Strength training program builds team
One vision that Dr. Jerry Falwell Sr. had for Liberty University was to establish a dominant Division I football team, and that’s where Bill Gillespie enters the scene.
Gillespie is the strength and conditioning coach for the Liberty football team.
He started with the Liberty athletics department back in 1981 as an assistant strength and conditioning coach. In 1991, Gillespie left Liberty to be an assistant strength and conditioning coach at the University of Washington. The Huskies went to the Rose Bowl the next three seasons and made nine bowl appearances the next 11 years. Gillespie was named “Pac-10 strength and conditioning coach” in 1991 and was promoted to the director of strength and conditioning at Washington in 1999. Four years later, he went to the NFL and was part of the Seattle Seahawks strength and conditioning team for the 2003-04 season.
In the winter of 2005, Gillespie returned to Liberty and really connected to Dr. Falwell’s dream of creating an elite football team.
“Coming here to Liberty, I really believed in the mission Dr. Falwell had of reaching the world for Christ through the game of football. So when I had an opportunity to come back, he explained to me how his vision of reaching the world for Christ and developing a championship program started with the weight room.”
Upon his return to Liberty, Gillespie introduced a program here that he was confident the players would latch on to. “When I was at the University of Washington, we started developing a program where you develop strength through speed of movement. It was a more accurate strength that we found was more applicable to the game of football,” Gillespie said. “When I went to the NFL, the players ate it up. They loved it, they thought it was the greatest thing in the world. And it really confirmed to me that it was helpful.”
Coach Gillespie admitted that it was difficult to leave the NFL, especially since Seattle went to the Super Bowl the season after his departure, but he loves being here at Liberty and praised Rocco for the success of the football team.
“Coach Rocco gives me so much support in allowing me to run the program the way I need to run it,” Gillespie said. “Honestly, I have worked for some of the greatest coaches in America and Coach Rocco has been my favorite head coach to work with. He understands my goal is not to develop weight lifters but to develop a championship football team.”
Winning a championship and being competitive is what Coach Gillespie is all about. To accomplish those achievements, he explained it all starts before anyone even steps foot on the field. “Everybody wants to win on game day but you don’t win on game day, you win in the offseason.”