KMarkle Performance: Optimize Your Fitness Goals and Life

Welcome to KMarkle Performance

Who am I? My name is Kevin Markle and as of writing this blog I am a current Division 1 Athletic Performance coach (aka Strength and Conditioning coach) with the University of Alabama's women's basketball team. I've spent the last 9 years working as an Athletic Performance Coach with a variety of different teams and hundreds of athletes. I started this blog to share some insights into exercise, fitness, and performance that I have discovered over my career. Just in case you don't understand what my job entails, I essentially put athletes through a variety of workouts to enhance their performance in their given sport. Lifting weights is a big part of that but as I get to work with my athletes daily, I can expand into impacting their lives Holistically as an athlete on the competition field and as a human being. Holistic Performance is where I focus my energy and how it affects the human organism in order to optimize results. I want my athletes to get stronger but I am not just chasing new max lifts on squat and bench. Exercise has been a huge part of my life since I was 14 and some of the lessons I have learned have branched far and wide more than working out and can be applied to create your own High Performing Life.

How Exercise Changed My Life

Before getting into Performance Coaching, I started my exercise journey at the age of 14 years old. A skinny kid in high school who just got cut from the high school soccer team and was trying to find ways to improve himself. Through some mentorship from a few upperclassmen, I started to go to the gym. This habit soon became an obsession as I found myself day and night researching how to build muscle and strength. I discovered an author by the name of Timothy Ferris. His books were all about optimizing and getting the most out of your time and energy; this mindset took over the rest of my high school career and eventually lead me to getting accepted into the Kinesiology program at Penn State.

In college I was very set on what I wanted to do with my career, impact lives with exercise. I wasn't sure how I would do this to start but I was positive it was my direction. One day my Junior year my advisor said I would need to complete an internship as a requirement to graduate. The bulletin board in their office had a piece of paper posted, Penn State Strength and Conditioning Internship. Getting to work with Division 1 athletes every day? I applied immediately and eventually landed and interview followed by being offered a spot the next semester. 1 week into the internship seeing how the coaches were able to impact the athletes lives I was instantly hooked and decided right there that this was the career path for me. As I continued with school and my internship for the next year and a half I was able to learn from some amazing coaches and people as I began to prepare for my career. Years later after internships, graduate assistantships, full-time assistants and eventually my role now at the University of Alabama my goals haven't changed, I still want to optimize the performance of my athletes and my self physically but also in life. As I dive and unfold into the lessons I've learned while working with my athletes, I hope you can find what works best for you and your personal performance journey.

Conclusion

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my first post, and I hope to see you back as I continue to share all my experiences along the way.

Continue to come back and see what new posts I have to share. Please, as you read other posts, leave comments or ask questions on topics you want me to discuss. I have a small digital marketplace where I sell workout programs for people looking to spark a change in their workouts as well. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you back here for some of my other posts.