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Stephanie Mock Grubbs doesn‘t have the most publicly visible job at the Astros.
As one of the team’s strength and conditioning coaches, she spends most of her time in the weight room with players, or in meetings coordinating performance plans with other members of the sports performance team. But her role is invaluable—and as the first female coach on Houston’s MLB team, she’s also a trailblazer.
Since she ended her own athletic career as a volleyball player at West Virginia, she’s worked as a coach in more than a dozen sports—men’s and women’s—and has held positions at multiple Division I athletic departments including Pitt, Mississippi State, and Clemson. She also did a brief stint with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Grubbs spoke with Front Office Sports about her career journey, her day-to-day grind, and setting the stage for a future with more female coaches. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You played college volleyball, and then worked across college, NFL, now Major League Baseball. When did you decide that you wanted to pursue strength and conditioning coaching as a career?
When I was a college athlete at West Virginia University, I realized I was a very undersized athlete, and I knew I wanted to get a starting spot, even though maybe I’m a three-star. And I was like, “How can I develop myself to be a five-star and get that starting spot? How can I maximize my physical potential from a fitness standpoint and a strength standpoint? How can I ideally bulletproof my body to make sure that I can be on the court, playing at all times? How can I keep myself healthy, to be on the court and not have my shoulder injury or an ACL or this or that?”
In high school, I didn’t have an immaculate weight room. I didn’t have a dietitian, I didn’t have a mental-performance coach, so I was just really opened up to so many different resources when I got to the college level, which I think is so great for all the young student-athletes coming up. So, just being exposed to all the different performance team members, the one that I gravitated to the most was the weight room and my college training coach. It came from maximizing those resources that, luckily, I had at the college level and that Power 4 level—really Power 5 back then.
What was the biggest moment that stands out to you across your packed résumé?
I‘ve worked with over 20 different sports at this point, male and female. When I got to Clemson—that’s where I had been the longest throughout my career—it was kind of like a sleeping giant. That’s when football started to take off, and we could really see all the resources coming together with Dabo Swinney winning a national championship and things like that. I also had a mentor at that time, and he just told me: “Hey, Steph, work with every possible sport that you can, because you’re gonna learn so much as a young professional.”
If you’re working with a field sport, like a soccer player, you’re gonna learn more about energy system development and conditioning. If you‘re gonna work with golf, tennis, baseball, or softball, you’re going to learn more about rotational strength or power with that sport. There’s speed development with a short sprinter for track and field, or working with the running backs with football. He just told me to build out your arsenal and your playbook—don’t be a one-trick pony.
In addition to working for the Astros, you make social media content and have a personal training business. What’s your “day in the life”?
I get up, and I try to drink one bottle of water first before I go straight to the black coffee. Usually, I listen to some type of podcast while I’m getting ready to try to just take in some information early. The morning is probably the only time that I personally get for myself. And then I go train immediately, because if I don’t train right off the bat in the morning, then it‘s probably not gonna happen—the rest of the day, I’m pouring into everybody else, as I should as a coach. After that, I start with meetings right away of just planning out the day, meeting with the performance team: the dietitians, the athletic trainers, the PTs, etc.
And then we go into training the guys that like to lift before practice, then we have practice, and then afterwards, more guys come lift. In baseball, we have games like every day, everyone’s on their own routine. That’s why I think baseball is just so exciting, because it’s unlike anything else. It’s a new challenge that I’m super excited about. And my “why” is to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Afterwards, nutrition is really important for the guys, so making sure that’s all handled. Maybe guys have some arm care routines after the game. And then come home, probably talk to my husband at some point. His life is crazy, too. And then I run it back the following day.
It seems like the number of women in the field is growing, at least anecdotally. Have you experienced or seen a change that might have allowed for strength coaches on men’s teams?
I’m the first-ever major league coach for the Houston Astros. So, we’re still reaching new heights, which is awesome. Just getting that exposure is crucial, and even thinking about in our clubhouse, all the male coaches—there are so many girl dads just floating around. It’s cool when the daughters come into the clubhouse and they see me. It’s like, “O.K., this is gonna be more normalized over time.”
But I think there are some great groups out there that have actively been trying to help recruit and make things normalized. We’re just all coaches, and we want to make the team better.
I was replacing men in previous roles, but I had a really good male mentor tell me: “Steph, just make it about the job, not about the gender. Just be like, ‘Hey, I know I could do this job really, really well. Better than everybody else.’” And I think that’s been super helpful for me to kind of put it in a framework in my mind.
But you can‘t dodge looking around the locker room, and you‘re like, “Oh. I‘m the only chick in here.”
Do you have an ultimate career goal or dream job?
Clearly I’m super excited to be in my current role, just being at the major league level. But my end goal—I’d love to be a high performance director. So, over strength and conditioning, nutrition, sports medicine—just heading up the whole entire performance team to try to create common goals.
But next, I’d love to be just a head strength coach.
What advice do you have for anyone who hopes to follow in your footsteps?
You can never become complacent. You have to always be constantly learning, growing, evolving. We shouldn’t be doing the exact same thing we were doing 20 years ago. Working in sports is not easy, so it’s not for everyone. Just make sure you’re staying humble; you’re treating everybody the same.
