The door leading from the locker room tunnel into Wisconsin’s football weight room is closed and the windows blacked out. All the team’s offensive players can hear as anticipation builds is the thumping bass of rap music seeping into the hallway. They have heard the stories about Squatfest but are about to experience it for the first time. As they wait, a chant erupts: Let us out. Let us out.
At 10 a.m. on the last Friday in June, the door swings open. Players burst into the weight room, run a lap and take in their surroundings. What they see resembles a rave. Dante The Don, a DJ from Chicago, blasts hip-hop tracks. More than 100 LED tubes hang from the ceiling and weight racks, oscillating between red and white light. Images of the Big Ten championship trophy, Arnold Schwarzenegger holding a rocket launcher in the movie “Commando” and Mike Tyson throwing a right-handed hook are taped across the weight racks.
The ringleader is Brady Collins, Wisconsin’s 37-year-old director of football strength and conditioning who doubles as hype man and emcee. When he took over as Cincinnati’s strength coach in 2017, the last big workout before summer break simply was a heavy squat day. But Collins, always in search of ways to deliver motivation and fun, tweaked the format.
A couple of lights one year. A DJ and a fog machine another year. And now this: an extravaganza that he sees as a vital component to the team-building process necessary to win championships. Players might not remember the weight pushed down the line, but they will cling to the camaraderie and environment Collins has created.
Collins wears black Jordan 11 sneakers, black joggers and a black “Badgers Strength” hoodie that carries one of his mottos — Tough. Nasty. Disciplined. — with a white-and-red Badgers hat on backward. A whistle remains in his mouth as he paces back and forth, his head bobbing to the music. After players stretch, he stands in front of them and calls out the names for one-on-one tug-of-war rope contests, a warmup meant to instill the value of competition.
“All right, boys!” Collins yells. “It’s getting f—ing nuts in here!”
The air is heavy and hot. Before players break into squat rack groups, they encircle Collins. The music fades as Collins’ voice, hoarse from the defensive players’ workout earlier in the day, pierces the room.
“It’s all about why we do it and who we do it with,” he shouts. “You’re going to juice it up, no matter if it’s 225 up to 500. Who gives a f—? I want the energy f—ing through the roof. I want these lights to f—ing explode.”
Players say the intensity, enthusiasm and accountability Collins brings has generated buy-in from the group during his first six months. It’s exactly why Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell says he wouldn’t have accepted the job without Collins.
Collins describes himself growing up as a “meat head” who was bitten by the iron bug while playing football at Olentangy High School in Ohio. He loved how weight-room training impacted him physically and mentally and would spend his Sundays working out at a Gold’s Gym. He went on to play running back for Division III Otterbein in Ohio and says he realized during his junior year that a career path in strength and conditioning was possible.
Collins, who earned a degree in health promotion and sports sciences from Otterbein, says the lightbulb moment came when he and three co-captains created the football team’s offseason strength program from scratch using the exercise science books they had from class and adding their own flavor to the workouts. During his senior season in 2008, the team finished 9-2 and qualified for the Division III playoffs for the first time.
“Is it because of our training?” Collins says. “It’s because we were good players and we had good coaches. But that did help us because we actually had a detailed plan. So that’s when it clicked. Like, ‘OK, I could do that part.’”
In his senior year, Collins interned at Ohio State working with five Olympic sports programs and learning how to challenge top-flight athletes, arriving at 3:30 a.m. to set up 5 a.m. workouts. While earning a master’s degree in kinesiology from Kentucky, he volunteered with the football strength staff and worked part-time at Finish Line to pay the bills. Collins spent as much time as possible around the strength staffers, taking notes, cleaning the facility and impressing with his outgoing personality to rise from intern to graduate assistant. He parlayed that experience into a full-time assistant strength coaching role at Mississippi State before he was hired back at Ohio State under strength coach Mickey Marotti in 2015.
That’s where Collins says he hit the jackpot because his path crossed with Fickell. Marotti placed his assistant strength coaches with position groups so they could better monitor every aspect of the football team. Collins was paired with the linebackers, whom Fickell coached. Collins would make sure players were taped, hydrated, stretched and had snacks in meetings and anything else they needed. Sometimes, he’d break up the monotony of the season by creating humorous PowerPoint presentations before meetings and putting players’ heads on the bodies of other people just to make them laugh.
“If I’m told something, I’m all in and I’m going to do it better than anybody’s ever done it,” Collins says. “Not to be like, ‘Look at me,’ but just because I genuinely care and want those guys to be the best because I know how coach Fick was with those guys. The linebackers, they were the best at everything. Not just weight-room numbers, but their effort, academics, guys on special teams, just all that stuff. I took so much pride in knowing that I had the best unit on the team with the best coach. So I was like, ‘All right, I’ve got to be right up there with him.’”
