About
26 Years Chasing
One Question.
What actually makes an athlete better? That question took me from a university weight room to a rehab clinic to co-founding IFAST, and eventually, to basketball.
26Years Coaching
6×Top 10 Gym In America
1000sHoopers Trained
500+Podcast Episodes
The Path
Every stop taught me something the last one couldn’t.
I didn’t plan this route. But looking back, each side quest led me to why I coach the way I do: Assess first, train hard, and keep it simple enough to actually use.
Ball State University
Assistant strength coach working with volleyball, soccer, football and the powerlifting team, and athletes from all 26 sports. Finished a Master’s in Sports Biomechanics under Dr. Robert Newton and Dr. William Kraemer.
Athletic Performance Center, Fort Wayne
Ran the facility, but the work was mostly chiropractic rehab. Well outside my comfort zone, and where I learned assessment, rehabilitation, and corrective exercise properly.
Custom Fitness, Indianapolis
Worked in a high-end in-home personal training company. Pure one-on-one coaching, mostly adults in their 40s and 50s. It taught me how to actually coach a person, not a program.
IFAST
Left Custom Fitness and took six months off. Lasted two before the itch came back.
How IFAST Started
Two coaches, one gym, and a very specific idea of how training should be done.
In 2008 I walked away from a business that was working. I took six months off from coaching entirely, and got restless after two.
That’s when Bill Hartman and I decided to stop working inside other people’s systems and build our own. Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training opened that year, with a simple premise: assess every athlete properly, train them like individuals, and never confuse complexity with quality.
A year later, Men’s Health named IFAST one of the Top 10 Gyms in America, the first of six times in all. The gym is still the laboratory. Every method that ends up on this site has already been tested on the floor with real athletes.
What It Comes Down To
“
If you feel like you need a Master’s degree to understand my content, then I’m doing something wrong.
Mike Robertson
Why IFAST Basketball?
Basketball took over.
So I built something just for it.
Today, nearly every athlete I work with is a hooper. And they don’t train like anyone else: the season never really ends, the joints take a pounding, and a growth spurt can rewrite the plan overnight.
The frustrating part was never the science. It was watching good coaches and caring parents get buried under it: journals, jargon, and social media highlight reels that would never actually work in real life.
All while the kid in front of them still needed a plan on Monday.
IFAST Basketball is where I put all of it in one place: the assessments, the programs, the progressions, translated into something you can use today, in your gym, with what you have got.
Who This Is For
Built for the people who get it done.
Coaches
Full-time S&C staff, and basketball coaches who got handed the weight room. Programs, progressions, and the reasoning behind every rep.
Parents
You don’t need to become a trainer. You need to know what’s safe, what’s effective, and what’s wasting your kid’s time.
Athletes
Faster, stronger, harder to break. Training that builds your game instead of burning you out before the season starts.
So, what actually makes an athlete better?
Start where it makes sense for you.
Athlete, parent or coach: pick your path and start building faster, stronger, more durable hoopers today.
