Old School Football Conditioning - County Fair Workout

Clubhouse Gas Casey: Football is about Xs and Os but really it’s about “mono e mono” who’s the best man, who can gut it out the longest and the toughest and the way that you find that out first and foremost is by your teams conditioning program. You see a lot of teams around the country. In fact all of teams have preseason conditioning programs. Now we found a team with an intense, incredibly intense end season conditioning program that we’re going to show you today on Clubhouse Gas. So for you here at Whitefield what is your focus on when you prepare your conditioning program? Harold: (Asst. Coach Harold Hilliard) Well I really look at it from two aspects. I look at it as a prehab because the better prepared they are the less time their going to be doing rehab with injury so I look at it as a prehab. I also look at it as a mental and physical strength and power and endurance. A lot of times I feel that we won a lot of our games in football in the fourth quarter because of the mental and physical preparations that these guys have put through also. Casey: Have you seen a success as far as reducing injuries? Harold: I have, thank goodness besides some broke bones we’ve had no injuries here, significant injuries. ACL’s, knees, stingers all those things are obsolete. Casey: Is it just the stuff we said here or is there also weight training a lot? Harold: We do weight training. We lift 3 days a week too end season. We lift Saturday mornings just kind of a flushing day. We lift very heavy on Mondays and we lift lighter on Wednesdays and then we go with this kind of stuff two days a week as well. Casey: A lot of football programs have really hardcore conditioning programs preseason but you don’t see them a lot doing this end season, why is it important for you end season? Harold: Well I always I never like to maintain, I always like to climb during the season and hopefully our opponents will continue maintaining and then we can take advantage of the hard work the guys are putting in. Casey: Let’s walk through each of the drills and you explain the drill and the purpose, and the proper techniques so start with the tire flip? Harold: There are various weights. There are between 225 and 325. It’s great for a triple joint extension, the knees, hips and ankles. It’s very applicable to the football especially for the lineman things like that, so it’s just it’s lower body power is where it is. It’s explosiveness. Casey: Alright so what is the proper form for the tire flipping? Harold: Just to make sure that the hips and the shoulders rise at the same time. If your hips rise first you’re using too much back, so we would like to make sure that their using their lower body to get the tire, the motion started with the lower body. In the summer and preseason, we use to do it and really races and do it as fast as you can flip them and covers much ground as possible as you can so there’s a lot of upper body explosion as well but today we just did the as many as you can flip in a certain amount of time. Well the tire pull is a lot— the noun you’ll have to use is a donut on a baseball bat. You’re swinging with a donut on a baseball the muscles are firing at that capacity and then you take it off and then you still fire off that same capacity but the bat is lighter. Same with the tires, you’re running and usually a good positive angle while running and then when you remove it your muscles are still firing theoretically at the same rate they were firing with the weight behind you is just not there so thus increasing speed. Casey: Is it just a linear movement or there are other kind of variations you could put on the drill? Harold: Well there are variations today, we just ran in a linear pattern. The back is going to run backwards, the quarterback and do his drop step for a certain amount of time. We had our alignment bear crawling today. There’s a plethora. We do another thing where they have the ropes around their hands and so lounge walking so they are pushing at a 45 degree angle or alignment so it gets them into that punch. Sledge drive is they all have to work together. If one man is working harder – if you will so it will work trying to work in unison and build some team rapport there and it is a tremendous amount of work. It’s just the continuation of the foot movement, the wide base and pushing a very heavy object. Casey: A lot of people put their alignment on the sled but that’s what the importance of having your skill players on sled as well. Harold: Oh yeah I mean they have to move just as explosively and shed people to. A receiver has to get rid of his guy and get down the field. The Linebackers that’s what they do as they run through people. So all of these exercises are developing lower body and core explosiveness so when their going up for a pass or to defend or to block someone or to tackle someone it’s all applicable. Bucket carries that is just how farmers walk and what we’re doing is working on some grip and then again that gets in to the middle preparation. There’s some physical aspects involved but it’s a tremendous amount of mental, while carrying the bucket. Casey: Gutting it out. Harold: Oh absolutely. A lot of drills is just where we move in a linear and lateral and diagonal movements in this special awareness, foot speed, strive frequency and things like that so it just helps us a lot with the ability to get some fast speed. Casey: Talk about the impact that these particular workouts have on the character of the football team. Harold: You know I think it’s great first of all a team, team building, team bonding around here all summer long its 98 degrees. It’s just miserable. We’re getting heat acclimated out here. They look over, they can trust their teammate because their teammate is doing the exact same thing that their doing. So it’s not a quarterback is the champ or the receiver. Everybody is doing the same thing. And I think it’s a good team building as well as the physical and mental aspects so of doing these drills, these various drills. Casey Yeah, you know what team building everybody doing it together. I was very happy and a little bit surprised because where I came from to look at during conditioning drills to see the head coach right in the middle of it. Harold: Oh yeah, Yeah Coach Phils and he does every single rep of single fourth quarter we’ve done all summer of the month. His first two years here he does not miss something. He pushes the guys and what we have to do, we do piggyback here to the various hills and different topographies around here and he grabs the biggest guy out there and puts him on his back and takes him on his back and takes off of the hills. So he’s special, I mean those kids see him doing it and it’s not do as I say, its do as I do. Casey: Coach why not just run sprints and hit them real hard at the wait room and maybe use some of the more specialized of why are you flipping tires and carrying it up the hills. Harold: Well you know that’s a funny thing that you asked. I like to compare to say a boot camp of the Marine Corps on surviving Parris Island and even the Junction Boys back with Coach Bear Bryant. You know they went out as boys and came back as men and I feel like that that’s what these guys are doing here.