Brian Holloway: Preventing Injuries One Person At a Time
By James Line ’12
News Staff Reporter
Have you ever been hurt or injured? Have you ever wanted to improve your strength and conditioning? With Choate’s team of trainers, headed by Brian Holloway, you can confidently attend to these questions. Always on duty to assist injured players on the field whether in practice or games, Mr. Holloway and his staff come through when Choate athletes need them the most. Assessing injuries, taping up arms and legs, and organizing rehab in the training facility in the Winter X, these trainers are valuable people, critical to the health and success of Choate athletics. Mr. Holloway and his team also work with students in the Peak training program, helping students achieve their physical potential.
Hired in 1997 as a trainer, Mr. Holloway has been involved in sports since he was very young. He says, “Growing up, I played pretty much most sports, but football was my main sport. I also played some baseball when I was younger and a little basketball; I also raced motor cross.” He continued with motor cross later in life and still stays active and fit by competing in power lifting. Mr. Holloway explains, “I lift in the 220-pound weight class. My best bench is 500 pounds, my best squat is 655 pounds, and my best dead lift is 550 pounds.” In power lifting, competitors are tested in these three disciplines and the weights are added to equal a total score. After the three disciplines, whoever has the best total score wins in that weight division.
Even when he was young, Mr. Holloway knew he would be involved in sports medicine of some kind. He says, “By my junior or senior year in high school I was shadowing people in physical therapy as well as all the people in sports medicine positions, doctors and what not.” Mr. Holloway also says he chose to be a trainer, because he wanted to be involved in sports for the majority of his life and being an athlete on a professional sports team or even in a town league is not easy to do all your life.
More specifically, Mr. Holloway has two jobs as head trainer. The first, he explained, is to “insure everyone’s health for medical emergencies, things that happen during sports practices. We take care of those immediate medical emergencies, and then, after, do evaluations and follow up with rehabilitation.” These duties require on-duty trainers to respond to emergencies and other request for help. The trainers generally go to the venue where the sporting event is taking place and help the person in trouble as best they can. This also entails evaluating and determining treatment for injuries and deciding whether the athlete is healthy enough to play or needs to rest for a certain period of time. Additionally, trainers are responsible for making sure athletes take it easy, and work their way back to 100% health slowly and in a controlled process using specific rehabilitation methods.
The second part of the job, Mr. Holloway said, is that “I am also the strength and conditioning coach which involves the Peak Performers program, a program that is purely performance oriented and focuses on preventing use of performance enhancing drugs as well as making the athletes fast, agile, strong, and powerful.”
Mr. Holloway encourages those who may be injured to visit him and his fellow trainers to avoid long-term injury. He further said, “We’ll work through it. Sometimes people have pain, but may not necessarily be injured. You can always come. We have treatment for that which can help you walk better or alleviate other pains.” With facilities and trainers available at your service and with the support of the school, Choate provides an extremely valuable resource to its competitive and recreational athletes. So if you are injured, take advantage of the Choate resources and go see Mr. Holloway and his fellow trainers, Matthew “Matt” Brian Pendleton and Emily P. Osterhout. They will always be happy to see you, well, except maybe on busy days.
