For Michigan basketball’s new head strength and conditioning coach Matt Aldred, learning and education aren’t simply for his student-athletes. And the process isn’t limited to the classroom, either.
Aldred was never necessarily a purebred in the basketball community. Hailing from Eastbourne, England, he never played basketball outside of a short-lived stint at 12 years old. Admitting that it “really doesn’t count at this level,” Aldred’s beginnings may seem humble, but his plentiful drive and growth mindset have made him a mainstay in successful basketball weight rooms for nearly a decade.
“I’ve grown to love the game,” Aldred, a former soccer player, said Tuesday on the Defend the Block Podcast. “I’ve been around it a lot these last seven years. So I think you have to be curious by nature, you have to be inquisitive if you want to strive to be the best, if you want to impact a team, if you want to work with the best athletes, if you want to do big things in your career, you have to learn as much as you can about it.”
It was this same inquisitiveness that led Aldred’s winding journey to its latest stop in Ann Arbor.
After working in two graduate roles at the University of West Florida and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Aldred’s first full-time role came with the University of Florida as an assistant strength and conditioning coach in 2017. It was there with the Gators that he met then-assistant coach Dusty May.
“It was my first year in college basketball,” Aldred said. “Going back to that curious, inquisitive nature, I was really just understanding the sport at that point. Point guards, bigs, wings, like I really had no idea.”
Dusty May Promo!
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