Courtesy of Jah Bennett

Jah Bennett works to help the girls’ basketball team stay in top shape before the season.

A 2-minute plank is the perfect finish for the girls’ varsity basketball team’s Tuesday and Thursday conditioning sessions with fitness trainer Jah Bennett. He strolls among the athletes, who painstakingly hold their plank and grit their teeth as he cheerfully recaps his daughter’s funny dance performance.

Bennett has worked with the team with both preseason and season training for a little over a year now, with each session lasting an hour long. His workouts are usually centered around strength, agility and cardio. In his fitness regimens, even the least suspecting muscles, such as hip flexors, are strengthened. 

Bennett is no ordinary trainer — he has trained numerous Olympic athletes, including track athlete Jangy Addy, sprinter Kou Luogon and former professional basketball player Alex Okafor. In his own athletic career, he became the second best high jumper in UC Davis history with best heights reaching 2.20 meters, or 7 feet 2 inches.

Bennett’s path to coaching began with his own story of dramatic athletic growth. In high school, he participated in high jump, and despite not receiving any scholarship offers, he received the opportunity to be a walk-on with the Davis track and field team.

At first, it didn’t work out. After trying out and being cut for the third time from the team, Bennett’s entire mindset changed. He decided to relearn the basics of running and jumping. He even began working out with the Harvard track team in the offseason to solidify the fundamentals.

“The entire summer, I worked on it, and I literally stopped cutting corners and actually did everything the right way,” Bennett said.

Having made noticeable improvements, he made the UC Davis team on scholarship and had his achievements highlighted in the school’s newspaper The California Aggie.

“If I, who had no background and was not D1, can get to this point, anybody can do it,” Bennett said.

These days, he runs Bennett Fit and trains around 40-100 athletes at a time, depending on the season. To keep athletes motivated throughout an often physically and emotionally demanding workout, Bennett tries to understand what their motivations are and use it to push them through hard exercises.

Junior forward Payton Steffen has seen the benefits of such taxing workouts after routinely attending Bennett’s strength and conditioning sessions.  

“In the moment, the workouts are really hard, but then it makes the game feel easier,” Steffen said. 

Sophomore athlete Kaili Ljepava said, “He doesn’t go easy on us and instead he always pushes us.” 

Although preseason conditioning is a time commitment, players believe training with Bennett made them stronger and prepared them well for the season. According to players, the struggle of Bennett’s workouts brought the team closer together because they struggled as a unit. 

Bennett’s conditioning sessions strive to drive athletes past limits initially deemed impossible. During lifting sessions, both Steffen and Ljepava remember asking for lighter weights, but they were always receiving an encouraging “No, I think you can do this” from Bennett.

Workouts quickly got tougher and athletes often found it difficult to stay motivated. But with Bennett’s motivation that they could, in fact, push through the workouts, many athletes saw results they never thought they could achieve.

“From training with Jah, I definitely feel stronger and faster on the court, and I have more confidence in being able to take care of the ball better,” Steffen said.

Bennett’s training style stems from his own experience in setting personal goals and succeeding.

“Break [your goals] into sub-goals. If you really want something bad enough and you really have a plan, I think you can achieve anything you want to,” Bennett said.