Almost one month out from the beginning of the new year, how many of us can say we stuck to our resolutions? According to data-gathering platform Statista, 17 percent of Americans’ New Year’s resolution is to exercise more. If you’re anything like me the hardest part isn’t getting started, it’s sticking with the program. 

Eugene Weekly sat down with University of Oregon Baseball’s head strength coach, Darrell Hunter, at the Casanova Center which houses the Duck Medical Treatment Center and Marcus Mariota Sports Performance Complex, to learn how to get yoked. Or as he put it, how to “get the most out of each athlete.”

Hunter, a former member of the UO baseball team who has now either played with or trained every member of the UO team since it began in 2009, says, “For me, it’s not just about making pro athletes. It’s about just giving them a foundation, a willingness and a desire to work out and stay healthy.” 

That’s where anyone getting back in shape should be, starting to build a foundation of fundamentals.

For Hunter, the fundamentals start with a realistic understanding of where you are physically and where you want to be. When he gets a new player, which he says happens more frequently now than ever before because of the NCAA transfer portal, he meets with them to understand where they want to be versus where they need to be. The transfer portal lets student-athletes who want to transfer to put their name in an online database.

With the baseball season starting in February, he’s training his baseball players to be able to output a lot of force very quickly on the field. “You’re swinging a 30 ounce bat against a five ounce baseball, [so] squatting 500 pounds probably is unnecessary. It’s, ‘Can I move 225 pounds faster?’” he says. 

While Hunter has his players become “more explosive” by lifting  less weight faster, he emphasizes that exercise is not a one-size-fits-all situation. “If you look at player A and player B, the workout is not the same,” Hunter says. Understanding where you need to be is one thing, but Hunter says it’s even more important to draft a plan to hold yourself accountable.

While he creates his workout schedules in four-week blocks, Hunter says the exercises “change almost every day based on what I’m seeing out of practice.” It’s all about tracking how you’re physically and mentally feeling before going into a workout.

“Build a structured plan but be willing to change the plan,” he says. “I really want to go strong today, but I feel like crap. I didn’t sleep, work is stressful. Don’t just do it endlessly. Let’s say there’s a day where it’s not supposed to be that, but I feel great today. Let’s push it that day.”

“Attack each day differently,” he says. “It’s just consistency over anything else.”

Hunter says that just as the players who are the most driven to train off the field find more success than those that aren’t, those who create a flexible plan with realistic expectations will find themselves exercising more than others (like myself) who make the resolution to work out every single day of the new year.

However, Hunter says the best way to get regular exercise is to pick one you actually enjoy doing. “You’re going to be a lot more consistent if you enjoy what you’re doing.”