STRENGTH. PREPARATION. PERFORMANCE.

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September 26, 2026

For information on admission to Notre Dame Prep, please click here.

Coach Christian Polega’s four-year approach develops strength, speed and resilience while challenging student-athletes to grow closer to God and become the best version of themselves.

A high school weight room can be a place where students lift weights, run drills, break a sweat and prepare for the next game.

At Notre Dame Preparatory School, it is something considerably different.

Under Strength and Conditioning Coach Christian Polega, the school’s strength and conditioning program is built around a four-year progression that develops movement, strength, speed and power while continually adapting to the individual student-athlete.

The goal is not simply to produce stronger athletes.

“Empowering student-athletes to grow spiritually, mentally and physically by challenging them daily, assessing regularly and reinforcing the characters, principles and values of NDP,” is what Polega says is key to his program.

That philosophy gives the program a purpose that extends well beyond performance.

“We want to prepare and develop the next generation of leaders by revealing how great they were created to be,” he said. “Yes, the goal of the program is to ensure our student-athletes play more and play better, but ultimately we want them to be Christian people, upright citizens and academic scholars.”

A whole-person approach to development

That approach also reflects where the field of youth strength and conditioning has moved in recent decades. The National Strength and Conditioning Association describes long-term athletic development as a structured, logical and evidence-based approach that should promote physical development, prevent injury and develop physical literacy and foundational strength. The NSCA emphasizes that young athletes should be developed in an individualized, holistic and child-centered manner.

At NDP, that philosophy is translated into a program designed to meet students where they are and progressively prepare them for where they are going.

That integration is especially evident in the relationship between strength and conditioning and the physical education curriculum, according to Bobbie Hall NDP’00, chair of the physical education department, coach and upper school PE and health teacher.

"Since 2019, Coach P. has fundamentally reshaped what physical education and athletic preparation look like at NDP," she said. "As I got to know Christian, I realized that he was a key to elevating our program, so I sought out his guidance to incorporate a weight room component into the 9th grade PE curriculum and he ran with it.”

Hall said starting in 9th grade, every freshman now receives a year-long introduction to the weight room (officially The Betty A. Wroubel Performance Center) during their PE/Health class to help them build confidence and proper technique right from the start.

A four-year plan, not four years of workouts

Polega describes the ultimate objective as a four-year developmental plan that culminates in a senior athlete who is “fast, strong and healthy” and able to thrive on his or her respective team.

The progression is straightforward:

• Prepare and Protect
• Move Well
• Move Strong
• Move Fast
• Thrive

Each stage has a primary emphasis, but none exists in isolation.

“Each phase is putting an emphasis on specific biomotor abilities (movement, strength, speed and power), but all abilities are being trained on a daily basis in every program in differing amounts and intensities,” Polega said.

That distinction is important.

The freshman experience is not simply a scaled-down version of what a senior does. Freshmen spend significant time developing the fundamentals of “Moving Well,” with an emphasis on mobility and stability.

“The wider and bigger we can build their base freshman year the more potential they have to increase the height of their performance pyramid senior year and beyond,” Polega said.

Sophomores and juniors spend more time in the “Move Strong” phase, developing strength and size relative to their bodies. Relative bodyweight strength standards help inform when an athlete is ready to progress toward “Move Fast,” where greater emphasis is placed on speed and power.

And progression is not determined by grade level alone.

“How frequent a student-athlete trains is a great predictor of how slow or fast they will progress through each phase of training,” Polega said.

The concept is consistent with the NSCA’s long-term athletic development model, which cautions against treating youth athletes as miniature versions of adults and instead calls for developmentally appropriate exercise prescribed progressively as young people grow and mature.

The result is a program in which development is measured over years rather than weeks.

Individualization built into program

There is another important distinction between a structured strength and conditioning program and a generic collection of exercises: The program has to account for the student actually standing in front of the coach.

Polega describes NDP’s approach as unified in philosophy but individualized in application.

