Kody Cooke’s University of Hawaii employee ID card is an all-access pass.

He is the football team’s strength/conditioning coordinator and assistant head coach.

Because he is involved in planning practices, workouts, choosing meals and evaluating personnel, Cooke has desks in the weight room and coaches’ offices.

When roll is called at a position meeting, any position meeting, Cooke often answers, “here.”

“He’s the first guy I hired and the most important person here,” said Todd Graham, who was named UH’s head coach in January. “He’s involved in everything we do. He’s the guy I speak to every single day when we design our practices and workouts, and how we decide and phase those workouts, and how we practice football. He’s involved in every bit of that.”

By naming Cooke as assistant head coach, Graham has lifted the separation between football departments.

“My role is not just a strength coach,” said Cooke, who attends position meetings and video sessions. “It’s important for me to know how these coaches are coaching their players, so I can help in terms of training and bringing guys along and teaching in general.”

Cooke has kept busy monitoring a conditioning program that has been dramatically altered because of the pandemic. The usual pattern is to have uniform workouts for the players during the winter period, complementary workouts during spring training, and specialized programs for linemen and skill players in summer workouts leading to the start of training camp. But that changed when the Manoa campus essentially closed in March because of the pandemic, with courses moving from in-class to online instruction.

Without spring practice, Cooke improvised, setting up workouts for players depending on their access to equipment.

“In our sport, in any sport in general, soft-tissue injuries are the worry,” Cooke said. “Trying to program things they can do with a limited amount of equipment, that was a challenge, for sure.”

Cooke offered tips to maintain speed and power — skills that usually deteriorate if a player is idle over a five-to-seven-day period.

About two weeks ago, players who passed physical examinations were allowed to begin attending voluntary by-appointment workout sessions on campus.

“We can write their program, but we’re in there for the safety part of it,” Cooke said of the weight-room appointments. “We can help them spot. We can coach them (on lifts) because there are tactical things we have to coach up to keep them safe. The same thing with outside (workouts). Whether it’s speed day or a true conditioning day, we have to make sure they’re getting the proper rest. Levels of inactivity are going to happen. It was about 12 weeks before we could make appointment-only lifting. You have to take into account the loss of conditioning. The biggest thing is getting that base underneath them again.”

When official workouts begin in July, Cooke will implement separate supplemental programs for the so-called “skill players” and “big guys.”

For skill players —mainly receivers, running backs, quarterbacks and defensive backs — the emphasis will be on speed.

“There comes a point in time for skill guys that strong is strong enough,” Cooke said. “For those guys, speed is the most important quality. That what we’ll really harp on. Deeper in the summer, we’ll be doing a lot more single-leg work, a lot more single-leg plyometric drills, more speed work overall. The only way to get faster is to run faster.”

The single-leg workouts — front foot elevated during a split squat; front and reverse lunges — are intended to develop the shin angle. In essence, a positive shin angle is to direct the lower leg toward the desired direction of movement.

“If you really slow the game down, you’re watching skill guys run and cut and change direction,” Cooke said. “Being efficient in changing direction is really about creating a shin angle. The better shin angle you have, the stronger you are in that angle, the better accelerator and decelerator you’re going to be. (Hall of Fame running back) Barry Sanders was so good at what he did because he was so good at creating a deep-shin angle. He was so strong he was able to put a foot in the grass and go back the other way.”

Cooke said speed workouts will be recorded on video, then reviewed later to help players make any corrections. “We live in a world of technology,” Cooke said. “Why not use what we have?”

The linemen will focus on strength development. Their lifts will include power cleans, squats and clean pulls. “More explosive movement,” Cooke said. “Most of their movements are going to be bilateral. They’ll be on both feet.”

During the season, warm-ups will not be the same routine. “There is a different emphasis each day, whether it’s a change-of-direction day or speed day,” he said. “I don’t even call them speed warm-ups. They’re speed-improvement drills. There’s an intent for everything we’re doing.”

Cooke grew up in Waukomis, Okla., a small town whose high school competed in eight-man football. In the seventh grade, he began attending classes in Enid, 10 miles away from Waukomis. His school competed at the 6-A level, the highest in Oklahoma.

After two seasons at Oklahoma, Cooke transferred to Tulsa, where Graham was the head coach. After completing his playing career, he was a strength/conditioning intern for two years at Tulsa, then rejoined Graham at Arizona State as a graduate assistant and eventually sports-performance coach. He was at Virginia Tech the past two years.

Cooke acknowledges coaching fits his personality. “I like knowing the ‘why’ to everything,” Cooke said. “Do I think there’s only one way to do anything? I don’t think that at all. I think there are a thousand ways to do something. I want to make sure what my way is, is right in every way it can be right. There has to be a ‘why’ behind what you’re doing. I’m not going to make guys go out there and do different drills because they don’t matter. It has to have a point to it.”

Cooke’s other team helps him find ways to maintain his own personal fitness.

“My wife loves to train,” Cooke said. “She has a USAW lifting certification. We’re able to train together. It makes it fun and easy.”