Fickell appreciated Collins’ passion, taking notice at a critical juncture in their career paths. When Fickell was hired as head coach at Cincinnati in December 2016, he asked Collins to join him and lead the strength and conditioning program.
“There’s a method to the madness,” Fickell says. “But I think first and foremost, he loves the guys. He has an energy. He creates and builds those relationships. And then I think that more than anything, me and him see eye-to-eye in what our job is to build football players. He’ll do the things that we need to do based on specifics to positions. He is the best at what he does.”
Collins says Cincinnati didn’t have the resources or space early in the staff’s tenure to provide players with enough time or options to eat breakfast before meetings began in the morning. So he decided that he and members of his staff would cook for the players.
He would drive a university vehicle to Costco to buy food every week. Collins and his staff would be in the football facility by 4 a.m. making eggs and bacon, sausage or chorizo for breakfast burritos. There would be large spreads to layer on muffins and bagels. Collins says it’s important to him to do whatever it takes to provide his athletes with the best possible opportunities.
Center Jake Renfro earned first-team All-AAC honors for Cincinnati in 2021 but tore the meniscus in his right knee before the first game the following season. Collins calmed Renfro’s anxiety during lengthy conversations and gave him a plan for how to attack his recovery after surgery. Renfro’s dad, Rick, says his son not only looks up to Collins, but considers him to be “like his best friend” because of how much time they have spent together. Renfro followed Fickell and Collins to Wisconsin as a transfer this offseason.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s 1 in the morning, 3 p.m., 8 p.m., that man always has the same energy,” Renfro says. “He’s always upbeat, up-tempo. He is one of the best men I’ve ever been around in my life. He coaches us hard, but he loves us even harder. No matter what you need from him, he’s always there. I love coach Brady.”
Collins’ efforts fortified the bodies of a Cincinnati team that became the only Group of 5 program to reach the College Football Playoff. During a three-year run from 2021-23, 16 Bearcats players were selected in the NFL Draft. Collins has 16 NFL hats hanging on hooks in his office at Wisconsin to represent the pros he worked with closely at Cincinnati. That includes cornerback Sauce Gardner, whom Collins helped transform from a 160-pound freshman into a 200-pound first-round draft pick.
When Fickell accepted the Wisconsin job in November, he saw the potential to build the Badgers into a championship team just as he accomplished at Cincinnati. He made sure Collins was coming with him.
“At first, it’s tough because deep down you’re like, ‘Dude, we built that place,’” Collins says of Cincinnati. “But at the same time, you know just the way coach Fick does things, the way we do things, it can work at a lot of places but it had to be the right one. And once this one started coming up, I was like, ‘Holy cow. This one makes a lot of sense.’ It was a no-brainer.”
Collins’ alarm clock typically buzzes between 4 and 4:30 each morning. He throws on some sweats and tennis shoes, hops in his white GMC Sierra Denali and stops for the house blend coffee at QuikTrip — “A good amount of sugar,” he says. “I don’t want to say how much. My wife kind of gets on me for that.” — before pulling into the parking lot outside Camp Randall Stadium to begin his day. There has been a lot for him to undertake.
One of his first big projects was overhauling the weight-room space. He spruced it up with new paint and lights to add more color, brought in different weight machines and moved around the existing equipment to create a fresh environment. An accent wall painted red near the entrance features his “Tough, Nasty, Disciplined” motto across three lines in block letters. A plaque hangs from the wall that reads “Fe2,” the elemental symbol that references another one of his favorite phrases: “Iron sharpens iron.”
On a weekday in mid-June, a white board in the middle of the weight room is covered in marker with mottos, announcements, quotes and reminders for players that highlight Collins’ personality.
A photo of former Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant is taped near the top right corner with one of his quotes: “We can always kind of be average and just do what’s normal. I’m not in this to do what’s normal.” Collins also has a laminated statement taped to the board that Fickell consistently reiterates: “How you do anything is how you do everything.”
- Not Focused On Anything But Right Now!!
- Who Is A Leader? Prove It Even More!
- The Top F’N Dawgz Alwayz Represent.
- Never Hide, Coast, Cut Corners.
- Unleash Hell!
A television screen hanging in the middle of the accent wall is illuminated with images and names of the top-five weight-room point leaders from Week 4 of summer workouts. It’s another example of something Fickell and Collins believe deeply: Competition is paramount.