“I try to make the approach to training our athletes as unified as I can regardless of age, sport and experience,” he said. “However, every sport and athlete is not uniform in the methods and exercises that are selected for them.”

The program has basic templates for off-season and in-season training, but those templates are adjusted according to sport, training frequency, exercise selection, workload and individual needs.

An exercise that is appropriate during the offseason may create too much stress or soreness during a competitive season. In that case, Polega may substitute a movement that trains a similar pattern without interfering as much with practices or games.

Or an injured student-athlete may require another modification.

“In that instance, an exercise may be modified, altered or deleted based on their specific need,” Polega said.

Individualization happens daily through what Polega describes as the regression and progression of exercises according to ability, volume and load selection.

That means the objective is not to make every student perform the same workout.

It is to make sure every student is appropriately challenged by the right training stimulus at the right time.

That is a broader, fundamental principle of contemporary youth athletic development. The NSCA's position statement specifically calls for “individualized and holistic development, while research on youth athletes has emphasized the importance of accounting for maturation, training volume and other interacting factors rather than relying on a single measure to prescribe training.”

“They are here to train,” not simply to sweat

For Polega, perhaps the clearest dividing line between a professional strength and conditioning program and a traditional school weight room comes down to one question: Why are the students doing what they are doing?

“I joke about this all the time with my student-athletes — that they are here to train to improve specific physiological abilities and they are not here just to break a sweat,” Polega said.

“That is the separator.”

A workout can make a student sweat. A program is designed to produce a specific adaptation.

“A well-designed program is going to emphasize and target specific physiological abilities that are appropriately suited for the individual student-athlete in front of them,” Polega said. “A workout is going to make you sweat, but there is no real thought or design behind what the target or goal of that session is.”

In a program, he said, “each exercise, each training session and each phase builds upon what came before.”

That is the difference between activity and development, he says.

Making progress visible

It is also why assessment, progression and monitoring matter.

At NDP, Polega delivers team and individual programs through Teambuilder, a training platform that allows student-athletes to access workouts through an app. Students can track progress, view exercise demonstrations, swap exercises when prescribed, journal about their experience, review their exercise history and see leaderboards comparing their performance with peers.

For Polega, the technology is not the point. The information it makes available is.

“Teambuildr has been a great resource to be able to track individual and team progress month-to-month, year-to-year and freshman year through senior year,” he said.

The approach turns progression into something students can see and understand.

Betty Wroubel, athletic director, upper school assistant principal, and softball and volleyball coach, points to the breadth of Polega’s experience as another asset to the program.

"Christian has worked with athletes at the high school, collegiate and professional levels, and our students and programs benefit from that experience day in and day out, throughout the year,” she said. “I truly believe he is one of the best strength and conditioning coaches in the state, and we are fortunate to have him as part of our Notre Dame family."

Preparation is part of injury prevention

For families considering a school athletic program, performance is only part of the equation.

Health and safety matter just as much.

Research increasingly supports the role of appropriately designed, multicomponent exercise programs in reducing injury risk among adolescent athletes. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 16 randomized controlled trials involving adolescent team-sport athletes found that multicomponent programs reduced total sports injuries by 35%, lower-extremity injuries by 33% and overuse injuries by 39%. The programs incorporated combinations of elements such as strength, plyometrics, agility, balance and warm-ups.

That does not mean strength and conditioning eliminates the possibility of injury. It does demonstrate why preparation matters.

The NSCA's position statement on youth resistance training likewise concludes that a “properly designed and supervised resistance training program is relatively safe for youth” and can improve strength, power, motor skills, sports performance and resistance to sports-related injuries.

Why professional supervision matters

The operative words are designed and supervised, according to Polega, the point to which he emphasizes strongly.

“Having a room that is professionally supervised ensures that proper form, technique and loads are being used in an effort to keep everyone safe and appropriately progressing with each physiological ability,” he said.

For Polega, supervision is not an accessory to the program. It is central to it.

