The end of the workout is a chaotic symphony of sweat.
Barbells ring out as they clang to the floor, joined by a chorus of motivational screams and exasperated breaths. The radio is barely audible over the cacophony drowning out the room. But everything goes silent for a moment when the team hears the familiar sound of a bell.
Players drop their weights, abandon their sets and immediately run over to crowd around graduate running back Star Thomas. The New Mexico State transfer — who has only been at Duke for a few months — is going for a personal best on the power clean.
This is not the first time a player has rung the bell this practice, and like his teammates before him, Thomas cleans the weight with ease.
Too easy for director of football performance David Feeley.
He calls out for Thomas to increase the weight, and the team responds with a roar. Feeley leads Thomas into the hallway, and the rest of the players form a tunnel for him to run through. He enters, sets his feet and completes the lift. The room explodes.
That level of intensity — even just 10 days before the first game of the season — is the standard for a Feeley workout. A year ago at this time, then-redshirt sophomore Sahmir Hagans broke a program lifting record just days before the team took down then-No. 9 Clemson.
Feeley joined the Blue Devils when former head coach Mike Elko arrived in 2022, and he has been credited by players and coaches alike with creating and sustaining the program’s culture.
The weight-room guru’s relationship with head coach Manny Diaz goes back even further, though. The two first met when Diaz briefly held the title of Temple head coach, and Feeley’s name was the first one brought up by Diaz at his introductory press conference in Durham.
Adapting to Feeley’s program is not for the weak — he’s happy to say that. “The road to easy street,” an homage to the famous quote by coaching legend John Madden, is printed on every player’s workout T-shirt (an idea from graduate wideout Jordan Moore). But when players see the hard work pay off, like last year’s impressive draft class, they are grateful for Feeley’s anything-but-gentle coaching tactics.
There’s a reason Diaz wanted to make sure Feeley would stay when the new head coach took the job at Duke. It’s the same reason players constantly mention him when talking about their personal growth, and it’s a major part of the program’s transformation over the last two years. Feeley is the glue, the engine, the heart and the soul of Duke football.
Building relationships
When Diaz accepted the head coaching job at Temple in December 2018, he had decisions to make about his coaching staff. One of those decisions was in the weight room with Feeley, the incumbent strength and conditioning coach. Asking around the program, Diaz heard glowing reports from players and coaches alike.
Diaz was so convinced of Feeley’s talent that when he was offered the Miami head coaching job a few weeks later, he asked Feeley to come with him.
“I was absolutely speechless. I was so floored,” Feeley told The Chronicle. “I was like, wow, I have only met this man, and I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about him for a couple of weeks. He’s pulling me up to the Power 5 level. I owe that man everything, I really do.”
A couple years later, Diaz put in a good word about Feeley to Elko, and he ended up in Durham. Two years after that, it was time for Feeley to return the favor.
“David called me and asked me if I’d be interested in the job when it opened,” Diaz recalled at ACC Kickoff. “And I said, ‘Well, that depends.’ He says, ‘depends on what.’ I said, ‘would you stay?’”
“[Feeley] did not stay because of Manny Diaz, he stayed because of our locker room, he stayed because of our players,” Diaz continued. “And what could entice me to want to be the head football coach at Duke more than that endorsement from Feeley, knowing the type of guys that we get to coach every day?”
The story that connects Diaz and Feeley is remarkable, and emblematic of how the trainer fosters relationships. During a workout, Feeley darts around the weight room, stopping to critique players’ form, give them some motivation or help spot a rep. Every interaction is personal; he knows exactly what button to push, whether it be an inside joke, encouraging words or a playful insult.
It’s easy to see the joy on his face while he works and how quickly it spreads around the room. So even when his tone shifts and he goes from friend to coach to drill sergeant, players hang on his every word. During fall camp, Diaz coined the term “church of Feeley,” to describe the almost religious way players have faith in the strength coach’s training methods.
“The church of Feeley changed my life, man. I came in here, I was a little scrawny, little pudgy dude, and not to say that I’m all hard-bodied now, but it’s changed my life,” redshirt sophomore defensive lineman Wesley Williams said. “And also, I think the real church of Feeley is callusing the mind, going through those developmental lifts, and then all offseason, going through what he calls Spartan Fridays, and just doing a whole bunch of crazy stuff that seems pointless. It’s so that when you’re on that third-down rush to win a game, you know that you got this, you’ve been through harder.”
