VSP Spotlight: Stepinac’s Kenny O’Conner

This week’s VSP athlete spotlight shines on Stepinac senior Kenny O’Conner. The football & rugby product has made some unbelievable gains in the past couple of months during his time training with us here at VSP!

Coming off of a fantastic football season, Kenny actually decided to turn down college football scholarships to pursue playing rugby at the collegiate level & has recently committed to Fairfield University.

Being an offensive tackle/guard, Kenny’s main goal for his rugby prep was to lose some body mass while prioritizing muscle maintenance. The reason we wanted to do this was to allow him to become more explosive while running, jumping, & cutting. (Movements that are more prevalent as a rugby player compared to an OT) However, keeping his strength & force production at an elite level was a big consideration for us as well. 

So our plan was simple: Body mass down, muscle mass & force production maintained, power up, acceleration up, speed up, & COD up… 

A lot to accomplish, yes. But with a ton of hard work & consistency 100% possible, I guess we’ll see. 

Lets dive in!

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Body Mass

Coming off football season, Kenny came back to VSP weighing in at 235 LBS.

After having an educational conversation about nutrition about calorie consumption, macro nutrient goals, & how to best fuel his workouts, Kenny is now weighing in at 218LBS!!!

That’s 17 LBS of mass that we have cut down through targeted training & the right nutritional plan.

But as we said before, just as important as leaning out his frame was… maintaining strength & force production was incredibly important for us.

So let’s see if he did that… 

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Force Production 

Due to a wrist injury that he sustained during football season, Kenny was slightly limited to which force tests he could partake in over the past couple of months. This left our belt squat force test as our measure of force output that we were able to track during this period. 

So the question is… was Kenny able to maintain his force output while cutting down his lean body mass. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to maintain his previous force output capacity…

Because he IMPROVED it!!! 

His belt squat went from 605 LBS to 653 LBS. (+7.94% increase)

Now that the first part of the plan was completed, let’s see if Kenny was able to improve his power, acceleration, top speed, & COD…

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Power 

3 of the main test we use to measure power output is:

• Vertical Jump
• Broad Jump
• Triple Jump

Kenny’s improvements:

• Vertical Jump – 18.9 inches  to 21.1 inches (+11.64% increase)
• Broad Jump – 65 inches to 84 inches (+29.23% increase)
• Triple Jump – 198 inches to 247 inches (+24.74% increase)

Through targeted plyometric & power training we were able to see improvements in all of these power metrics. 

But now we need to see the real test… mass down, force production up, power production up, but what about acceleration, speed, & COD?

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Acceleration, Speed, & COD

We are just going to let these numbers speak for themselves…

10 YD Dash:

• 1.79 seconds to 1.68 seconds (+6.14% improvement)

30 YD Shuttle

• 7.81 seconds to 5.81 seconds (+25.63% improvement)

40 YD Dash

• 5.95 seconds to 5.75 seconds (+3.36% improvement)

5-10-5 Shuttle

• 6.4 seconds to 5.47 seconds (Right) 6.44 seconds to 5.22 seconds (Left) (+13.59% improvement) & (+19.06% improvement)

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Overall Reflection

When athletes come to us during an off-season it’s normally to work on one or two things. Strength or power. Acceleration or top speed. Kenny’s off-season blows that out of the water.

Through relentless consistency & hard work Kenny crushed every one of his goals. Body mass down, force production up, power production up, acceleration up, top speed up, & all while enjoying his training & coaches.

Everyone on the rugby field better watch out… because Kenny O’Conner is COMING!!!

We are super excited to see how Kenny does out there this year & eventually at Fairfield. 

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Written By:

Jake Lebovitch – Assistant Director of Performance & Content Manager