Exerfly is proud to be working with Andre Mattson, Head of Performance for the Santa Cruz Warriors and previous strength and conditioning coach of the New York Knicks and the Charlotte Hornets. Andre shares with us his sacrifices, lessons, and experiences from his journey working with some of America’s most elite athletes.

Growing up, Andre’s dream was to play in the NBA. However, as the years progressed, Andre realized this was no longer achievable. Nonetheless, he was dedicated to being involved in the sport in any capacity and soon began researching and exploring other avenues and coaching roles. For Andre, physiotherapy and rehabilitation work was limiting - he had always been interested in performance and found pushing his athletes to new limits extremely rewarding. “Resistance training translates to overcoming adversity every single time you lift.” He knew he wanted to be an NBA strength coach, and after years of networking and refining his skills, he made it.

Despite attaining his childhood dream, the road to get there wasn’t easy. Andre faced homelessness, rejection, and sacrifice. But he says, the power is in the mindset. The power is believing in yourself irrespective of other people's opinions. “It’s not what I don’t bring, it’s what you don’t see.”

Now, after years of hard work and dedication, Andre is the Head of Performance for the Santa Cruz Warriors. As well as this, Andre has many innovative and exciting projects in the works, including releasing a new invention and publishing his first book.

Andre’s journey with Exerfly started from his experiences with elite athletes and battling personal injury. According to Andre, his experience with injury made him “hungrier to learn, to get better, and to understand my body.” His learning led him to the importance of eccentric training for performance and safety - and the rest is history.

“Eccentric overload promotes muscle turnover and allows you to get stronger at a faster rate. I can create a high-velocity concentric movement and then get loaded through the eccentric phase – you can’t find that with anything other than a flywheel.”

Andre has now been training with the Exerfly consistently. Despite being at the tail end of recovering from an injury, he has been able to train safely with the Exerfly and has found on his return to basketball that he is “dunking with ease” and feels more explosive. Andre has also noticed his athletes are jumping higher and performing better athletically, after only a short period of training with the Exerfly. A friend of Andre's who is involved in bodybuilding commented, “I’ve never felt as activated as I do on this machine. Every muscle fibre is turned on.”

Andre loves the ability to train his athletes in parks and convenient outdoor locations. “With Exerfly, my athletes can have higher quality training anywhere they want.”

We are excited to be working with Andre and supporting his coaching journey with Exerfly. Andre is passionate about performance and what influences it – from mindset, sleep, and nutrition. In the coming weeks, Andre will be sharing his advice, discoveries, and his personal and professional coaching journey with Exerfly.