“That translates into everything,” Collins says. “Now it’s going to seep into academics. Now it’s going to seep into not just on the practice field, on the game field, it just seeps into every aspect of your life. ‘He put on five pounds and he’s running faster, he’s stronger. I’m going to do that now.’ It’s contagious.”
Collins’ staff includes four full-time assistants he brought from Cincinnati: Danny Folino, Jeremiah Ortiz, Austin Stephan and Dustin Tripp. Together, they award points for anything from the attitude players have when they walk into the weight room to whether they’re wearing the right clothing to how much they bench press to how many reps they can achieve to if they’re on time to how well they perform in academics. Collins says one player stayed after and picked up bottles and towels in the locker room, so Collins awarded him points (the staff also deducts points, if necessary).
The point-leaders are part of something Collins refers to as the “Dub Club,” which he says reaffirms that those who grind get rewarded. Twice a year, after spring practices and again before preseason practices in August, he sets up an awards dinner that consists of steak, lobster, shrimp, baked potatoes, a sundae bar and more. Players have realized that how they act can have benefits, which has reinforced a willingness to do it more. Collins publicly posts his “Dudes of the Week” on Twitter to acknowledge the hardest workers.
“He gives you such an awesome atmosphere, energy, that you can’t not want to work hard,” running back Chez Mellusi says. “It’s literally not an option. It literally won’t be possible to not work hard with him. The energy he brings is nothing like I’ve ever seen.”
Collins keeps a basketball hoop in the weight room, which has led to dunk contests. Players have competed in blackjack, Gatorade flip cup, charades and video games. One day this offseason, Collins devised a new competition on the fly, sticking strips of tape in the shape of a triangle to the weight room floor, placing 2 1/2-pound weight plates in the center and turning it into a shuffleboard game in which they had to push the weight across the floor with a wooden bat.
“That’s been one of the coolest things that I’ve witnessed is this desire to use strength and conditioning to become a competition with the highest level of accountability for everybody,” athletics director Chris McIntosh says. “I’m incredibly impressed with the amount of energy the guy has. Luke was committed to bringing Brady with him. You place a lot of trust in the person you hire to make all kinds of decisions. That was one of the first that he shared. It becomes clearer with time why.”
Collins has revamped how Wisconsin’s football players train. They used to work out in two big groups and now lift in several smaller groups so one of the strength coaches can watch, help out and hold them accountable to each other. He emphasizes a philosophy called “progressive overload” rather than Olympic-style lifting, which he says puts too much stress on the hands, wrists and elbows. Collins focuses on ground-based movements that help to condition a body to have more rotation, which creates better durability and flexibility, while training lower bodies based on need for a respective position.
Players train with high intensity and tempo to maximize their athleticism. Collins says no workout should last longer than 75 minutes, which translates to the game because of how quickly the ball can be snapped between plays. He doesn’t want anyone sitting around for two minutes between heavy set reps in the weight room. Fickell says he has been impressed with how quickly Collins’ methods have generated a connection and “true joy” among Badgers players despite how hard they are being pushed.
“When you have a guy that’s that passionate about what we do, what he’s trying to accomplish, I think it’s the easiest thing ever to follow a guy like that,” offensive lineman Michael Furtney says. “Whatever he does, I go at it 100 percent.
“Obviously, I’ve only known him for this half a year, but I’d follow that guy to hell and back.”
Squatfest has nearly reached its conclusion. Players have leaned on each other for support during a grueling session of squats, upper-body work and punching bag exercises in which they wear boxing gloves to pummel the taped-on logos of Wisconsin’s opponents this season. Collins even runs into the center and elbow drops one of the bags.
Before the workout ends, Collins has a message he wants to impart.
Players lay on the ground shoulder to shoulder and lock arms for what he calls “finishers.” Collins knows their bodies and minds want to shut down. But they must hold each other up to complete a core exercise, keeping their legs six inches off the ground before breaking into fluttering kicks. Collins is looking to see whether players will feel sorry for themselves and give up or lead through adversity. This is where championships are built.
“What’s our big thing about finish?” Collins says, calling on wide receiver Chimere Dike.
“One-and-four, coach,” Dike responds, repeating Wisconsin’s record last season in games decided during the fourth quarter.
“Never f—ing again!” Collins bellows. “Because of the s— that you guys do together. You’re going to finish right now together.”
Minutes later, it’s all over: the agony, the pain, the first Squatfest at Wisconsin. Collins, like his players, is drenched in sweat. He asks them to huddle tight for a final message before sending them off to a well-earned break in advance of preseason practice, another step taken on the path toward achieving their goals.