“Without having someone who knows and understands the principles of training, exercise technique and the appropriate application of training you are asking for disaster to strike,” he said. “The weight room is the most dangerous room in every high school across America and there should be an emphasis on hiring a qualified professional to safely and effectively run those rooms.”

Across American secondary schools, access to specialized athletic health care also is not universal. A national study of 20,272 public and private secondary schools with athletics found that 34% had no access to athletic trainer services. Among schools with access, 53% received full-time services. The study's authors described athletic trainers as professionals specifically trained in areas including injury prevention, care, rehabilitation and safe return to sport.

The research does not establish how individual schools staff strength and conditioning programs, but it does illustrate a broader reality: specialized athletic support is not uniformly available across American secondary schools.

At NDP, professional strength and conditioning is intentionally incorporated into the athletic experience.

Modern training is more than traditional weightlifting

Strength and conditioning also has evolved beyond the traditional image of a high school weight room.

The discipline encompasses movement quality, strength, power, speed, agility, mobility, stability, workload and progression. Contemporary research also examines increasingly sophisticated training methods for youth athletes.

A 2023 systematic review in Sports Medicine, for example, examined 22 studies involving eccentric resistance training in athletes 18 and younger. The researchers identified the Nordic hamstring exercise and flywheel inertial training as the most frequently studied eccentric methods and found support for their use in improving measures of muscular strength, jumping, sprinting and change-of-direction performance.

But the point is not that every student needs an advanced training technique.

It is that youth strength and conditioning is now a field grounded in exercise science and ongoing research, with coaches selecting methods according to the needs and developmental level of the athlete.

That is consistent with Polega's approach at NDP: The exercise is a means to an identified objective, not the objective itself.

The benefits may extend beyond the playing field

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the research surrounding youth resistance training is that its potential benefits are not confined to athletic performance.

A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis published in Sports Medicine examined 53 studies involving school-aged youth and found a small positive effect of resistance training on combined measures of cognitive function, academic achievement and on-task classroom behavior. The authors described the findings as preliminary evidence, making clear that the research does not establish that strength training automatically produces better academic outcomes.

That difference matters.

NDP is not asking student-athletes to train so they can become better students by default. Rather, the research provides another reason to consider physical development as part of the education of the whole student.

For Polega, that broader connection is already central to the program.

“I want the student-athlete to understand that when they set realistic and attainable goals that if they consistently commit to the process with an unwavering attitude and put forth a good effort that almost anything is within their reach,” he said.

“Strength and conditioning is just like any other endeavor in life that fosters greater patience, greater self-control and the ability to achieve long-term success.”

That is a very different lesson from simply learning how to lift more weight.

Hall sees that development extending beyond physical gains. "Coach P offers an unparalleled opportunity for our students and athletes to develop not only physically, but also personally through discipline, goal-setting, and accountability," she said. "This is just what we do now and I am so thankful and appreciative to have Coach P as a colleague, resource, coach, and a great friend at NDP."

Wroubel also sees the program’s impact in the time and attention Polega gives students beyond scheduled classes. "What stands out to me is how much time Christian gives our kids. He teaches them during various physical education classes, works with them after school, and is often here on weekends or even before the school day begins. He genuinely cares about helping each student get stronger and grow in confidence, while also developing the discipline and work ethic that will serve them well beyond athletics."

Learning how to respond to adversity

Even for professional and collegiate athletes, progress in a weight room, like progress in school, rarely happens in a straight line.

There are days when an athlete improves. There are days when progress stalls. There are times to increase the challenge and times when the appropriate decision is to back off.

Polega sees those moments as part of the education.

“Strength and conditioning doesn’t reward the instantly gratified,” he said. “Adversity will show up and the student-athletes who learn to put their head down and chip away at the problem will be rewarded in the long-term.”

The lesson is not limited to athletics.

“There are times to push, times to rest, and times to maintain — like every other season in a person’s life,” Polega said.