“I’ve been very impressed,” transfer defensive lineman Kendy Charles said. “I’ll be very transparent. When I first got here, I really struggled with the intensity, the detail aspect of [the workouts] and their urgency. There’s no wasted time [and] no wasted movements. Feeley is an incredible strength coach, probably the best in the country. I’m in the best shape of my life right now [and] it’s all credit to him and his program.”
Building muscle
The day-to-day grind that comes with Feeley’s offseason program isn’t pretty, and at times it can be hard to find motivation without on-the-field opportunities. Feeley leans into that; for him, those struggles make the reward that much sweeter.
“You have to go through it. It’s got to be the muck. It’s got to be hard, dark times of working really hard before you can smile,” Feeley said. “[The players] don’t want to smile until they’re there on a podium in December.”
In a workout, that can mean failing a rep, pushing the body past its limits and, most importantly, training the mind to be stronger than any obstacle it faces. Feeley mentioned his admiration for Diaz’s focus on mental health, and also places it at the forefront of his own work.
Players take lead at various points of a Feeley workout, calling out the cadence for an exercise, spotting their teammates and making sure nobody is slacking in between sets. Feeley calls these “leadership opportunities,” and said that by the time players take the field, they have already had hundreds of chances to lead their teammates.
“Confidence comes through demonstrated ability. We had our draft picks out of here last year, and I really believe that those guys took a huge mental step in confidence and conviction that they can be really good football players, and we need to continue that here,” Feeley said. “Every time that bell goes off, it puts the player on the spot to perform under pressure. So not only is that weight not going to change or be convinced, but now all their teammates are around, and you’ve got to perform for them.”
Using the example of last year’s trio of draft picks — Graham Barton, DeWayne Carter and Jacob Monk — Feeley’s impact is clear. Not only did each of those players grow stronger, but their mental strength and leadership rivaled their physical prowess.
“All through the pre-draft process and the training process, almost every single thing I did was replicable to what we do right here,” Carter said at his Pro Day last spring. “That’s what we do. We train, we train, we run, we lift heavy. The same fundamentals, everything we built are things that I literally did day in and day out.”
Building culture
Once players pledge to “the church of Feeley” and emerge stronger physically and mentally, a standard begins to form. It’s something every program strives for, an expectation independent of outside noise and completely focused on what happens inside the walls of the facility.
Not only did Feeley create that standard at Duke, he maintained it after a sudden coaching change. Yes, his continuity was important in retaining as much of the roster as possible, but it was also crucial in retaining what the program stands for.
“The whole key has been keeping Feeley. If you ask all of our players, they believe that he’s the key to success over the last couple years,” Diaz said. “I saw it firsthand at Miami. So you hear coaches talk all the time [about] establishing a culture year one, it was already established. Because your culture is what you do for each other and what you do in the offseason. It’s what you do in the weight room, or in the summertime, what you do on the track. I think that put our players at ease.”
Feeley asserts that the team plays as much of a role in building culture as he does. After all, they are the ones in the locker room, on the field and lifting the weights. As much respect as the team has for him, he reciprocates it completely.
“When you treat everybody equally accountable, there’s an enormous amount of trust that goes on in the room,” he said. “We start [building that trust] day one in January, as soon as we’re back. The hardest part was the first two weeks that I was brought on to this job in 2022. They just didn’t know what it was. And then after they figured out what, it took care of itself, because they saw the value in it.”
Therein lies the final piece of the puzzle that explains the enormity of Feeley’s impact. He makes players work harder than they ever believed they could, and he’s far from sunshine and rainbows. It takes someone wired a little differently to run the program he does, and it takes an especially strong will to come out the other end.
But all of Feeley’s intensity comes from a place of respect and love. When asked what he would be if not a coach, Feeley had a simple answer: lost. And every time he spoke of how he coached or his approach to the weight room, he emphasized what the players deserve — the lofty standard he holds for his own coaching.
“I’ve got the best job in college football because of these players,” he said.
Just before the evening workout starts, Feeley is on a ladder rewriting the previous session’s slew of broken personal records on a whiteboard that hangs in the center of the weight room. He sees a few players talk with the equipment team about designing special tank tops for players who break multiple personal bests in one season. Then he reviews the workout plan he already knows by heart.
At exactly 5:05, he walks out before a sea of players jostling and joking around. Feeley blows his whistle once, and immediately has the team’s complete attention. He gives a brief introduction and blows his whistle again.
The music of the workout starts. Feeley is the conductor.
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Dom Fenoglio is a Trinity junior and a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.