For a young man, ETSU graduate student and physical trainer Jon Keller has garnered experiences to fill a lifetime.
Keller spent most of his childhood and youth as a baseball pitcher. He continued until junior college when he was forced to quit because of an elbow condition. Keller underwent “Tommy John surgery,” a procedure in which the elbow’s tendon is replaced by a tendon elsewhere in the body. He still has the scar. This later prompted Keller to switch his major at Eastern Washington University to exercise science.
Soon after graduation, Keller received a position as student assistant strength and conditioning coach at the college.
His choice for graduate work was ETSU.
“I came here based on Dr. [Meg] Stone. We worked together at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs,” said Keller, referring to the two-time British Olympian and 1982 Commonwealth Games gold medalist with whom he developed strengthening and conditioning exercises for Olympic hopefuls. Stone told Keller about the Sports Enhancement Consortium’s openings at ETSU and suggested he apply for admission.
As a graduate student, Keller teaches three entry-level classes, two strength and conditioning classes as well as Fitness for Life, a general physical education class. He also works is a graduate assistant at the Mini-Dome’s Performance Lab, specializing in strength and conditioning. In strength and conditioning, said Keller, “We take a sport like tennis and look at bio-energy facts and movement specificity.”
Keller said bio-energy facts were attributes such as the amount of time a player takes to recover from exertion, and that movement specificity dealt with the specific motions associated with the athlete’s sport.
Despite his busy schedule, Keller finds time to relax a bit and study in the Mini-Dome.

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