Episode #103: Joe Kenn

Joe Kenn is the Vice President of Performance Education at Dynamic Fitness and Strength, where he leads the development and delivery of cutting-edge fitness and strength training programs and resources for athletes, coaches, and trainers. Coach Kenn has over 30 years of experience as a performance specialist and strength and conditioning coach. He has worked with athletes at all levels, from high school to professional, across various sports and disciplines. Coach Kenn has been a head coach at four major universities and an NFL team, a national, regional, and state level speaker, and the creator of the Tier System Strength Training and the Block Zero Concept.

He began his career as an assistant athletic fitness director at Wake Forrest in 1991 before starting becoming a graduate assistant at Boise State University. He was later promoted to full-time assistant coach following his graduate assistantship in and a year later became the head strength coach where he held that title from 1994-1999. Kenn spent two seasons as the as the director at the University of Utah before landing at Arizona State University as the head sports performance coach from 2001-2007. From there he spent two years leading the University of Louisville football program’s training before jumping to the NFL as the head strength and conditioning coach for the Carolina Panthers. He spent 2011-2020 with the Panthers before arriving at his current position working with Dynamic Fitness and Strength.

In addition to working with high-level collegiate programs and professionals in the NFL, Coach Kenn has been the strength coach for Brian Shaw for two years on his quest for his 5th World’s Strongest Man title. Coach Kenn is a Master Strength and Conditioning Coach and boasts such awards as the, 2015 NFL Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year (Professional Football Strength & Conditioning Coaches Association, PFSCCA), 2013 National Strength & Conditioning Coaches Association (NCSA) Professional Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year, 2000 NSCA Mountain West Conference Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year and 1998 NSCA Big West Conference Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year.

He is the author of multiple books including, “The Coach’s Strength Training Playbook” and “Push, Jump, Punch: A Developmental Process for Teaching the Athlete to Power Clean” He is the owner of Big House Power, which is a subscriber-based website designed for educational and professional development for all levels of strength coaches.

Coach Kenn has been training long before he began coaching and continues to develop himself in the weight room as a strength athlete. A former two-year letterman for the Demon Deacons football team at Wake Forest University, he has also competed multiple times in powerlifting both in the raw and single-ply divisions.