That perspective is reflected in the structure of the program itself. Progression is not synonymous with continually adding weight or intensity. Sometimes progression means mastering movement. Sometimes it means improving stability or mobility. Sometimes it means knowing when an exercise needs to be modified because an athlete is injured or because the demands of the competitive season have changed.

The student learns that development is a process.

From “move well” to “thrive” to God

By the time an NDP student-athlete reaches senior year, the objective is not merely a higher number on a lift or a faster time on a test.

The goal is a student who has spent four years learning how preparation works.

Freshmen learn how to move. Sophomores and juniors develop strength and capacity. Athletes progress toward speed and power.

For Jason Whalen, counselor, upper school and head football coach, the program’s effect is particularly visible in the development of speed and explosiveness.

"When people ask why we've been able to make back-to-back state finals and win a state championship in 2024, Coach Polega is a huge part of that answer,” he said. “Our team speed and explosiveness has become one of the defining strengths of our program, and that's a direct result of the culture, standards and training he brings every day.”

Whalen added that Polega is innovative, extremely knowledgeable, and pushes athletes to be their best.

“More importantly, he genuinely cares about their development,” Whalen said. “When we say we're a program that develops athletes, Coach Polega's work in our speed and strength program is at the center of that mission. Throughout the process, they learn how to set goals, track progress, respond to adversity, adjust when circumstances change and remain committed to long-term development.”

The result is a progression that Polega has many times described as simply: “prepare and protect” so athletes can play more, then “move well,” “move strong,” “move fast” and ultimately “thrive,” so they can play better.

But the final measure of success is broader.

“Ultimately, I want to see a four-year development of our student-athletes in their strength spiritually, mentally and physically,” Polega said.

“I also want them to grow closer in their relationship with God, while becoming the next best version of themselves and equipped with the knowledge and wisdom to make the right decisions in the next chapter of their lives.”

That is the larger purpose behind the program.

The weights, exercises, testing, training software, progressions and performance measures are tools. The deeper objective is development as a human being.

A different way to think about the weight room

The National Strength and Conditioning Association's long-term athletic development model describes the field in terms of safe progression, physical literacy, foundational strength, injury prevention and lifelong health.

At Notre Dame Prep, those concepts become a key part of a four-year student experience.

The program asks what an athlete needs now, what that athlete will need next and how today's training can prepare the student for the demands of tomorrow.

It recognizes that a freshman and a senior should not train identically. That an athlete in season may need something different from an athlete in the offseason. That an injured student-athlete may need a modified approach. That training frequency affects progression. That proper technique and appropriate loads matter. That assessment and tracking have a purpose. And that getting stronger is only one piece of becoming a more capable athlete.

Most important, it recognizes that the person in the weight room is a student before he or she is a statistic on a performance chart.

The broader research supports the value of properly designed and supervised youth strength and conditioning. It supports progressive development. It supports multicomponent training as a tool for injury reduction. And emerging evidence suggests that resistance training may have benefits that extend into cognitive and academic domains.

At NDP, Polega's philosophy puts those principles into a distinctly school-based context.

“We want to prepare and develop the next generation of leaders,” he said.

That makes the weight room part of something much larger.

It is a place where students learn to move well, work deliberately, accept coaching, measure progress, manage setbacks and stay committed to a process that takes years to complete.

And, ultimately, according to Polega, “it is a place where the work of becoming a stronger athlete is connected to the work of becoming a stronger person."

For information on admission to Notre Dame Prep, please click here.

Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org

About Notre Dame Preparatory School
"At Notre Dame Prep, we inspire our students to become the best versions of themselves. We challenge them through an experience of academic excellence, focused on active, project-based learning. We invite them to explore a world of opportunities beyond the classroom. We guide them as they grow in spirituality within a community strong in its Catholic and Marist identity."

Notre Dame Preparatory School is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. Notre Dame Preparatory School's upper school enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame Prep's middle and lower schools enroll students in pre-kindergarten through grade eight. All three schools are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDP is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the National Association of Independent Schools. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School, visit the school’s home page at www.ndpma.org.