In addition to serving as the trainer for the football team and coach of the track team, Fitzpatrick also served as a professor of physical training and the director of the school's Waterman Gymnasium. He was first hired at Michigan in 1894, the same year the Waterman Gymnasium was opened. Gymnasium training was compulsory for Michigan students at the time, and it was Fitzpatrick who oversaw the training. The gymnasium training included "muscular strengthening and improvement", exercises (known as "correctives"), basketball, and Swedish gymnastics.
