiac, he oversees basketball and ice hockey while managing staff, budget, return-to-play protocols, and department culture. Known for his movement-based training approach, emphasis on stress adaptation and durability, and balance of qualitative coaching with practical performance metrics, Patel has established himself as a respected leader in collegiate athletic performance.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Brijesh we discussed his journey into athletic performance and the experiences that shaped his philosophy as a coach and leader. He shared how he discovered his passion for strength and conditioning in high school, created his own pathway through internships and mentorship at the University of Connecticut and Holy Cross, and ultimately became the first full-time strength coach at Quinnipiac University. Over time, he built the program from the ground up and developed a clear performance philosophy centered on three pillars: reducing injury risk, developing better overall athletes, and educating them. He also explained how his role today balances hands-on coaching with department leadership, emphasizing accountability, respect, and work ethic as cultural non-negotiables for both athletes and staff.

We also discussed his movement-based approach to training, his focus on building durable athletes by progressively dosing stress in the offseason, and why he believes resilience comes from systematically increasing an athlete’s capacity to tolerate workload. In the return-to-play process, he highlighted the importance of matching team workload to avoid deconditioning and addressing the psychological component of injury recovery. On the topic of technology, Brijesh shared that while he values data and tools, he prioritizes coaching instincts, relationship-building, and simple volume tracking—such as “time on feet”—to guide decisions. Overall, the conversation highlighted his practical, disciplined, and athlete-centered approach to long-term performance development.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Brijesh located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Brijesh:

1️⃣ Background & Career Path

On discovering his passion early:

“I knew I wanted to be a strength coach when I was a senior in high school. Not a lot of people know what they want to do at 17 or 18 years old, but I had a fascination for training. I loved athletics, I loved sports, and I loved the mindset that you can improve — that you can get better. I saw how manipulating exercises and variables throughout an offseason could lead to completely different results, and that just fascinated me.”

On choosing impact over playing:

“I realized I wasn’t the best athlete and probably wasn’t going to compete at the next level. But what I really wanted to do was impact other people — help them reach their dreams. That realization shaped everything for me. If I couldn’t compete at the highest level as an athlete, I could still contribute at a high level by developing others.”

On creating his own path:

“Back then there weren’t formal internships everywhere like there are today. So I had to create my own journey. I would ask questions, observe, look things up if I didn’t know them, and come back with answers. I think the coaches were testing whether I was truly committed. That process built my foundation — not just technically, but mentally.”

On forming his philosophy:

“Through those experiences I started to formulate my philosophy: number one, reduce the chance of injury. Number two, make better athletes. And number three, educate them. How we do that can vary — it depends on the sport, the research, the resources, the technology — but those three pillars stay the same.”

On persistence and leadership mindset:

“If you want to be successful, that’s not normal. You’ve got to be able to do things in an uncommon way if you want to accomplish uncommon things. I don’t think I’m normal in how I think or operate — and I try to teach my athletes that. If you want uncommon results, you have to behave differently.”

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2️⃣ Role at Quinnipiac

On building the program:

“I was Quinnipiac’s first full-time strength and conditioning coach. When I started in 2008, I essentially built the program from scratch. It was just me at first. Now we have a staff of four full-time coaches, two weight rooms, and we oversee every team year-round.”

On balancing performance and administration:

“My coaching responsibilities haven’t really changed over time. I still program for basketball and hockey, I’m involved in every return-to-play process, and I work with them offseason and in season. From an administrative standpoint, I manage the staff and the budget, but I’ve built systems in place so that I can still coach at a high level.”

On culture and non-negotiables:

“We talk about having non-negotiables. Our three non-negotiables are accountability, respect, and work ethic. That’s what we expect from student-athletes, but I expect the exact same thing from my staff. If we’re going to hold athletes to a standard, we have to hold ourselves to that same standard first.”

On eliminating excuses:

“We don’t make excuses. We don’t complain about lack of funding, lack of technology, or limitations. If we as leaders start making excuses, it gives the athlete permission to make excuses. And that’s something we can’t allow culturally.”

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3️⃣ Training Philosophy & Durability

On movement-based development:

“We take a movement-based approach. Everything we do is designed to enhance the athlete’s ability to move more efficiently. We work primarily with skill-based sports like basketball and hockey, where you can be very skilled without being physically developed. Our job is to enhance their movement capacity so their skill can express itself at a higher level.”

On driving capacity instead of minimal dose:

“I’m not a big fan of the term ‘minimal effective dose,’ especially in the offseason. In the offseason we have to drive stress. We have to raise the athlete’s capacity to tolerate stress so that when the season comes — with school stress, social stress, financial stress, and physical stress — they can handle it.”

On stress and adaptation:

“You can’t tolerate stress unless you dose stress. That’s one of the biggest principles we operate under. We progressively and systematically apply stress in the offseason so athletes can adapt, recover, and build resilience. That way, when it’s time to perform, the physical capacity is already there.”

On resilience during the season:

“Our goal is to drive their capacity to do more work more frequently, so they can perform their skills harder, faster, and longer. If capacity is high enough, durability improves. Resilience improves. And performance improves.”

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4️⃣ Rehab & Return-to-Play

On psychological readiness:

“Looking at the research, the biggest component of return to play is psychological. Physically you might be recovered, but being able to get over that mental hurdle — to let yourself compete at the level you were at before — that’s the most challenging part.”

On maintaining workload during rehab:

“Our first goal is making sure that their total overall workload matches what the team is doing — if not more. If the team practices for an hour and a half and lifts for 45 minutes, we want that injured athlete accumulating similar total volume between rehab and training. That way when they return, they’re not deconditioned.”

On performance benchmarks before clearance:

“Before they return to play, ideally we want them within at least 90 percent of their previous speed and power numbers. From a strength standpoint, they’re often stronger because we’ve invested more focused time. But speed and power need to be within that range.”

On multidisciplinary collaboration:

“It’s a multifactor approach. Athletic trainers, sports psychologists, sports nutritionists — everybody is involved. Return to play is not just a strength decision. It’s a coordinated effort.”

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5️⃣ Technology & Innovation

On budget realities:

“From a budgetary standpoint, we don’t have an expansive budget. So we have to be smart with what we use.”

On moving away from excessive tech:

“At one point I realized I was spending more time looking at a computer than building relationships with athletes. And my strength is connection and communication. So I leaned into that. I’m much more of a qualitative coach than a quantitative coach.”

On reading fatigue without tech:

“You can sense their energy and fatigue level just by watching them — by their eyes, by their foot strike, by how long they spend on the ground. You can see when legs look heavy. Coaching instincts matter.”

On volume as the primary stress metric:

“Volume is our key indicator to stress. We simply time practice — time on feet. Acute-to-chronic workload ratios, total weekly volume — those matter. Just because practice doesn’t look intense doesn’t mean they’re not accumulating stress.”

On a key learning moment:

“We had a team practicing for three hours a day. Coaches thought it wasn’t intense because they were teaching and standing around. But they were still accumulating volume on their feet. We shortened practice, slightly increased intensity, and a week later everyone was out of the training room.”

On individualized power profiling:

“We use jump mats, Excel formulas, bodyweight, squat max — we calculate a power quotient to determine whether an athlete needs more strength work or more velocity work. Even without force plates, you can still individualize effectively if you understand what you’re looking at.”

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