A veteran with more than 14 years of experience in the field, and member of the Penn State athletics staff since 2009, Greg Miskinis is set for his ninth season as an assistant director of athletic performance in 2022-23. He oversees all facets of performance enhancement for the Nittany Lion men’s basketball program.
Throughout his time at Penn State, Miskinis has helped grow 43 professional athletes, many of whom he still works with on programming for their given sports. He has developed and coached draft picks in a number of different professional leagues including the NBA, NFL, NWSL (women’s soccer), NLL (men’s lacrosse) and WNLL (women’s lacrosse).
Working closely with the team’s athletic trainer, Miskinis has made a significant impact on the health and well-being of the men’s basketball student-athletes. The Nittany Lions have maintained the best injury prevention numbers in the nation, with no player missing a game over the past three seasons due to injury.
Preparing the team for competing at the highest levels, Miskinis has developed both in-season and off-season programs that combine speed development, power production, explosive mobility, conditioning, proper warm-up and cool down techniques, flexibility, agility and regeneration. Miskinis incorporated programs with a high nutritional focus to help student-athletes build and maintain effective habits and achieve high levels of both physical and mental resiliency. The Nittany Lions have shown an incredibly consistent motor, finishing five of the last six seasons with a second-half scoring advantage over their opponents. The Nittany Lion men’s basketball team has consistently been praised by national media and opposing coaches alike as one of the hardest-playing and toughest teams in the Big Ten. He has also introduced several measures of wearable technology to track and improve preparation, performance and recovery.
During spring and early summer 2020, Miskinis designed workouts to adapt to the unique circumstances that prevailed following the cancellation of the postseason tournaments. With the Nittany Lions’ return to campus in June 2020, he worked with Jonathan Salazer and the Penn State athletics administration to create healthy and safe training environments. This included the adaptability to convert an all-outdoor training protocol for the first three months of the fall semester, creating an optimally safe and healthy environment for the Nittany Lions to get season-ready.
Miskinis previously worked with all 31 of Penn State’s athletics teams in some aspect. He helped build the national champion women’s soccer team in 2016, while giving Penn State its first Mac Hermann trophy winner in Raquel Rodriguez. He also assisted with the strength and conditioning efforts of the football program, including two appointments as the interim director of strength and conditioning for the athletics department during transitional periods. In his 13 years at Penn State, Miskinis has only been a part of one losing season, while taking nine different Penn State athletics programs into postseason competition.
Following his graduation from Penn State, the letterwinner and former tight end on the Nittany Lion football team (2004-08) assisted the Penn State football team as a graduate assistant coach from 2009-2012. He earned his Master of Education in health education in 2011.
In addition to his day-to-day duties in Penn State’s sports performance department, Miskinis also mentors Penn State kinesiology department student interns and guest lectures in Health and Human Development, Kinesiology, Biobehavioral Health and Health Policy and Administration courses throughout the school year.
Miskinis holds certifications from Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association (CSCCa), United States Weightlifting Level 1, National Academy of Sports Medicine Performance Exercise Specialization, National Academy of Sports Medicine Corrective Exercise Specialist, Functional Movement Screen Level I, Precision Nutrition Level 1, a Blood Flow Restriction Certification, Kettlebell Level I, Mental Health First Aid, and the American Heart Association CPR/AED.
The Pennsylvania native is married to the former Megan Altig. The couple has a daughter, Vera Kate, and a son, Liam Gregory.
Gregory Miskinis