In response to this, Hall of Fame Coach Tom Osborne sought out Boyd Epley to pioneer the first concerted strength and conditioning program in the country. The Nebraska Cornhuskers, who had ascended to become one of the powerhouse football programs in the country, were coming off a brutal 47-0 beatdown at the hands of Oklahoma in the National Championship. Allow me to take you back to 1968, about three decades before I was even born. Which leads me to the premise of this article: Have we become overly reliant on using static loading with our athletes?įirst, a quick interjection.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to justify the practicality and effectiveness of conventional static weight for a lot of athletes and populations, says Click To Tweet When I put my personal bias for lifting weights aside, however, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to justify the practicality and effectiveness of conventional static weight for a lot of athletes and populations. I can’t overstate enough that, to this day, I 100% love jacking some steel. Al Vermeil, Dan Pfaff, and Buddy Morris are icons, in my view, and were instrumental in my early development as well. I was indoctrinated into this field by the likes of Louie Simmons, Eric Cressey, Mike Boyle, and others who are categorically “weight-centric” coaches. As we’d expect, this has continued to result in a great deal of debate, fervor, and borderline contempt from those across the aisles. But it goes without saying that for every one or two practical, beneficial, nuanced applications, there are hundreds of others that aren’t worth a damn-and remember, there is almost nothing “new” at this stage of the game. In fairness to both ends of the spectrum, I believe most coaches are genuinely well-intentioned, and we’re all really just trying to do one thing: figure out how to optimize human performance. Along the way, some cling desperately to the industry leaders and take every word as gospel in other cases, outcasts and radical thinkers take fundamental concepts and add their own twist or nuance to it, believing in their own mind they are revolutionaries of our field. In the same breath, S&C can be described as a “dog eat dog” world but also very much a copycat industry-there are a handful of predominant coaches/organizations that seem to set the path for the rest of us to follow. The strength and conditioning field is an interesting space, to put it one way.
This has been a difficult, delicate balance I’m still figuring out. While these tissues certainly need to be exposed to heavy static load, there is a strong argument to be made that most of the training effort should emphasize distal speed, terminal stability, and tissue quality as the athlete becomes more advanced. The ligaments, tendons, fascia, and joint capsules are unmistakably critical for overall health and function. You’re also forced into learning (and respecting) the significance of soft tissues. Having to do this so many times based on necessity has inspired me to develop a new paradigm for how I populate training hours, even with healthy athletes. When you work with injured athletes, you’re forced to see things from a different angle-because there are so many hard barriers, you’re prompted to engineer unique solutions that accommodate the athlete’s limitations. I’ve had to work extensively on how to program effectively for my athletes without overtaxing injured areas. For me, working predominantly with an injured population essentially makes conventional compound loading sparse in most cases and imprudent in others.
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