The Team
Built by People Who’ve Been There
30+ years in the weight room. A career building brands that matter. One site that brings it all together.
Why We Built This
The Best Strength Coaches Deserve Better Resources
The coaches doing the most important work — the ones in underfunded high school weight rooms, the ones managing 12 sports with one assistant — were making major decisions about software, equipment, and facility design with almost no reliable information to go on.
Vendor marketing. Outdated forum posts. Word of mouth from coaches who hadn’t bought new equipment in eight years. That was the landscape. Meanwhile, D1 programs had consultants, institutional knowledge, and decades of vendor relationships to draw on.
StrengthAndConditioning.com is the resource we wish had existed. Honest, experience-backed guidance on the decisions that actually shape programs — software, equipment, facility design, and professional development. Built for coaches at every level and every budget.
Meet the Team
Built by Coaches, for Coaches.
CEO & Founder
Trace Pate
S&C Coach · High School through Pro · FST Level 4 Practitioner
Trace has spent more than three decades in weight rooms at every level of competition — from rural high schools with five racks and a dream to collegiate programs competing at the national level to professional athletes preparing for the highest stage in their sport.
He’s built programs from scratch, rebuilt programs that had lost their way, and mentored dozens of coaches who now run their own successful programs. He knows what a $12,000 budget looks like and what a $500,000 budget looks like — and he knows that the decisions made with neither are often more important than the equipment itself.
When coaches reach out with questions, Trace is the one answering. Not a content team. Not an algorithm. A coach who has sat in the same chair you’re sitting in.
He’s also a certified Level 4 FST™ practitioner — the highest level in the system — which shapes the recovery content on this site.
“The best investment any program can make isn’t a rack or a platform. It’s the knowledge to know what to buy, when to buy it, and why.”
CMO & COO
Robin Pate
Marketing Executive · CMO & COO
Robin has built brands for global media companies and led marketing through a biotech startup. She sits on boards, hosts strangers through Airbnb, volunteers for children’s causes, and wears more hats than most people know what to do with. She’s good at it.
At StrengthAndConditioning.com, she handles everything that happens outside the weight room: strategy, partnerships, operations, and making sure the site actually works for the people it’s built for. Her view is that the best resource in any market is the one people recommend to each other without being asked. Everything here is built toward that.
“Coaches have great instincts. Our job is to give them the information that makes those instincts even more powerful.”
Our Commitment
What We Promise Every Coach Who Visits This Site
No Vendor Bias
No vendor has ever paid to influence a review or recommendation on this site. Our opinions are our own — shaped by decades of actual use, not by who sends us a check.
Real Experience
Every recommendation on this site comes from experience — in actual weight rooms, with actual athletes, at actual budget levels. We don’t recommend things we haven’t tested or wouldn’t buy ourselves.
Always Accessible
The coach at a 400-student rural high school deserves the same quality of guidance as the D1 program down the road. Budget should determine what you buy — not the quality of information you have access to.
Work With Us
We’re Here When You Need Us
Whether you’re a coach working through a software decision, an athletic director planning a facility build, or a vendor looking to reach this community — we’re easy to find and quick to respond.
For Coaches & Programs
Software questions, facility planning, equipment specs, vendor introductions. Free 30-minute consultations available for programs in active planning phases.
Get in Touch →For Vendors & Partners
Directory listings, Buyer’s Guide features, sponsored content, and partnership opportunities for vendors serving the S&C market.
Partner With Us →