Trenton Smart’s extensive career as a strength coach spans from the collegiate to high school level. As the Director of Sports Performance at Mason High School, the largest high school in Ohio, Smart leads a strength program that impacts athletes across 18 athletic teams. Although he was introduced to strength training during his teenage years, his passion for the weight room would not be realized until after college.

“My high school was very small,” Smart says. “We didn’t really have a high-performance weight room. It was more like one of those circuit weight rooms with all the machines. So I didn’t get into training until I was about sixteen, at a facility in my hometown that was run by an Army Ranger. He really got me into it.”

While playing Football at Ohio University, he would train under Dak Notestine, now popularized as the personal trainer for NFL Quarterback Joe Burrow. After college, Smart spent a brief stint working in the pharmaceutical industry. After a year away from the weight room, he realized something was missing, and began pursuing a career in strength and conditioning. He interned at the University of Cincinnati, worked his way through the ranks at McNeese State, earned his master’s degree in human performance while he was there, and went on to Valparaiso University before landing at Mason High School.

“I had a great college career at Ohio University, three year starter and all that type of stuff,” Smart says. “But the weight room was probably where I excelled the most and when I got away from it for a year after college, I just knew it was where I needed to be. So I took the internship at University of Cincinnati. And now we’re here.”

Simple, Smart, Effective

KISS—”Keep It Simple, Stupid”—is the guiding principle that Coach Smart follows. At Mason high School, he focuses on fundamental movements, progressive overload, and sport-specific injury mitigation. The majority of his training is uniform across all sports, but he adjusts based on in-season or out-of-season athletes and emphasizes specific injury risks for each sport.

“Freshmen are on the racks, but they’re not necessarily using a barbell for the first four weeks in here,” Smart says. “They’re just building good movement patterns through simple movements like kettlebell squats and that type of stuff.”

Prehab, Recovery, and Sports Medicine

Mason High School stands out for its integrated sports medicine approach. With three full-time athletic trainers and an on-campus team doctor, injury mitigation and recovery are at the core of the program. Smart incorporates “prehab” exercises based on recommendations from the athletic training staff and common injuries for each sport. This strategy not only reduces the risk of injuries, but also helps athletes recover from injuries and makes injuries less severe.

  • All Sports do glute work, lower back, as well as single leg deceleration work for ACL injuries.
  • Baseball players prioritize lower traps and serratus work for shoulder injuries.
  • Change-in-direction sports incorporate groin work and Copenhagen planks.

“I look at sports performance as an umbrella,” Smart says. “You have athletic trainers on the back end. You have strength and conditioning coaches on the front end. They both have to work together. Neither one is more important than the other. But if you’re doing a lot on the front end, what I call prehab, the less you’re going to have to need or rely on rehab, not if, but when an athlete deals with an injury.”

Long-Term Development

At Mason, strength training begins as early as 8th grade, with a progressive ramp-up before high school competition. Smart facilitates safe, efficient adaptation, slowly progressing athletes through movements before moving onto more technical, Olympic lifts and heavy strength work. By the time they reach varsity, they’re well-versed in advanced movements and prepared for college-level training.

“When I was a director at Valparaiso, we’d have freshmen recruits coming in and they’d either have really good form or minimal experience,” Smart says. “Or they had bad movement patterns, so we had to unwind them a little bit, which actually takes a lot longer than trying to just teach from square one.”

Strength Training Meets Mental Resilience

While physical training is at the core of Smart’s program, he also has a unique method for training the mental aspect of performance. He conducts weekly meditation sessions where athletes do breathing exercises and take time to clear their minds. For Smart, the power of meditation and visualization in achieving one’s goals is personal as well as practical. But he also sees it in simpler terms.

“I think the biggest thing for me is simply giving them a time and a space in their day, at least once a week, where it’s just quiet in a world that’s not,” Smart says. “Whether it’s ten or twenty minutes a week, I’m able to get them away from their phone, get them to close their eyes, and I tell them, ‘Just don’t think about anything, focus on your breathing, count your breath in and out, relax, and empty the space in your head.’ It’s very rare that you get to experience that in today’s world.”

Smart’s Lessons in Leadership & Coaching Impact

Under Trenton Smart’s leadership, Mason High School’s strength and conditioning program empowers athletes through fundamental training principles, proactive injury regimens, and mental development. As Mason continues to push the boundaries of high school athletic performance, Smart’s influence ensures that every person who walks through his weight room leaves stronger—physically and mentally. His parting advice for other strength coaches: patience, consistency, discipline, and to lead by example.

“When I was at University of Cincinnati, there were eight of us that started that semester, only Logan Neff and I made it through. His big thing was ‘sense of urgency.’ Everything you do, have a sense of urgency about it. Because there is no time that can be wasted in this profession and the amount of sacrifice that you have to put in to see results is more than what anyone could ever imagine. That held so true in the fact that I sacrificed so much personally, moving across the country just to find a little bit of a success in this field. Then that success starts snowballing. And it was all because of having a very high sense of urgency about it.”