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Following a tough road loss to Stanford, the University of Hawaiʻi Rainbow Warriors are continuing to build their strength and conditioning program inside their training arena, affectionately known as the “Iron Church.”
The intensity is high inside the training facility under director of football sports performance Bobby Thomas
Thomas, who is in his second year with the team, came to Mānoa after working at several Power Four programs and spending three seasons with the Atlanta Falcons
“We always say the word holistic. For us, we are very inclusive of everything,” Thomas said. “We take a little bit of Olympic lifting, we take some powerlifting, and we kind of just put it in this bubble of things. So we try to get as many different movements as possible
“How can we develop power? How can we develop strength? How can we get bigger? How can we get more size added? How can we become more mobile? It’s just this smorgasbord of stuff.”
Thomas said his training program balances multiple development areas, including power, strength, size, and mobility. He added that pushing the tempo is a core priority of his system
“When you come out fast and there’s a lot of energy, people feed off of that,” Thomas said. “But people can also feed off of slow, and we just don’t want that. We try to push the tempo in everything that we do.”
Rainbow Warriors defensive back Elijah Palmer credited Thomas’s focus on mobility for keeping the athletes flexible
“Coach Bobby does a great job of allowing us to stretch and hit the mobility side of things where some other strength and conditioning coaches are just about power, power, weights, weights, weights, but their guys are stiff,” Palmer said. “Coach BT does a great job of allowing us to open up, get in what we need as far as the mobility side of things, and really allow us to open up so we can become stronger.”
The team trains inside historic Klum Gym rather than a modern, air-conditioned facility. Players and staff said the vintage environment matches the team’s identity and helps them embrace the hard work
“Regardless of what that looked like, the facility, what coaches were here, we had an end goal in mind,” Rainbow Warriors linebacker Jamih Otis said. “The purpose was always gonna be there, no matter if the plates was metal or the plates was wooden. The work is still gonna always be there, and it just goes along with our team. A lot of our team, you know, we’re grateful for anything that we have.”
Thomas agreed that while luxury facilities are desirable, the team focuses on utilizing what is available to build toughness
“Would we all like to have the pretty weight rooms and all the special stuff? Yeah, absolutely,” Thomas said. “But we got what we got. Let’s make the most of it and use what we have, just embrace it. That’s kind of the identity of our team. We’re tough.”
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